"they're part of BIG DIGITAL!"

Physics? In my record store? GET OUT!

I buy CDs for the booklets (and am massively disappointed if there is none)

Or you could just buy a CD/DVD player or audio file player and have the same ad-free experience but with modern signal quality and for a fraction of the cost. Heck a saved library on a laptop running some kind of audio player like WinAMP and disconnected from the internet would also give you that experience. Could even use Windows XP or a classic Linux for that nostalgia since it wouldn't be internet connected.

I really like the comparison of analog media with camping!

Since owning a CD player i use my CDs more now than i did in 2010. Unfortunately Discogs shipping fees mean i can't buy most of the things i want

It used to be in the 80's when D/A converters were shit compared to the great 70's and 80's vinyl and tape players. Or in the 90's and 00's when most of the CDs were mastered loud and ugly. Nowadays it is what you say: digital really sounds better...

Wasn't there even an "all analog" label in the US that claimed to use a fully analog pipeline in their process. People were saying it sounds so much better than the digital garbage we have, until somebody found out they were secretly using digital sources in their process and now the company got sued.

For all the recording nerds out there I highly recommend the book "Perfecting Sound Forever" by Greg Milner, which offers really good insights from both sides of the analog/digital debacle.

Yep and I like to read the lyrics and any additional content or art that comes with the album while I listen to it. I also like that it forces me to not skip any songs, as when I stream stuff I tend to skip even some good songs in order to get to my favorites faster. The sound quality isn't really the point for me with vinyl, it's more about immersing myself with the album and enjoying it like a movie.

I do this with my CDs, my ritual is mostly about setting up the ambience in the room though.

I'd love to have the space for a record player, but for now my vinyls are decoration.

Purist

Analog is inherently lossy due to the materials and playback method. Vinyl records sound different when they are dusty.

Digital is inherently lossless because the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem guarantees that, given a sufficiently high sample rate, all information from the original signal is preserved.

Digitizing is only lossy once*. Analog is lossy every time you copy it and degrades over time.

*Assuming you use a lossless digital format

You can sit here and have an argument about Nyquist-Shannon, but it isn't relevant for lots of music made in the past 40 years since it was made or recorded digitally.

If your work was made with a DAW there's no point to analog.

I've got a record from a smaller artist somewhere that I swear has fucking mp3 compression in it, because they don't know how to export their shit like an adult.

@zephr_c @nifty The character in the drawing is Hatsune Miku, so this is alluding to vocaloid music which could be produced purely digitally as you say.

Completely agreed otherwise, though.

Nearly all music is recorded digitally, anyway, and has been for a while.

But there's a difference between converting a JPEG to a PNG and re-compressing a JPEG as another JPEG.

Relevant

Hearing discernible sounds < boxing with lungs wrapped around one's fists.