I’m stuck on this one at the moment…

I absolutely love vinyl, don’t get me wrong and have been buying dance/electronic music since 1987 and wouldn’t change my collection for anything. But as a DJ I have been asking my self questions over the last year or so – at the end of the day mixing records to create a soundscape is why I have always DJ’d but the more I go out and see my favorite artists play, the more amazed I am at the sound coming out of the speakers and the majority of the time it is due to them using digital media. Not so much CD’s but wave files in Traktor/Ableton etc. So from a perspective of creating the best sound I can my thoughts have been going over to the dark side of digital :groucho:

The technology has moved forward so much that you just can’t fuck up the sound with vinyl as you can with digital files. And if you want the most amalgamated sound then I can’t see anyway forwards but digital (I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD BE SAYING THAT!!!!) Layering different parts of tracks and adding effects like VST’s to specific parts is unheard of with vinyl. It is a really difficult thing for me to make a decision on so maybe there will always be a place for vinyl with digital media by its side, but with oil prices going up and so the cost of buying vinyl, this adds another dimension to the argument (tunes are a lot cheaper digitally and you only need buy the one tune rather than sometimes paying for 3 others you dont like). And on top of that record shops are nearly exitinct, Smallfish was probably the best last shop to close in London late last year and was a tragedy. Now we facelessly buy online, know staff spotter to help you pick out stuff or say whats on promo and under the shelf. The whole feel of spending days in a shop trailing through the wax…I could stay in there for weeks on end and i’m gutted its gone but it will have to move on at somepoint maybe depending what you your self want from it.

Yes the feel will be lost from the mixing, yes that analogue sound of needle to record will be lost but the end product is far beyond anything that can be done with decks….or am I wrong?:bad_idea: