Analog Revival Means Vinyl Will Outlive CD

An anonymous reader writes "In the age of the iPod, an unlikely revival is taking place — kids are turning to 7" vinyl to get their kicks. Sales of 7" singles are apparently through the roof. Bands like the White Stripes are releasing thousands of new singles on the format, and record purchases have risen by over a million units in the last year — back to 1998 levels. NME told CNET: "it's very possible that the CD might become obsolete in an age of download music but the vinyl record will survive,". The article explains how indie kids are drawn to vinyl because "the tactile joy of owning a physical object that represents your attachment to a band is infinitely more enjoyable than entering a credit card number into iTunes.""

Sliders

Its all like a bad episode of Sliders.

Re:Sliders

Was there a good episode of Sliders?

Re:Sliders

A couple of points both for and against each format:

  - CDs have a much, much higher dynamic range than vinyl. Compare CD's 90db or so to vinyl's 45db on a good turntable.

  - CDs lack an infinitely variable volume level. At 16 bits of resolution, there are 65,536 possible volume levels (including silence), in distinct steps. Normally one would never notice, but the limitations of digital DO have a profound effect while processing. This is one of many reasons a studio will work with 24, 32, 48, or even more bits of resolution, even if eventually it will be downsampled to 16 bit audio. All of the processing/mixing will normally be done at a higher resolution. Incidentally, this is why many bands still record using analog equipment, and some even do all of their mixes on analog. AAD or ADD is almost invariably going to be better than DDD if you listen to music with a lot of texture and dynamic range.

  - CDs have a hard limit for frequency response, with an immediate cutoff at 22050hz, whereas vinyl's frequency response extends past 25000hz with a very gradual rolloff. This should be taken into account by the recording or mastering engineer with the top end attenuated on a gradual slope. This problem used to be evident with very early CD pressings where the CD would sound "harsh" or "overly bright" compared to cassette or vinyl pressings, until the recording or mastering engineer rolled off the highs with a gradual curve. Of course, if you blasted your eardrums with headphones at 120db, you won't hear the difference anyhow because you probably can't hear much beyond 12000hz, plus it wouldn't be evident with most pop anyhow, mainly with classical, jazz, and progressive rock.

Re:Sliders

CDs have a hard limit for frequency response, with an immediate cutoff at 22050hz, whereas vinyl's frequency response extends past 25000hz with a very gradual rolloff. This should be taken into account by the recording or mastering engineer with the top end attenuated on a gradual slope

I'm guessing you got this 22050 Hz cutoff frequency by dividing the sampling frequency (44.1 KHz) by two (see Nyquist frequency [wikipedia.org]). You fail to take into account the transition time for the analog prefilter used to avoid aliasing; not only is there not a harsh cutoff when the correct filtering is used, the frequency response should actually start dropping around 20 KHz--the upper range of human hearing. The signal is oversampled at 44.1 KHz to provide room for this transition. Besides, a human couldn't hear frequencies out to 25 KHz anyway, so that is probably not the reason for early CDs sounding "harsh" or "overly bright."

Re:Sliders

In addition, if you sample at 44.1Khz and there is a signal with a frequency above that, it's not filtered out - it will get aliased down to 44.1Khz - freq. So you need the analog filtering before the sampling to prevent this. And analog filtering always has a rolloff, it is not infinitely sharp (a consequence of the Kramers-Kronig [wikipedia.org] relation - a step cutoff filter will respond to a unit impulse before it is applied.)

Bah! Vinyl will never replace

...the wax cylinders on my Gramophone

Re:Bah! Vinyl will never replace

You play wax cylinders on a gramaphone? I play gramaphone records on mine, and put the wax cylinders on the phonograph. Much easier on the media that way.

Re:Bah! Vinyl will never replace

Hmm, no wonder the cylinders keep falling off the platter.

Re:Bah! Vinyl will never replace

The band His Name Is Alive [hisnameisalive.com], around the time of their 1995 album Stars on E.S.P [amazon.com] , actually did produce a number of wax cylinders due to frontman Warren Defever's interest in retro recording technology. Too bad the average joe doesn't have a player for them.

Re:Bah! Vinyl will never replace

In all seriousness -- where does a hipster idiot -- errr, sorry -- "indie kid" get a device on which to play these vinyl records? It's not like you can go into Best Buy and purchase one.

Thinking about that again -- that's a stupid question. We have an Internet nowadays...

Re:Bah! Vinyl will never replace

That, and you actually can buy a turntable at Best Buy.

