Do i prefer vinyl records?
Wednesday, January 20
Robert van Loghem in life hacking, music

No i don't. In fact i don't prefer any medium, be it vinyl, cd, or some downloaded digital thing. When i listen to music on my home stereo the sound quality has to be at least ok. With ok, i mean, no distortion, relatively-uncompressed and does not sound like a 128kb mp3, where I hear a constant ocean when I should be hearing cymbals. I've got a 1200 piece vinyl collection, some 500 CD's, 450 tracks bought online and 1 Album-USB stick ;) by Mr Scruff on Ninja tune. It has to be about the music! but sometimes I catch myself prefering sound quality above any other quality and that is something dangerous.

So preferring a single quality above something else is dangerous to me. But why? I think that there is more to music then one single quality, sound, composition, sharing (how share-able with other people ;), complexity, impressiveness all come mind. (some of those qualities are a bit personal and vague ofcourse!) So I try to not prefer one to the other but judge them on different qualities. Sometimes it can be hard to not fall into the trap of just focussing on sound quality because I've got a pretty good sound system which is like Simon Cowell of XFactor coming down on an unsuspecting and innocent sounding music piece with a bolt of lightning if it does not sound right. When I first got my Speakers aka Maxima's I thought I could throw away 50% of my music collection because it sounded terrible or so-so. Thankfully I had learned that while sound quality is important! it is not the bar to which the rest must be compared with. Take for example, Peter Broderick, sound quality, so-so, but the composition and the arrangements give me goose bumps!

There must be something more to music then sound quality and that is something I have learned in the last 3 years! It is also about other qualities. Beautiful music sounding bad is beautiful music sounding bad ;) But i still enjoy THE beautifull part of it. So do i prefer vinyl records? No i don't, i like the sound and the spinning black disc, but other media has its uses too and that is where the real enjoyment starts. Wherever i am, i can always equally enjoy music be it on my big speakers or doing the dishes while my iPhone is playing some mp3 from LCD Soundsystem. I enjoy them both and equally. In the end it is all in my mind. 

Article originally appeared on Drummingwithneedles - Robert van Loghem (http://drummingwithneedles.com/).
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