So like most people I like listening to music and I've seen some people harp on the virtues of vinyl. Unfortunately I have not the equipment to play vinyl but I was wondering if anyone on here could tell me if it's objectively better or if it's just some nostalgic/hipster BS.
To be honest, I'd love to have some vinyl records and a turntable but that's mostly based on the cool-factor rather than sound quality and also being able to play recorded music without any electricity, not that I would ruin my records that way.

I don't miss the sound but I miss the art work.

I'm not a "hardcore" audiophile, in the sense some of my friends and acquaintances are -- I'm talking people who spend huge amounts of money in audio equipment; amplifiers, state-of-the-art turntables, expensive speakers, etc. --, so I'd say... not really.

The sound quality of vinyl records is definitely better than the one we find in digital media since CDs, but to actually take advantage of it we have to invest a lot of money in equipment, so, in my modest opinion, it's not really worth it if you only have a low-to-medium level audio system and peripherals.

Other than that, the artwork vinyl records brought along is something I honestly miss -- and I don't think it's a matter of "not being practical", we were actually buying art pieces, at times, not just art-music, but art-painting and art-design. I miss most of those sweet sleeves and covers vinyls came in, even more than what I miss video game boxes and manuals.

Having said that, I guess it just comes off as "hipster-y", to you, so feel free to dismiss my opinion.

:)

On the low-end record player I've got I don't notice anything extra special about the quality. Seem to find myself agreeing with what everyone has already posted. Thinking maybe if you wanted to listen to old Jazz records or something like that and had good equipment, then it might be worthwhile thinking about.

Despite the most likely given arguments, that vinyl has a certain warmth and sounds better and so on, they have no technical advantage over CDs. Of course there are some really bad mastered CDs, which can sound less good than vinyl, but then it has nothing to do with the medium.
And most vinyl have CD mastering on them anyway, since this is way cheaper than creating them from scratch.

However, vinyls have some aesthetic preferences, which you might find appealing enough. For example, they are beautiful. CDs look like plastic toys, compared to them. The artwork is bigger, the process of making them read is satisfying...

i would say its -mostly- about how youve learned to listen to music.

I think there was some sort of smallish research few years back where the music teacher who did it said that many younger people who had grown up listening to (badly) compressed mp3's preferred that sort of "sound" to vinyl or whatever audiophiles claim to be higher quality.

They certainly sound very different, so id vouche for individual preference.

( i think this is straightly comparable to gaming, where old folk like me may think ASCII/ANSI and MUD text are all the graphics a game could ever need - while someone of younger generation is more likely to expect any give "good" game to have all the graphical bells and whistles)

It took me a while to hunt it down, but here's an interesting article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/07/loudness_wars_stfu/

Oh yes grammaphone is much better than digital audio but if you're going down that road you want a bearingless turntable, and while you're at it throw in some vacuumtube amplifiers as well, and electrostatic speakers, and some superexpensive audiocables, and etc.....

It's more grognard than hipster to be honest, hipsters are mostly on the low end of the spectrum.

I love my Vinyl collection, I even love the scratchiness that you can often get with them.

you can get much better quality from cd's and digital media but Vinyl will always be more of an authentic sound to me.

Yeah, it's that one. Not always though. Only about 95% of the time.
I have about a dozen friends that brag all day about how much they love vinyl. About eleven are hipsters. Perfectly messy beards, fake glasses, a typewriter in their front room that they never use, maybe a vest from 1973...

In general - the more you talk about it, the more full of shit you probably are. If you don't brag about your awesome vinyl collection, then you probably legitimately love vinyl.

Thanks, I think that answered my question. I hear the difference too but certainly not enough to justify the huge costs in acquiring the high-end equipment necessary to play it "properly". Ultimately the value in vinyl to me is the fact that it's analogue, then if I had no electricity I could still listen to some Flaming Lips or something, and that it looks a lot cooler than CDs. It seems like more of a moot point when I consider that my hearing is always deteriorating, too, so the differences, presumably, would be less pronounced over time to my ears. Yeah, I think this has more to do with my curiosity than the sound quality.

No, vinyl isn't really all it's cracked up to be. Believe me, from someone who went through the best age of music IMO, the 60's and 70's (especially the 60's, some real powerful art there that just sounded amazing) to some of the crap that passes for music today, as much as the music was better before, the technology is better today and so is the sound, most especially long term.

I'm not even sure a brand new pristine vinyl sounds any better than a CD, but after 100 plays it's not even close IMO.

CD's didn't stick around just because they were smaller. They stuck around because that technology was a real improvement.

I did like the albums though. Gawd I've got hundreds of them and still pull them out once in awhile just to look at the cool art work. About 3 years ago I bought a converter and converted most of my albums from those years to CD's, and now listen to my 40 year old Pink Floyd albums on my computer and love it.

I remember going to record conventions with friends back in the day to scrounge around for old rare punk rock albums. Pressing vinyl (usually 45s) was sometimes the only way for small time bands to press their music. There was certainly a collector culture that sprung up from the vinyl era. You could have misprints, special editions with elaborate artwork, autographed versions, various colored vinyl printings, etc... all that made collecting vinyl fun (and kind of expensive).

But yeah, as a few have said, the sound is not up to par with modern technology. Some like the pops and scratches though. I guess it's a matter of opinion. I know some old timers who keep saying that vinyl is coming back and is trendy again. Well, trendy perhaps, but vinyl's not coming back. You're not going to see millions of people throw out their mp3 players and old CD players in exchange for a huge expensive record player and vinyl. Not gonna happen. But it's a cool sub-genre that still exists in some form, and if you have the time and money, record conventions can be fun and useful for meeting fellow record fans and adding albums to your own collection.