Opinion of people who purchase vinyl records nowadays

[MATTROSE94]

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.

Cylinders did have the advantage of having a constant linear speed as the needle went over the groove.  Platters didn't have that, so the sound quality degraded as one neared the center.  Indeed, because of that, there were a few disc recordings where it was considered important that the sound quality be at its best at the end of the record rather than the beginning that were recorded with the groove starting at the label and working out to the edge instead of the usual starting at the edge.  Of course, platters are far more convenient and the otherwise unusable center space gave a place for a label to identify the record when it was on the machine out of its container.  (Incidentally, the term "canned music" was coined in reference to the "cans" cylindrical records came in.)  Still, it wasn't until the sound quality of discs improved to the point that most people couldn't hear the difference that discs overtook cylinders in popularity.

I noticed that type of distortion as well to a point on some of the 78RPM records that I have from the accoustic recording era and the early electric recording era. On many of mine, it almost sounds like a swooshing sound. From what I can tell, many record labels did not solve that issue until well into the 1930s, but by that point in time, the production of cylinder recordings was pretty much over (I believe that the last cylinder recordings were issued by Edison records in mid-1929).

On a side note, I noticed that many of my 78RPM records from the late 1950s (around the time that they were finally phased out) sound a whole lot better than their 45RPM counterparts. Several examples of records that I have from the late 1950s that sound better on 78s than on 45s are "Twilight Time" by The Platters, "Little Star" by The Elegants, "Tonight Tonight" by The Mello-Kings, "Walking After Midnight" by Patsy Cline and "Johnny B Goode" by Chuck Berry. By that time those songs were released, the 78RPM format was basically over for the most part, with the exception of jukebox operators and the small number of people who still had older phonograph equipment built prior to the introduction of LP's and 45's in 1948 and 1949.

[MATTROSE94]

FFs, and I'm one of them. 

I was born in the 90s, so music has been nearly all digital for my entire life.  I like the convenience of CD and MP3 (and the fact that MP3 doesn't degrade like vinyl, cassette, or CD), but vinyl is just plain awesome.  As far as I'm concerned, 8-tracks are junk and not worth my time, and cassettes are a huge pain in the butt because it's so easy to rip the tape out and render them worthless.  Plus, vinyl will sound better than any of them most of the time.  Now before you start chewing me out and pointing to all this science that proves that CD "sounds better," please hear me out: vinyl sounds better because it's usually mastered better, not because of any inherent technical advantage.  The loudness war has pretty much destroyed high fidelity and dynamic range on most CDs and digital files (and even some vinyl), so old vinyl will generally have superior fidelity and dynamics.  I love a lot of old music (especially 50s-80s rock), so vinyl is a natural choice for me because most of that music was originally recorded and mastered for it.  Simply put, it's the way that music was meant to be heard.

On a side note, I noticed that many of my 78RPM records from the late 1950s (around the time that they were finally phased out) sound a whole lot better than their 45RPM counterparts. Several examples of records that I have from the late 1950s that sound better on 78s than on 45s are "Twilight Time" by The Platters, "Little Star" by The Elegants, "Tonight Tonight" by The Mello-Kings, "Walking After Midnight" by Patsy Cline and "Johnny B Goode" by Chuck Berry. By that time those songs were released, the 78RPM format was basically over for the most part, with the exception of jukebox operators and the small number of people who still had older phonograph equipment built prior to the introduction of LP's and 45's in 1948 and 1949.

Those are all awesome songs, IMO.

The 1950s era of music is pretty much my favorite. There was a lot of great music released back then and I am lucky to have many of the songs of the era on the original 78rpm records (which are getting rarer and rarer as time passes). I also agree with you that 8-tracks were a mediocre format for the most part, as the fidelity is extremely poor on most of them and their design had some serious flaws. I really don't know why the 8-track format was able to last from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s.