Re:Bah! Vinyl will never replace

Otter, actually you *can* just walk into a best buy and buy a somewhat decent record player. i did just that very thing last year.

i have a cherished record collection of older mid to late 80's hardcore and punk that is in the process of being ripped... and well, since the darn things wouldn't fit into the CD player... i went out to my local best buy... and 10 minutes later (after aggressively rejecting the extended warranty) had a sony turntable.

Re:Bah! Vinyl will never replace

had a sony turntable.

You fool! Now you'll get rootkits on your LPs!!!

How is that any different...

... from purchasing a CD?

"the tactile joy of owning a physical object that represents your attachment to a band is infinitely more enjoyable than entering a credit card number into iTunes."

Re:

... from purchasing a CD?

I would guess it's cheaper. The 7-inch vinyls are singles. And it just goes to show that nothing has changed. People want to buy songs individually for $1 or $2 rather than paying $15 or $20 for a whole album with only one or t

Re:

Well, vinyl doesn't have DRM, and I don't see how it could possibly. I would welcome a return to vinyl, personally, although I think that this article is stupid, as you have certainly pointed out... That is not a reason to buy vinyl at all. People just do

Re:How is that any different...

Check this [cdmasteringservices.com] out.

Re:

It's not, but a pretty coloured 7" or awesome artwork on a 12" picture disc is much much more interesting that just the shiny side of a CD..... Even the covers are better, Iron Maiden artwork was not meant to be squeezed onto a CD cover....

Re:How is that any different...

I live in a City of Vinyl, Bristol in the UK. The reason that vinyl is prevalent here is two-fold. Firstly we have a massive tradition of DJs in Bristol. Secondly we have a massive tradition of good music and people who are passionate about it.

Passionate music lovers do enjoy having a physical object that represents a link between them and the band they love. More than that there is a massive amount of street cred in owning and listening to vinyl, it's just cool. Also, a great many people feel that Vinyl just sounds better than CD. Finally, people enjoy the size of the cover art. Cover art died with the CD, a great many people believe that. The revival of Vinyl means the potential of new and great cover art.

Buying vinyl is massively different from buying a CD.

Re:How is that any different...

You can't roll joints on the back of a CD - mind you, you can't snort coke off an album cover so maybe it depends on your drig of choice.

Re:How is that any different...

Well you see, the album cover is of sufficient size to facilitate breaking up the weed, as well as the picking out of any stems or seeds (unless you've got the real sticky icky). The GP's point, i believe, is that a cd cover is much too small, and your kind bud would constantly fall off the edge as you picked through it. However, the cardboard of the album cover is considered too porous to cut a good line of coke on, whereas the plastic cd case is perfect for such.

ps: yes, i am blazed right now, thanks for asking

Probably kills brain cells, too.

there is an inexplicable feeling that comes from the ownership of a vinyl record, rather than a cd.

It's the smell.

(sniffs record) Sweet, sweet acetate...

Re:How is that any different...

One thing that's different is the size. The cover art is larger and the lyrics/credits are easier to read.

A larger package also permits the inclusion of more goodies. How many of you remember the old Alice Cooper album "School's Out" that looked like a school desk? In the first few printings, the sleeve hinged open to reveal a picture of pencils, erasers, etc. It also had fold-out legs, and the record itself had a pair of panties stretched over it.

You cannot get that kind of coolness from a CD and a jewel box.

Re:Can't scratch them? Are you insane?

I may be mistaken, but I think he was talking about the "wicka-wicka-wicka-wicka" type of scratching, and not the "sskkrrreeeeaccccchhhh" kind of scratching.

Re:How is that any different...

Vinyl, like cassettes, are damaged each time you use them, even if you're taking care of them. With CDs, you can play them all you want without damage. Why someone would say an old vinyl or tape sounds better than a CD is beyond me. Likely, they like the restro aspect of it, and think it makes them 'elite.' Kinda like someone wearing a transformers shirt (that the gap or whatever made this year).

Re:How is that any different...

That is not necessarily true. There are some turntables [elpj.com] that use lasers as the stylus rather than a very fine diamond (or worse depending on the quality of player such as a Fisher-Price record player). The ones that use lasers do not damage the media.

If it's not a law, it should be

The stupidity of consumers is directly proportional to the perceived cool factor of the product.

Easy..

