200bpm
I think albums had to be better composed to entice you to play side two.  Today with digital and instant gratification, you just jump to tracks you like so the organizational concept of "album" is no longer as important. 

Earlier I posted about not "missing" vinyl because of it's limitations and the compromises engineers were forced to make - but ^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^ is something I LOVED about albums.
 
With a CD, artists (let me rephrase, LABELS) are forcing 12, 13, 14 and even more songs on the CD's and they are not well paced. I rarely find any flow on ANY CD. Vinyl Albums were "masterfully" put together in terms of pacing. It was like a live set list. Grab your attention, roll along for one or two more, slip in a ballad, end with a bang. Repeat on side 2! Sometimes they got sneaky and ended side 1 with a ballad... That really forced you to move on to the next side - you couldn't leave it on a ballad! Those little twists were GONE with CD's. Don't even get me going on Random....
 
Aside from the Artwork, and maybe even more than the Artwork - this is what I really miss about vinyl.  But nothing else

codamedia
Earlier I posted about not "missing" vinyl because of it's limitations and the compromises engineers were forced to make - but ^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^ is something I LOVED about albums.
 
With a CD, artists (let me rephrase, LABELS) are forcing 12, 13, 14 and even more songs on the CD's and they are not well paced. I rarely find any flow on ANY CD. Vinyl Albums were "masterfully" put together in terms of pacing. It was like a live set list. Grab your attention, roll along for one or two more, slip in a ballad, end with a bang. Repeat on side 2! Sometimes they got sneaky and ended side 1 with a ballad... That really forced you to move on to the next side - you couldn't leave it on a ballad! Those little twists were GONE with CD's. Don't even get me going on Random....
 
Aside from the Artwork, and maybe even more than the Artwork - this is what I really miss about vinyl.  But nothing else

Well, I grew up in an age of vinyl and hated the fact that they were noisy, wore out as I played some discs to death, some were warped from new and scratched, 7" and 12" singles were mastered differently to albums and you could clearly hear the difference in volume but I agree there was something about this to love so we share opinions here.
 
However, I do have fond memories of using them and my turntable which is why I still have around 200 of them with a good turntable, but...
 
When CDs came out, I loved it as I could play to death my albums without worry of wear.  Also, they were mastered more consistently until we got into the loudness war!!!  I personally loved the fact that artists could now produce longer albums and you didn't have to change the damn thing over to continue listening to it but there was something about that which I did like so in a way, I have contradictory feelings.
 
I think the revival is a case of how history has a habit of re-appearing as we all love to look back and sometimes it's the youngsters who are simply just looking for something different which is typical of fashion, lets be honest!
 
I was in HMV the other day and a young sales guy was telling me how their vinyl section is getting bigger as they're selling more discs and how amazing they sound, meanwhile I couldn't help smiling and eventually I had to tell him that I grew up in that age and still have a collection of them but in my opinion, there's nothing particularly amazing as they were always produced with sonic compromises and a frequency response which favoured our natural hearing.
 
As they say, there's no accounting for fashion, trends or taste.
 
What I will say though is don't knock CDs too much as the whole market is losing out to the dreaded MP3 download market and soon listening to quality recordings with artwork and getting that whole "you've bought a product, an image and a story" package will be lost forever as downloading MP3s is killing that whole romanticism that we had with music in the last centaury and it's all the fault of the big greedy record companies which is exactly why CD single's sales died a nasty death in the UK!!!

One thing that's missing from the streaming, digital world of music is the tactile pleasure of actually holding an object in your hands with pictures and writing on it that you can look at and read while listening to the music.  And then see and touch when you're not.  Might sound crazy, but it was quite a bit of the joy of experiencing "new music" when I were a lad.
 

also, hijacking the internet just to stream mainstream tv/music/films is a bugbear of mine... it's like the natural conclusion of sending 20MB word docs by email... grr
 

Seth Kellogg [Cakewalk]
Vinyl has it's limitations but digital copies come with almost every vinyl sold today.

that's me :-)

it's said vinyl - when pressed well and played on a good turntable ofcourse- is surely superior to CD.
to explain, a CD disk is limited to -I think it's 20Hz- 20.000Hz, allthough many speakers, headphones, amps are wider range as those freqs can be heard and are on many studio recordings.
 
