Shut up just ignore the troller they get off on people getting agro with them.
Anyway, regarding the CD vs. Vinyl debate I am a die hard vinyl lover (give me a 12" over a silver disc any day), but CDs are just so darn useful for some things (mainly, and I hate to admit it, burning hard-to-find tracks from Napster).
Someone said this on onlinedj.com recently and I thought it summed it up really well:
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From what I've seen, vinyl now is essentially a niche market. Apart from a few die-hard hobbyists, nostalgists and people who savor very expensive analogue technology like fine wines (e.g. I once was reading a review of techs on a hi-fi turntable site that said they were 'great budget turntables'), vinyl is almost exclusively marketed towards professional and hobbyist DJs and turntablists.
CDs on the other hand overwhelmingly dominate the music industry due to 1) mass marketing 2) consistent level of audio quality over many plays and are easier to maintain 3) are practically indestructible 4) compact size 5) are cheap to produce 6) use (now) cheap technology 7) make a really cool arcing pattern if you stick it in the microwave
So there is a strong social factor here actually. Very few people use vinyl. You can't even get vinyl anymore at your local Tower Records or Sam Goody's at X suburban strip mall. To find vinyl you have to go to special vinyl stores or more "underground" (translation "cooler") record stores. Its also much more expensive. Thus it makes vinyl users "unique", "special" and a "breed apart" from the great unwashed, uncool clamering masses that want to hear the new Britney Spears single thats been played on MTV for the last 2 days every 30 minutes and followed by Alice Deejay's "Better off Alone" which is played at the local bar at exactly 12:20AM every night by the resident DJ for the last ...god knows how long anymore.
And even if you find this fabled underground cutting-edge retro-techno record store, you run into the problem of "who the heck are these artists?" and then "I don't know what that song I liked at that last rave/party was called" and then followed very shortly with the blood draining out your head when you suddenly realize "what? you mean its organized by record label? RECORD LABEL?? I don't even know what its called!!!" Its enough to make someone pop their head in a store, flip through the record racks pretending their looking for something while these thoughts are racing through their heads and beating a hasty path towards the exit.
By the time someone actually grits their teeth and does plop down $1000+ on equipment, learn which artists/labels they like by staying in a record store and listening to 20 singles at a time, suffer through 1++ months of learning how to beatmix on turntables (essentially by feel,with eyes closed and brow furled), learn things like "anti-skate" (uhh...its not a setting on my CD player...) and "tonearm settings" (you mean my left arm right, 'cause I'm left-handed?) and "elliptical" or "spherical" (can't I just get something in between?) styli, not to mention the difference between "scratch-curve" faders and "optical" faders and "ALPS" faders and "long curve" faders you better damn well believe that someone feels elitist. I mean, you need to know this stuff pretty much within the first few months of mixing just to _start_ sounding good.
And then some person (undoubtably someone very young and from the great unwashed masses, see above) comes along and cheerfully says, "you know what? Everything you know and learned is cr*p, 'cause see this this shiny box that my parents/sibling/lover/spouse got me for christmas/birthday can do everything your outdated and obsolete analogue technology can do and BETTER 'cause I download my songs for FREE from napster by going to record stores and reading the titles from the back of this month's readily availible Gatecrasher CD, even though a free Napster track often has encoding artifacts and flaws. Thus I'm smarter, cooler and BETTER than you because MY technology has outpaced YOUR technology over 10 YEARS ago and you're an obsolete dinosaur. And besides, MY technology uses lasers, yours use what, needles?? hahaha..."
Vinylists at this point are miffed. They reply with things like "its more intuitive (no stopping on a track frame)", "its more of an art (no button pushing)" , "its better quality" (no annoying high pitched squelches from a badly ripped mp3), "its more serious/greater commitment (it cost a whole heck of a lot more)". CDists fling words like "outdated" and "elitist". Battlelines are drawn, mud-slinging turns into flaming pots of oil, and the battle is joined.
And then there are the Vinyl-CD people. Who, really, no one really understands and as voices of moderation often do during war get convienently swept under the rug .
This whole argument, which I've seen play across many boards, heard with my friends and roommate always tends to end up along these lines. Its actually pretty funny in an absurd way if you think about it.
Isn't it just all about the music and feelings?
Peace and respect.
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Well put I say. I thought he summed it up very nicely!
