26
by Brinkman_Archive
As much as I dislike the compact disc, it is not so much an issue about the aesthetic of digital music per se, as it is about the marketing of digital music to the consumer. Essentially, it boils down to the current limitations of the "consumer-level" CD-player at any given moment.
For instance, a Brian Eno recording from the 1970s, such as Here Come the Warm Jets, exists on a reel of magentic tape. From that tape a series of vinyl pressing exist (albeit varying in quality) that you can still obtain to this day. I purchased one myself shortly after the Phonocomb LP 'Fresh Gasoline" came out.
There also exists, for the digital-oriented consumer, a couple different compact disc pressings, the older of which is now considered obsolete. The reason for this disparity between the two digital counterparts has to do with the state-of-the-art consumer-level compact disc player in the late 80s/early 90s, and the current "high-end" SACD player that exists today.
A case-and-point I experienced first-hand when the said Brian Eno CD reissue was released. I was working at a record store, counting a till in the office while my manager was playing the recent SACD of Here Come the Warm Jets. I was commenting on how glad I was to see the album re-released but dissapointed it wasn't "better" sounding (having been used to the vinyl pressing). He was used to the vintage digital pressing and found it highly superior. He went so far as to call me deaf, and so on. This was slightly unnerving, so I thought about it to the point that I reevaluated why I ever bought vinyl in the first place.
I've since come to realize that with vinyl, you are issued a pressing, and that pressing (if mastered and manufactered with care) is something to be cherished. If you have a shitty record player, a shitty stylus, and a shitty amplifier, you can still enjoy that great music, even through your shitty speakers. If you can geek out on gear like I do, that great music sounds even better with a better turntable, a better stylus, and a better amplification system and speaker setup without having to buy the same record all over again.
In short, when you buy vinyl, you are purchasing a high-fidelity analogue phonograph of that/those artist(s) in a recording environment. You're assuming the engineers were compentent enough to do their job correctly and capture what it is like to be with This Artist in This Space doing This Thing. For pre-digital master recordings, digital media will always be playing fidelity catch-up to it's analogue counterparts, except in respect to the "surface-noise" component, which is increasingly less a selling point in comparison to the financial strain of the subsequent digital reissues expected for any given album.
As for current digital recordings go, I'm not one to speculate, but I fear that today's state-of-the-art digital masters will become an obsolete form more soon than expected. This is not to say that bands will stop making digital recordings, as much as it is to say that the demand for ease-of-accessability will take it's toll on the idea of preserving the album-as-statement (if it hasn't already) to the point that music recording is no longer archival, but rather artifacted.