 

Wouter Schijns
it's said vinyl - when pressed well and played on a good turntable ofcourse- is surely superior to CD.
to explain, a CD disk is limited to -I think it's 20Hz- 20.000Hz, allthough many speakers, headphones, amps are wider range as those freqs can be heard and are on many studio recordings.
 
 

Whatever the other parts of the chain are capable of, I'd be astonished to hear of a piece of vinyl with a frequency range that wide.
 
The old RIAA standard for cutting vinyl was to cut off the bottom around 50hz and to cut off the top starting at 12khz. Pretty much every classic LP of the vinyl era conforms to this.

You definitely can't get vinyl as loud safely. You end up with real physical issues that can make the needle jump out of the groove.
 
I think that and the thing I mentioned above about frequency range are real factors in the appeal of vinyl.
 
The fact is, in terms of accuracy, vinyl is a pretty terrible medium.
 
However, in terms of the limitations and compromises it forces upon you, you often end up with something more agreeable to the ear by default. Everything up at 17khz and beyond is actually pretty unpleasant. Super-heavy compression is pretty unpleasant. And those things are hard to do on vinyl.
 
CDs and mp3s don't inherently sound worse. In fact, by all measurable metrics, they're clearly superior formats. But people do some horrible things within those formats that just aren't possible on vinyl.

If you can you should watch a recent episode of Maron (IFC).
 
It is hilarious, he is cruising vinyl shops and even buys a 4K vintage Macintosh tube amp.  All in the pursuit of "that sound."
 
The funny part is when he keeps sitting people down and asking them if they can hear the beauty....
 
JR

In this month's "Mix" there is an article about the resurgence of vinyl and Jack White's latest release.  It is growing market share (up to 4% if I remember right) while CD sales continue to fall.  I guess in 25 years or so there will be a CD revival.
 
@

 With digital distribution the same could be said about CDs.
 
 Vinyl - artwork is larger.  I think vinyl users are the last of the true audiophiles. I'm sure they have a lot invested for listening.  They are probably not using the $99 turntables.
 
 One of the dangers I feel about digital music is that it sounds cleaner and we listen to it at louder levels. You would be surprised how bad the hearing is of kids from the iPod culture.  When you are around those people who have to share their music with other while listening to their headphones there is potential for long term hearing loss.
 

kitekrazy

John T
You definitely can't get vinyl as loud safely. You end up with real physical issues that can make the needle jump out of the groove.
 
I think that and the thing I mentioned above about frequency range are real factors in the appeal of vinyl.
 
The fact is, in terms of accuracy, vinyl is a pretty terrible medium.
 
However, in terms of the limitations and compromises it forces upon you, you often end up with something more agreeable to the ear by default. Everything up at 17khz and beyond is actually pretty unpleasant. Super-heavy compression is pretty unpleasant. And those things are hard to do on vinyl.
 
CDs and mp3s don't inherently sound worse. In fact, by all measurable metrics, they're clearly superior formats. But people do some horrible things within those formats that just aren't possible on vinyl.

 There is an article one time on Rolling Stone mentioning that most music coming out of the corporate studios are mixed more in favor of portable devices.  BTW compressed digital formats sound horrible loud on a stereo system. The average person is no longer concerned with high fidelity.  They want to hear their trunk and quarter panels rumble or the person next to you at a stoplight has their music up where the speakers distort enough to make you miss the days of AM radio.

I don't believe that the vast majority of listeners have ever cared much about Hi Fi.  Its always been just a relative few that were/are interested in high quality sound. First the gear is not cheap and then how many have the ears for it anyway? It isn't exposure to it either. Musicians have an edge because they in general want what they do to sound good. However, many don't care either.
 
 

Nowadays there might be machines that press vinyl better than back then.
maybe now vinyl can sometimes give a better audio quality than CD, an 80s analog recording can be pressed onto vinyl directly as for the CD the analog master tape first has to go through Digital/Analog converters.
but vinyl is limited to the amount of music, a 1 hour vinyl loud dancerecord with lots of bass fe would not be possible.
just sharing what I read on the web...
 

Just for the record... the vinyl I bought and played and sold years ago have never come back.
 

The "vinyl versus digital" discussion, like many in life, comes down to whether you want to be happy or right.  Whatever format you're listening to the evaluation should be "am I enjoying this musical performance here and now?"  If the answer is "yes" and that makes you happy then you're also right!