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CD's are definitely the way "modern" people listen to their music. It is crisp, clear, and vibrant. The quality not only enhances what is being sung or played, but allows the listener to close their eyes and be part of the music. It is as close to being there as it gets.

The storage of CD's is defiantly easier and takes up less space. The CD is basically indestructible compared to vinyl. There is no need for the additional storage for the excess phonographic component's either. One simply needs a shoe box and a disc player. No turntable along with extra needles, and the occasional nickle to give the needle head some weight.

Vinyl distorts after time and is easily distressed. Crackles of time seem to automatically appear no matter how carefully the record is preserved or used. The true sound is lost over time. Having the proper cleaning and needle care is helpful although sometimes the damage just happens due to climate.

While believing that the vinyl record isn't as good of a medium as CD's, I do believe it is comparing apples to oranges. Both are sweet but have different tastes and uses. Vinyl records are more of an era; CD's are a totally different era.

The vinyl era is one of feeling, one that not only did the recordings get better, but it was the beginning of music defining our lives. If anyone touched my vinyl there was hell to pay! If a record got scratched, I cried and usually saved money to by a replacement. That is how important records were to me. They were what I listen too when the world was ugly to me and what I listen too when the world was beautiful. It was also what I focused on when life was just "there".

When I hear an old Beatles tune on vinyl or CD's, I don't think about the quality, I think about what I was feeling the first time and the 100th time I was listening to that song. I hear only what I remember. Not the true tonal quality, but the feeling I had, not the feeling the Beatles had. Every important date in the history of my life is remembered by a song, maybe not an appropriate song, but none the less, that is how I remember things. When I here a tune that is now on CD, I for some reason hear the scratches and skips as if it was my old LP. My children will most likely say that is ridiculous, but they don't understand life before F.M. radio. They too define their lives by music, but some how it is just not the same.

Another reason vinyl was important in those days was because most people didn't have the discretionary income to just run out and buy a record. If they did have the money, they often thought long and hard about whether they wanted to spend it that way. We had to save for it or work for it and we had to really want it. Now it is a bit different, not that it is wrong, just different.

Yes, CD's are technically better the vinyl ever could be. There can be no doubt about it. They play truer, last longer and are easy to duplicate. But, vinyl had it's place and in it's time couldn't be surpassed. Vinyl is our history, CD's are our future.

Learn more about this author, C H Jahner.
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