I bring this up because on my recent trip to Chicago I found a Marantz direct drive turntable for eight bucks and with a new needle and cartridge thanks to Circuit City for a measly twenty, I am back in the vinyl game for the first time in nearly twenty years and loving it.

It looks very similiar to this:






As a result I've been enjoying a few of the ye olde favorites I've had in storage below.









Also, does anyone believe that despite the crackle pop, the audio from vinyl on a high end system is superior to the sounds eminating from compact discs?

Discuss.

cd's, then probably mp3's.

i was listening to some cassettes a couple weeks ago since i was borrowing a car that only had a tape player. i really wasn't that into listening for the sound quality rather that it was just something to listen to.

i have about 30 or so vinyl albums but i rarely listen to them since the turntable is downstairs and it's kind of a pain in the ass to try and listen to it down there.

i can't really tell any difference in the quality between vinyl, cd or mp3 but my hearing isn't all that great either so i'm not much help.

vinyl for sound

mp3 for portability

CDs are somewhere in between

i probably listen mostly to mp3s, since im hardly home

tapes have their own shitty charm too

especially since my car only has a tape player

I listen to a variety of formats.

MP3's on my Creative Zen when I'm out and about but rarely at home.

Mainly CD's at home.

I didn't actually get a CD player until '96 when my life settled down a bit from moving around, so before that I'd mainly bought cassettes to listen to on my walkman. I've replaced most of the cassettes with CD's but there are still some that I haven't but which I still listen to on a semi regular basis (Superchunk, Alice Cooper etc).

I also have a Minidisc recording deck. I have literally thousands of radio shows recorded on to minidisc (mainly John Peel, but also others) and quite often listen to them as well. The White Stripes and Lightning Bolt *Live At Maida Vale* Peel Sessions are awesome.

mp3 is my media of choice.

Sorry, but why?

Music sounds so much better on either CD (especially the newer remasters (see the newer Bob Dylan's albums) or vinyl. I can't tell you how many times I have bought an album after hearing an MP3 and thinking...so this is what this album really sounds like.

The increased portability and accessibility is huge for me. Those gains far outweigh whatever quality loss I hear between CD and VBR via EAC/LAME.

Exactly. Im between Uni, work and home all the time so the only time i could listen to records/CDs is at night. I could take a stack of discs and a discman with me, but why should i when the sound quality of mp3s are just as good when listening with earbuds.

That is the only way I hear MP3's these days and seems to be the standard on s1sk. It's still a huge drop off, IMHO. I understand the need to bee portability but most of the time I need the quality over anything else...just a bit old school i'm afraid. (sounds like a lyric from a boo radleys song...scary).

CD, cassette, vinyl. I hear about disc rot on CD-R's but vinyl is forever and well stored cassettes seem to be good for a quarter century and counting. I think it's smart to keep as many formats as you can. It's kind of sad that the trend is toward worse sound (mp3) when you'd think we'd be moving toward higher sampling digital, e.g., DVD-Audio as the standard release by now. Unfortunately I guess the biggest segment of the market doesn't care about sound as much as portability and won't demand something better. Let them have their ipods (hope they don't go deaf/ tinnitus out) but for those who care about sound, it seems logical to have an improved format that plays on regular CD players but has much better sound on a specialized player (which also plays old CD's). Instead, nobody seems to care about CD's--it's all about digital downloading. The services do have a lot but they're not the so-called Celestial Jukebox. And then you're supposed to store the track or album on a crappy CD-R which no one knows how long will last OR store it on a hard drive which are unreliable enough that you probably need a second drive as a back up? Even a coated commercial CD is no sure thing supposedly although you don't hear too much about rot--yet. So good old maligned vinyl is the archival format?

my favourite is vinyl, but iPod would have to be most often.

Prefer CD, but more often listen to aac on the ipod as I spend most of my time at work.

CDs are tops for me. New vinyl sounds terrific, but I have a very low tolerance for pops and skipping.

CDs for me. The only time I listen to mp3s is while sitting at my computer.

I don't have a mobile mp3, and don't really want one.

Word. Vinyl for tangibility, digital for portability.

cd in my car
mp3 everywhere else

I can't tell a sound difference, but putting on a CD commits me to listening to something instead of just switching between tracks.

I really can't either, but I was mainly thinking of the medium. When I'm listening to cds, I'm at home playing them on my stereo. I'd prefer to be sitting on the couch, cd case(s) in from of me than having those damn earbuds in.

Vinyl on a good system. Hands down.

CD's are fine. MP3's are fine....I'm not enough of an audiphile to care about every little nuance in each format. Cassettes can stretch adnthe sound goes bad. Vinyl was never my thing, although I like the crackling vinyl sound in the speakers when you first put the needle down.

Vinyl at home, cd's for the car.

At what bitrate are you listening to mp3s, BeeOK? Because at 192, there's virtually no difference between the mp3 and the original CD. And I'm guessing that you've gone to more than a handful of concerts without hearing protection, right? And you have probably listened to your car stereo too loudly too often, right? I highly doubt that 95% of people can hear a difference due to the everyday hearing damage that most of us have from overdoing it in our youth. Personally, I don't think anyone can hear it, but I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to a tiny minority that may have superhuman hearing. I know, I know, you just happen to be one of those 5%. Everyone says that.

Cd's first then ipod. I would listen to vinyl at home but I don't really have the space to set up my record player.

Really, it should be:

vinyl, because of its sound

If I had my druthers, I'd listen to vinyl exclusively. I enjoy its sound more than the digital formats. However, it takes more time (cleaning and dusting the vinyl and flipping) and a specific place to listen to it (which isn't always available to me). That makes CDs the choice for me most often. However, I do listen to MP3s on my iPod, both when exercising and in the car sometimes.