Galliardist,
I’m wondering why, in this reply below, you didn’t even acknowledge the whole point of my post to you: I was correcting your mischaracterizations/misunderstanding of my argument.
You’d written things like “
I'm not going to accept that because you can ignore the problems in vinyl playback, everybody else can or should.”
When nowhere had I suggested that, and even have often argued precisely the opposite. I have continually acknowledged that one person can be bothered more by problems and vinyl playback than another person and therefore, of course, vinyl is not for everybody.
And yet through your post to me, and I could’ve selected multiple other examples, were similar micharacterizations, suggesting I was making generalizations about vinyl, its superiority, etc, but I simply was not arguing for.
Would you acknowledge you misunderstood me at least? Otherwise, I don’t know if my clarification got through.
As to this…
I am looking at how people are actually listening. I am looking at how they make their choices. And I don't see the words they write afterwards as necessarily confirming their original reasons for turning to vinyl. I'm surprised at the nature of your response to my post: particularly the two quotes you pulled out would make it obvious that is what I am talking about.
I'll add that I don't consider things like post-rationalisation of decisions dishonest, it's a human trait which I've certainly found myself doing. It does happen and you do need to consider it when considering what people post online after taking to vinyl, in the context of the discussion here.
I find all that pretty vague and opaque. But it seems to imply that whatever people say about why they enjoy vinyl, you won’t accept it and at least imply you somehow know better than they do as their reasons reasons.
It looks like you were already dismissing such accounts as post hoc reasoning.
Is there any reason I should take this seriously? (please note: the fact that generally speaking post hoc justification exists, is not an argument against any specific account ). For example, I’ve given plenty of reasons as to why I got back into vinyl:
To be clear, digital music has the *potential* to be better. Vinyl as a format is inherently limited. This, I agree with. For me, digital has the *potential*, but the current implementation is flawed; mainly in the delivery and the reconstruction, but also in the original quantisation...
www.audiosciencereview.com
If you’d like, You can start explaining to me why those aren’t the real reasons I enjoy vinyl and explain to me the real ones that I actually hold. (post hoc justification you think is in play instead)
But really... vinyl is better because of how people use music?
^^^ another example of starting with a misleading generalization I never made, nor would have made. I speak only of my own experience, or vinyl enthusiasts who have made observations and comments similar to mine as to their experience with records.
I would not make the sloppy generalization in that form of “vinyl is better…”
Firstly, I certainly listen to entire albums when streaming. And when vinyl was my main thing, I could also go and cue up a different track, or take an LP off and start listening to another after a minute or so if I'd made an obviously wrong choice of what to play. This stuff is really format agnostic.
Cool.
But am I to accept your anecdotal account of your experience? Or shall I ignore it as inaccurate post hoc justification?
I am happy to accept your account of how you went about listening to vinyl and digital sources.
I’m a different person, and so my experience was slightly different sometimes. You may have continued to effortlessly listen to entire albums from your digital source. I found it increasingly difficult. Not impossible, but more difficult overtime. Are you willing to accept people having other experiences than you? If so, Why should we accept your account as to how you listen versus someone who listens to records? Where it is the person listening to records, who’s description of the experience suddenly becomes under suspicion?
If vinyl disappeared tomorrow, completely and utterly, people would still listen to whole albums that they like or understand as whole albums.
This is imprecise, relative to the points I’ve been making. I’ve been either referencing myself, or other vinyl enthusiasts who acknowledge they were experiencing similar issues. Your thought experiment has an effect already been run by us: we were not in fact, tending to listen to whole albums, when digital streaming was our only source. Then, when we integrated a turntable and records, we found ourselves listening to whole albums much more frequently. So we have our experience against your mere speculation.
And when you get into speculation like “ if they were really into the music…” you have entered Newman territory, which is full of stones and glass houses. You aren’t in a position to tell how people would listen if they were “really into the music.” People really into the music find their own ways of highest engagement with their music.
