Viricide Filly wrote:superior quality over CDs they have.
Debatable. Early CDs weren't great, to be sure, but that was because encoding formats weren't as sophisticated. It's pretty much a mathematical fact that there is no loss of information in 44.1 kHz at 16 bit PCM (which is the ideal format for a CD these days) that can be heard by normal human ears. A properly manufactured and pressed Audio CD is indistinguishable from a properly manufactured vinyl record. Assuming proper manufacturing (and storage), it's even debatable the two will be different 100 years from now.
For what it's worth, there's loss in vinyl, too, because the needle has a width. There is only so narrow a groove the needle can settle into, meaning that there's only so small a wavelength that can be recorded. Naturally, this limitation is well outside the range of human hearing, but that's really the whole question: can you hear the difference? Under the most ideal circumstances, you cannot hear the difference.
So what about that "raw" sound? Electrostatic hum. Dust settling on the record while it plays. Feedback from the speakers if the table is in the same room, and the music is played loud enough to vibrate it. The imperfections of analogue transmission of audio in commercial record players is what actually makes vinyl so popular. Given that, what eery says is perfectly true. If people who listen to vinyl listen to it for its imperfections, then that's pretty much exactly what people who listen to audio cassettes do it for; the properties of tape hiss and electrostatic hum are desirable to them.
Granted, when a CD is played back in less than ideal conditions, after improper storage, it's hard to argue that it still sounds "good." But I would hardly argue that vinyl is superior because it degrades more gracefully.
