Not to sound like a boomer and/or hipster but you really do lose something listening to like, 70s prog rock on Spotify or CD vs vinyl
It’s not about sound quality, it’s about the intentionality, the intimacy, physically touching this disc with the music etched into its surface.
Like, Pink Floud’s The Dark Side of the Moon is one of my favorite albums ever. It was the first vinyl record I ever had (stolen from my father) and it was how I became familiar with that album.
(I realize, at this juncture, that I am not helping my “I am not a boomer and/or hipster” case. I’ll cop to the latter but I’m 31, shut up.)
Anyway, on the vinyl, side A ends with “Great Gig in the Sky.” It’s a vocal instrumental, there’s a singer but no lyrics. It is a quiet, solemn, deeply haunting piece, that fades out slowly before the silence of the lock groove, the inner portion of the record leads the groove into a circle which holds the needle until the tone arm is pulled back.
In practice this means there’s a good 10-30 seconds of silence (though usually there’s some dust in the groove that leads to a few clicks and pops) while you go over and flip the record. It’s punctuation, a pause that has intense artistic value.
When you flip the record over to side b, the first track is “Money”, a deeply cynical and sardonic song about, well, greed. It starts with the sound of a cash register dinging and sliding the till out. It’s very loud, very sudden, and then immediately it cuts into Roger Waters’ off-kilter, 7/8 bass riff.
If you’re listening to this on vinyl, by the time “Money” kicks in you’ve been sitting in relative silence for a moment, and when you drop the needle on a record it makes a bit of a “pop” sound as the needle finds the run-in groove, which again, serves as punctuation. Almost an inhalation, a singer taking a deep breath before belting out their opening lines. It all flows together.
On the CD you get none of that and it’s kinda like being woken up by a fucking flashlight to the face.
It just feels so off in a way that’s difficult to describe, hence this big post. Anyway, records rule.