Fast forward (or more appropriately, hit the skip button) close to 25 years.

I redesigned my audio system, and this time I decided to include listening to my old vinyl records in the setup. I have a pretty large collection, many with the CBS Records ‘For Promotion Only’ stamp on them, a few still in shrink-wrap. Parenthood interrupted my listening habits, but fortunately I had mothballed the records in a warm, dry attic for years and they are still in pristine condition.

It was really the album cover art that got me interested again. I’m lucky enough to have several of the more famous covers in my collection: The Rolling Stones Let it Bleed, the Beatles Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band, Led Zepplin’s IV, Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense, Blondie’s Parallel Lines, and on and on. Some covers are worn because they were early favorites, but many are almost mint due to my habit of recording to cassette and preserving the records (basically, an accident). I spent hours searching online for the best frames to mount albums on the wall of my home office. Eventually, I bought eight from the Rock Art Picture Show. Their product lets you mount the covers and still slip the albums out for an occasional listen. They are a small independent store that supplies the Smithsonian among others, and I’ve got to say they’re fantastic.

My aging Dual turntable had to be junked. For now, I’ve replaced it with a cheap model with a preamp, but maybe I’ll upgrade soon. In a nod to how the younger generation thinks of records, my son calls it “the vinyl player.”

Listening to albums is an enjoyable and ritualistic flashback. You delicately ease the albums out of the cover and slipcase. Carefully positioning the record on the spindle, you clean off the record. Like a patient watchmaker, you then lower the needle to the record. You listen to the entire side of the album. You don’t skip from track to track like a caffeinated squirrel. You get the whole experience, just like the artist and sound engineers designed it.

There’s no doubt that vinyl is hip now. Go to a Brooklyn flea market and you’ll see all your favorite retro artists’ record albums lined up. I was at MOMA a month ago and was surprised to find an excellent exhibit called Making Music Modern: Design for Eye and Ear, which featured high end audio gear as design art. The exhibit included a wall of album art, and I was flabbergasted to find several albums that were part of my collection among the ones featured.

Making Music Modern at MOMA

So, would I switch back to vinyl? After listening to my records over the past month I’ve come to the opinion it’s about the mastering, not the digital vs. vinyl format debate. I’m fortunate that my collection is almost all high quality analog pressings from the 70s and 80s. They were made before the start of the loudness wars — a sonic “arms race” where every artist and label feel they need to crush their music onto CD at the highest possible volume level, for fear of not being “competitive.” In fact, yesterday was Dynamic Range Day, an annual protest against this loudness trend, backed by famous music producers, engineers, and high-end manufacturers.

Recently, no less a music authority than Neil Young weighed in with the comment that almost all new vinyl releases are sourced from digital masters, and you are essentially listening to a CD cut to wax. Some artists, such as the White Stripes, remaster their work specifically for vinyl. Neil is pushing his high resolution Pono music player, and now Jay Z’s TIDAL is also hawking music at a quality level beyond the capacity of human hearing. Neil Young has been criticized for his junk science, and recently Kirk McElhearn wrote an exceptionally clear and insightful article: Music, Not Sound: Why High Resolution Music is all a Marketing Ploy.

As one of the few people with a sound system (and maybe ears) that could potentially let me hear the differences in music beyond CD quality — Bowers & Wilkins XT4 speakers, Rotel DAC, Integra receiver; with design help from the excellent Home Theater Group — I’m skeptical of the high resolution music claims. However, if hi-res provides an excuse for remastering, that could make it worth it.

The vinyl cycle took thirty years for me, but it wasn’t a circle. It was a spiral that expanded into conversations around digital, and high resolution, and places no one ever suspected vinyl would go. For the right albums, I love the vinyl experience and I’ll be on the lookout for artists paying attention to the techniques and skills that make vinyl come alive again.