-The intrinsic value of music-

I think that the intrinsic value of music transcends packaging and delivery formats, and that these are just things you've got used to and are comfortable with. If you'd never had them you would never have missed them.

I can relate to the point you are making. Coming from a recording background; I see many flaws in your argument. Let me explore some observations I've made.

1. Digital vs Analog recording medium
2. Cutting vinyl from said medium
3. Quality of end listener

Digital vs Analog

I love recording to 1/4" tape at 15ips. It gives me a sound I don't get from digital recording that I enjoy. You can saturate it if need be. The heads, even if biased accurately, are not perfect. There's an element of chaos taking place. The curvature of the freq spectrum will be altered. Many people enjoy this sound. In the early days of digital conversion, it wasn't too great. When it finally caught on and better conversion was being made; many people still didn't like it. Why? Because it wasn't pleasantly changing the curvature of the freq. spectrum. It was...:gasp:...accurate. If it comes out that you're getting a clinical sound, your sound is clinical, do something to change it. Your source isn't as glossed over with the slight change analog tape gives you. I'll make an analogy.

Analog tape = Pothead friend that is nice, kind, but when you ask him how your music sounds he says "Yo dude, your music sounds awesome. You totally rock. Man I got the munchies real bad. Do you have any Dorritos?" Wow and Flutter, Wow and Flutter.

Digital = Brutally honest nerd friend that will point out that your grandma's lipstick looked like a clown as she is in her coffin at the funeral. He tells it like it is even if you don't want to hear it. He's critical, and sometimes makes you uncomfortable. But, with the right attitude you can make good use of this guy because he's dependable.

I like both of these characters to some extent. Nothing is perfect.

Cutting Vinyl from said Medium

I'm sorry but Vinyl is far from any kind of fidelity. It is a pleasing and nostalgic medium. It pales in comparison to analog tape (the pothead) this is more like a 65 year old pothead vietnam vet who back in the day did occasional LSD. He chain smokes and his voice is raspy. He was too close to an explosion and can't hear any low end below 55hz. Yeah sure he's fun to be around and he has some rich and colorful stories. What he can't remember he makes up, and sometimes he flashes back into a 100 yard gaze ranting about how they killed his platoon.

I still love the character.

Do you understand what goes into mastering for vinyl? Quite a bit of high and low end must be compressed or rounded off. If the low end isn't compressed or eq'ed enough, the needle will actually bounce! No shit. Is this drastic change that was used for so many years what you like about the recordings? Is your ear conditioned to this freq. response instead of an emperical study of reality and accuracy?

Quality of the end listener

The young women on the bus listening to the music... At least they're making an attempt to listen to music. Most of your people don't care about audio fidelity. They never have. If they can hear their favorite top 40 on the lowest common denominator playback system they're tickled. It's whatever they're conditioned to listening to. If a standard is low, then it doesn't take much to impress.

Here's what you need to understand about digital. Most digital conversion is total junk. Especially in the consumer world, and most of the pro world as well. Conversion is where it's all at. It's not so much the medium. A big part of the draw to vinyl is, the "conversion" so to speak the medium to electrical energy delivering to the speaker is more direct.

I'll agree, mp3's do start to suck if you get down in kbps. I would argue that a 320kbps mp3 is probably closer to the original tape master than the same thing on vinyl. I have a friend who was really into the late 90's boom of mp3's when most were 128kbps. He still likes listening to music at 128kbps! He will convert his higher bitrate songs down in order to calm his dogmatic mind. Silly!

The MUSIC is paramount. It doesn't matter what medium or conversion it has; if it's bad music, it's still bad music. We're flooded with so many options these days. A lot of it is made with terrible conversion, mediocre ideas and concepts, and poorly executed musicianship. The good stuff is still out there,probably more than ever, it's just harder to sort through the junk because what multiplied in the realm of good; it multiplied 1000x in the realm of bad. Our taste has also gotten a lot more sophisticated and fickle.

Thanks for reading.

I am 41 now. And I was happy when the very first CDs and CD players hit the stores in 1984. I bought an CD player then from my first earned money. Two Klaus Schulze CD were my first CDs ever: "Dune" and "Body Love".
And they sounded way better then my LPs then. And they still sound better today. OK, some noises and lo-fi effects of LPs are gone. Some other new problems like aliasing were introduced. But all in all CDs sound better to me.
Hearing an very well treated LP today on a better then average turn table still sounds like hearing it through a carpet. And all those little unwanted noises.

But today I know so many young people that can't tell the difference from a real CD and a 128 mp3. Even a 192 B/sec mp3 changes the sound. personally I prefer 192 mp4 files for use in my car. The cut on the higher frequencies is like on the FM radio. And a car isn't the perfect room for music anyway. And there is engine running most of the times anyway. But mp3s as the main storage for music? No!
And yes, I miss the big covers. And only a few CD booklet are giving you the same information as all the small print on a LP cover and LP's inner sleeve (sometimes).
But today we have the internet to get more pictures or information about the artist and the music. So I can life with the small booklet.
But an mp3 file, even if the tags are there (to often they are missing and you have to add them for further sorting and finding), the are just the very very basic informations. And often they are not right at all.

And digital music as download is of cause missing the physical aspect. And it way more likely, that this music will not be available if your computer crashes or needs to be replaced. I have LPs from the mid/late seventies here. They do play. And there is only one with a scratch on it (Pink Floyd: "The Wall" during the helicopter at the end of "Another Brick In The Wall, Part 1"). The CDs of 1984 are all doing fine. Only a very few errors a good CD player let slip through.
But even if you back up pure data-only music on your computer, will they play in 20 or 30 years from now?
As long as I have long time relations to certain music track, and when this music is long out of print, I am happy to have it here in a physical way. And to have a digital mp3 or better mp4 file here just in case.

My kids (12 & 14) are collecting music in the mp3 file formate and from iTunes. No cover. No physical collecting. And they have no problems with it.

Maybe I am just getting old or old-fashioned.

Anyway, I am not willing to part from so many track I own fro 20 years or more. They are part of my life. Memories connected to them or to the mood of certain track. I still got the music here that played as a kind of "the cigaret after" when I was together with my very first girlfriend. And yes, it was EM music. And it was from Klaus Schulze. No more details

Oh, Aaron: interesting