You release albums as individual cartridges for portable players... it gives you a tactile "thing" with a label, contains mp3's in a generic format, is in a durable case .. can even contain games and whatnot. The ultimate packaging. I still have sega carts I can look at and remember the hours of fun playing Sonic, or Toe-Jam and Earl (panic on funkatron)...

Even better, you release "blanks" EPROMs that can be burned once (or maybe twice - in case of an error) to integrate with all the online purchasing. (print the label too)

Is 1998 anything to brag about?

Hey, remember back in the '90s, when you thought vinyl was dead? Well, we're selling just as many now as we did then! Hoopla, Janet!

The Return of REAL Cover Art

One thing I've missed with CDs is the smaller form factor has led to less inspired covers. Less Detail. Fewer painted covers. It's an art that faded away without nearly enough notice. Replacing cover art is most cases are vanity portraits of the artist or band, with poor photoshop work to tie into a marketing theme.

If vinyl makes a comeback, I hope new talent following the footsteop of Roger Dean take up this opportunity.

Re:The Return of REAL Cover Art

I've always found Pearl Jam to do a good job with their CD albums' art. In several of them they even include a collection of pictures that accomodate the music of the album.

Unfortunately I think their music has been on a steady decline for some time now.

Analog[u][e]

Absolutely insane. This isn't a comparison of apples to apples. The reason people want the vinyl has nothing to do with Analog[u][e] verses digital. It's just a "cool thing to do at the time". It's in now, but like all fads, it will go out again soon. We just live in a soceity big enough that whatever you're into, there is probably a following of someone else who is into it. The novelty of the fad can catch like wildfire, but in the end the only reason people will stay with a technology is because of ease of use, necessity or monetary gain. Vinyl isn't easier to use. It's harder to back up digitally and there simply aren't enough people big enough to carry around the vinyl record changer ipod. Thus, there's not enough long term money in this fad.

NME's Alex Needham is championing the format to supersede CD. "I think it's very possible that the CD might become obsolete in an age of download music but the vinyl record will survive,"

The format has already been "championed" then IT was superceded. I'll keep my cd's at home, then carry one digital music device that holds everything. Leave the vinyl for the novel enthusiasts. They will have their fun. Soon enough even they will start buying cd's, dvd audio, or whatever else comes around the block that's better.

This has already happened

Vinyl has already outlived 8-tracks and cassettes. Why is it surprising that it will outlive CD?

Their opinions...

Their opinions will change the momment they want to move out of their parent's house and have to carry boxes of vinyl up any number of flights of stairs.

Copyright worries?

See? Those RIAA people should have known that people still want to buy and own their media. The fact that MP3s are out there and are being passed about liberally is irrelevant to the fact that people want to buy and own. The reason for MP3 sharing, in my opinion, is partly convenience and partly to address the problem of scarcity and availability.

It's also nice to hear that the indy crowd is growing in force. It is about the only way, shy of legislation, to put the power back into the hands of the artists.

Wait a sec....

You mean they're enjoying the concept of OWNING music they like. Dude.. You just can't do that, the music wants to be free!!! FREE I TELL YOU!!!..

Oh... um... wait... I just got a memo from the RIAA, they say that they had dinner with "Music" last night and after a few drinks Music agreed that it would much rather simply be rented.

Can we put something in vynil records that will make them dissolve after 30 or 60 days?

long live the 7"

As someone who has about 600 7"s, I can completely understand the reasoning behind this (although it's a bit hard to explain). For one thing, a 7" can typically only hold 2-4 songs, which means that the band putting it out usually needs to ensure that the songs that are committed to vinyl are their better ones (this usually excludes major acts releasing 7" singles for the "cred" that comes with it). Also, they usually only cost about 3 or 4 bucks (it's gone up in recent years though), which means that it's a very small investment to make to find out about new bands. Finally, as others have mentioned, there's the tactile aspect to the whole thing. A 7" has a decent sized sleeve that can contain a fair bit of information. It can easily be a 7"x14" folded double-sided cardstock with tons of notes, scribbles, drawings, etc, and it can easily include any number of inserts. I really don't think the 7" is going anywhere among certain types of fans.

Something to consider...

Something to consider: Vinyl can be read by archeologists; by looking at the groove under a microscope, they can infer that it's sound. CDs use a complex error correction algorithm that will take years to reverse engineer, and decoding an MP3 off of a hard drive will be even more difficult.

