by Amelie Mueller

Created on: June 18, 2009

An often overlooked view of this age old debate is the collective nature of vinyl LPs versus CDs. In this ever changing music industry, musicians are always trying to figure out new ways to not only earn a profit selling music but also create a degree of interactiveness and participation amongst their fan base.

With the onset of the digital mp3 era, CD sales have not only drastically decreased in record numbers but they are also showing no signs of slowing. Interestingly, the sales of vinyl have dramatically increased to the point where even big name chain stores are now clearing out precious floor space where fancy CD display racks once reigned to make room for the bulky but better selling vinyl.

As an avid music head and recording artist, I've witnessed the power a vinyl record has firsthand. Indie musicians are learning to harness the power of vinyl by offering fans special edition pressings and limited edition colored vinyl as ways to get the consumers interested in collecting the artists work as opposed to simply downloading the work off the internet, often illegally. To counteract the general lack of portability and convenience of a vinyl many smarter musicians are also offering up a free mp3 download with the purchase of each record. In this regard, vinyl is not only helping to resurrect the drowning industry, it's also an attainable method in which artists can use to make a living.

Ask anyone with a respectable amount of knowledge of music what the appeal of a vinyl is and you will undoubtedly hear the same answers time and again. Vinyl offers the listener more of an involved experience. To listen to a vinyl isn't to just pop a disc into a player, press play, and let the music fade into the background. Listening to a record requires more user interaction and encourages us to vest more time and interest into the overall experience. Vinyls are not stored in zippered cases away from the original artwork and packaging. Vinyls ask us to choose the sleeves, explore the artwork, smell the pleasantly unmistakable scents, take in the texture of the pressing. Vinyl gets all of our senses working in overdrive and creates an unmatched atmosphere that is perfectly complimented by the tones the album itself plays when the needle is set to the groove. One cannot simply walk away from album as it spins on a turntable.

Sometimes we become so enchanted with the new technological advancements that whenever we see the word "digital" our minds automatically registers the product as being better. Technically speaking, analog vinyl recordings actually offer up the truest and highest quality sound when compared to a CD.

Simply put, in order for audio to be digitized to a CD it is recorded into 44,100 bits of sound per second and then transformed into a relatively speaking very limited number of sound possibilities, thus resulting in a loss of original sound. Whereas, an analog LP records and plays back the exact waveform as the original tune. The groove on a vinyl LP has not been digitized therefore, the audio is not limited to record at a select number of samples per second.

The sound of a vinyl is more wholesome. Think of it this way: If you were going to commission a photographer to shoot some art for you, you would expect an original piece that fully represented the actual scene or subject of the print. You would not be happy with a broken down pixelated print that had to be restructured and retouched because of a computer's limitations.

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