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Comment by aidos | Hacker News Reader

Big sleeves and art, but for me it’s the ceremony. I just love taking that time to really appreciate what you’re about to listen to. Filtering along the spines and having something jump out that grabs you and you know it’s the album for now.

Yeah, there’s probably a compromise in quality, but for me the experience is just better.

I miss my vinyl collection a lot. Really wish it was easier to ship it to the other side of the world but I’ve struggled to find a way.

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Some people actually like "Material objects". I personally do. A well made tool, nice suit, a nice pen and piece of paper a leather lounge, and of course a nicely printed record cover and the feeling of loading the thing in the player.

I think society has lost a bit of that with digital stuff.

Video games used to come in these big, thick cardboard boxes with elaborate art. Inside it was a thick manual, a quick fact sheet or two, and the game itself in a proper jewel case.

You bet I wouldn't mind paying full price for that.

RPGs would also often come with world maps, sometimes on cloth. Some games also came with amazing reference guides. Red Baron (1990) iirc had a spiral bound guide with information on ww1 fighter tactics and schematics of all the planes in the game.

I remember, it was an awesome time.

plus: no logins, no algorithms, no endless random play until end of time, no ads, no tracking, no buggy pairings, no subscriptions, no DRM, no licensing issues.

Hah!

Recently a bar I frequent had some issues with their Internet connection for a few days: low speed, drops and a total black out. Usually they are playing music from some internet services, which wasn't an option at this time, of course. But they do have a vinyl setup and enough records to go by while waiting for the connection to be repaired.

I grew up in cassette tape era, but they shared a characteristic with vinyl: albums had 2 sides, providing a "break" or "intermission" between sides. Many artists would purposely arrange the songs on an album to account for the break in the middle, or group sets of similar songs on the same side (I receall several Duran Duran albums having the radio friendly singles on side 1, and the more ethereal, experimental-sounding songs on side 2).

I remember getting the albums out of the sleeves, then the paper inner sleeve. Then spraying shooting my discwasher with an anti-static gun. I think there was a special deionized water you could drip on it too. Then you would clean around the disk and put it on the turntable. I had an automatic turntable, I wasn't into dropping the needle on the disk by hand.

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