vinyl space

In the summer of 2013, when we were getting ready to move to Texas, I went through our basement storage to figure out what we would keep, what we would sell, and what we would throw away. I lingered a long time over several boxes of LPs — records that I had owned for decades, but that I hadn’t listened to in … well, in at least a decade. After a long mental struggle, I asked my son to gather up the records and sell them to Half Price Books. I didn’t do it myself because I thought I might well chicken out and bring them back home. But the age of vinyl was over, right? We’d be streaming and listening to MPs from here on out, yes?

I try not to think about what we sold that day, because over the past few years I’ve resumed listening to vinyl, and am gradually rebuilding my collection. (So far I’ve managed to keep it small — fewer than 100 discs. So far.) Some blame for this state of affairs must be laid at the feet of my friend Rob Miner, whose record collection and vintage stereo system I used to enjoy when he still lived here in Waco. Damn, this sounds good, I would think.

The online wars between the Vinyl Partisans and the Digital Defenders are endless and not worth rehashing here, or anywhere else. But in essence the Defenders point to the indisputably greater fidelity of digital recordings, while the Partisans speak more vaguely of “warmth” and “presence.” And it’s hard to speak any less vaguely! While many, though not all, music lovers believe that recordings can have distinctive “character,” it’s not clear how to identify the particular sonic features of a given recording — beyond obvious and not-especially-helpful things like dynamic range and audio spectrum.

Pascal said of the Copernican universe, “Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m’effraie,” and while digital recordings do not frighten me, they estrange me: they seem to be coming from a great vacuum, some featureless un-environment, a cold and boring non-place. But when I listen to a well-engineered record, especially one made in the analog era, on vinyl, I feel that I’m sharing a perceptual space, a sensorium, with the musicians. I wish I could describe it better. It’s an experience the opposite of alienating; it’s what the Germans call heimlich. Digital recordings, by contrast, often seem to be unheimlich, uncanny, slightly and uncomfortably weird.

If you don’t feel that way and feel it pretty strongly, then vinyl isn’t for you. It’s kind of a pain in the neck to use — I am not one of those people who enjoys the “ritual” of changing records; I would strongly prefer to be able to listen to a record straight through, as I do when I put on a CD. For me it’s the sound only that appeals. Well, that and the packaging: readily visible cover art! Readable liner notes!

So, yeah, I spend a lot of time wishing that I still had those records I sold in 2013. But to be fair to myself, I think most music-lovers in that year would’ve been surprised to know that in the year 2025 vinyl records would still be made at all — and thus far more surprised that they now outsell CDs.