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Vinyl is a terrible technology?? Have you never put on an old record and considered the miracle of it?

70 years ago Miles Davis vibrates some air with his horn, which is translated into electricity by a microphone, which is translated through magnetic tape and eventually back into electricity and then back into vibrations on a disk. 70 years later I can take that disk and turn its vibrations back into electricity that moves the air on my living room. No encoding, no decoding, just air and electricity that my ancestors will be able to replay until the end of time.

That's as close to magic as anything humanity has ever come up with in my opinion.

It is bad by modern standards. Low capacity, high noise, imperfect stereo separation, pretty bad frequency response. CD quality audio solves every problem perfectly and it's old and dirt cheap at this point. To even approach that with vinyl you have to fuss over needles, weight, turntable mechanics and so on and and spend a lot of money and still won't get there.

Personally I see far more magic in digital electronics. Storing vibrations physically is neat and clever, but none of that looks particularly magic to me. Just a straightforward, logical solution to a problem. More elegant simplicity than magic really.

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