Opinion of people who purchase vinyl records nowadays

[angus]

I do, but I don't have a turntable for it.

 

Why not also buy five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy discs as well?  You could use them as coasters, and your records as frisbees.

Whatever.  Option 2.  However excellent or lame a song is, fitting onto a bit of metal the size of a pinhead is always preferable than fitting onto a brittle piece of plastic too big to conveniently carry.  I have plenty of records from the old days, and a working record player plugged in and ready, but I can't say I've used it in years.  Why would I when any song I'd like to hear from my collection I could hear more conveniently, and in better quality, with the push of a few buttons.

[angus]

Tape?  When I was in rock bands in college and grad school, we recorded the tracks digitally whenever possible.  Initially all we had was tape, but once digital became affordable, I never felt any nostalgia about tape during that period, and was glad for the convenience.  Would Ludwig von Beethoven have scoffed at software, had it been available to him, which could save and transpose as he developed new keyboard riffs?  I have a hard time imaging that he would have turned it down in favor of constantly scribbling on parchment with a quill by firelight.  

[angus]

buying vinyl has been mainstream since the bush years

I think it's probably more like "since the Harding years" or maybe even "since the Wilson years."

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a group of retrophile hipsters existed during heyday of 20s jazz who went around insisting that the hollow phonograph cylinders were the only way to go, and that all the modern jazz records are just soulless garbage devoid of ritual or pleasure.

[angus]

Cylinders did have the advantage of having a constant linear speed as the needle went over the groove.

You're my new favorite retrophile hipster douchebag.   

[angus]

the experience of it...
 it's often very distracting to listen to music while using the computer.

agreed.  When I want to become one with the music I use my 25 year old Kenwood modular upright stereo, big wood and glass case, with 4 huge tower speakers.  Partly because I somehow regard that as the appropriate experience (you can take the boy out of the 80s but you can't take the 80s out of the boy?) and partly because the computer is distracting.  I'm the only one I know that still has a big old stereo as a prominent piece of furniture in my living room.

Still, even when I do sit back and listen to music on my stereo I prefer digital.  If I have a choice--and I have many albums on CD, record, and cassette tape, so often I have a choice--I go for the CD over any other form.  The digital invariably sounds better than the record or the tape.  Even different CD versions have different quality.  There is analogue recording with digital mastering, digital mixing with digital mastering, etc.  I guess the AAD, ADD, and DDD labels only applies to about 1990 and before, because the source material was often out there before digital recording was possible, but digital recording, when available, is my preference when I have a choice in formats, and I'd always look for those CDs back in the day when I was purchasing them. 

Obviously records look cool, and the cover art is larger than on any other format, and there were many times that I'd pull out the record album to study and read while actually listening to the album on CD. 

Folks a little older than I may even own a fourth format, eight-track tapes.  I remember them well, but by the time I was old enough to buy music, they were no longer sold in stores.  My guess is that they're the worst of the lot.  Like cassettes, they warp and stretch and come out of the case, and unlike cassettes, they do not even offer the advantage of being compact.