For more information, I've written an extensive study of the merits and drawbacks of vinyl: http://www.andrewrondeau.com/Writings/My%20Love-Ha te%20Relationship%20With%20Vinyl%20-%20Or%20-%20Wh y%20We%20Should%20Keep%20Making%20Vinyl.html [andrewrondeau.com]

From my article about its limits:

1. Vinyl does a decent job at carrying two channels with proper mixing, but as the format war in the 1970s over quadraphonic audio on LP demonstrated, it doesn't carry much more. Many people, including myself, find that music in surround is much more natural and real then traditional stereo. Digital, on the other hand, can discretely carry as many channels as possible. (I've heard all the arguments against surround-sound and will only offer one counter-argument. Listen to a good concert, and try to recreate the experience with traditional stereo. You can't.)
2. During a school project investigating ski-base wear, I learned that all material surfaces, no matter how smooth, are rough and random at some scale. This point is where vinyl, no matter how good of a manufacturing process is used, cannot hold a high frequency or soft note. I do not know if anyone has performed any research into determining where this point is on vinyl. How can vinyl record "everything between the samples" if even it has a limited resolution? Once digital audio has a sampling rate and bit density that exceeds vinyl's resolution, any double-blind test will show digital's superiority. (Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if DVD-Audio and SACD do exceed the physical limitations of most vinyl used in record manufacturing.)
3. The size and shape of the cutting lathe causes sounds to be clipped off, although they may conceivably be written onto a record. Even if additional sound "between the samples" makes it onto the record, it's too small to be picked up by the needle and will never make it out of the speakers.

Re:Trendiness

I guess the one thing that never goes out of style is blinding stupidity.

Re:Bell bottom jeans are back!

Vinyl is still huge in DJ/hip hop culture. Especially Jungle / DnB genres of electronic music. In the U.S. however, prices for vinyl imported from UK/EU have skyrocketed due to many reasons, primarily the Dollar's strength compared to the Pound or Euro which then push consumers to more wallet friendly downloads. At my vinyl buying peak, I would spend $60-100 per week for 5-9 tracks. Now I spend $25/week for 12-15 tracks at full .wav (~1411kbps) quality.

But vinyl won't die and with the latest download sites, independant labels have found a happy medium of producing less vinyl and offering their tracks online. Many labels are vinyl purists and haven't yet entered the digital realm. Some label owners whom I've talked with have had increased profits but most said it stays about the same margin-wise without as much overhead.

Re:Bell bottom jeans are back!

Vinyl never really went anywhere. I'd been buying vinyl for the last 15 years. It's always been popular for the "underground" (how I hate that word) music culture. The only reason this is getting play at all is because the White Stripes, a former "underground" indie band, has hit it big and is just doing something that's always been done but is now in the public eye. No news here at all.

Re:Bell bottom jeans are back!

Vinyl never really went anywhere

mod parent up!

saying vinyl is 'dead' is like saying apple is 'dead'. just because it has a smaller market share limited to fanatics and afficianadoes instead of the top-40 masses doesn't mean vinyl ever went anywhere.

here's news for all you computer geeks: there are music geeks too, and they think pretty much the same way. just think of 7" records as the audiophile version of the command line.

Over-romanticised rubbish.

- Vinyl has a higher noise floor than CD. even on the best players.
- Modern day vinyl quality is *abysmal*. thin and cheap.
- Trying to fit a modern-day album onto vinyl drastically compresses the grooves. Albums aren't 35 minutes anymore, they're commonly 40-50 minutes.
- Vinyl can't replicate certain sounds. Try an out-of-phase bass signal across both channels, the needle would pop out of the groove.
- Think vinyl has a more "natural" sound? Then you're wilfully ignorant of the drastic equalisation mashing that is necessary to embed music on a record - the bottom end has to be all but removed, which the player then puts back in. Think any player gets it right? Or indeed the same as any other player?

There are many reasons to like vinyl, sound quality is not one of them.

Re:Over-romanticised rubbish.

I apologize in advance for linking to an Alan Parsons Project album [themusic.com], but currently released LPs often will make a point of having thicker, higher quality LPs than what you'd find on 60s or 70s releases, perhaps bragging on having 180 or 200 grams of vinyl. Really, "abysmal", with little starts on both sides? The only *abysmal* quality vinyl I ever saw was old punk releases, yuck.

Additionally, over the last 15 years, longer albums will be released as double LPs, rather than trying to stretch longer albums into an LP format.

Bad bass? I'm not a huge vinyl fan, but sometimes it's cheaper than the CDs, so when I used to buy albums (instead of just downloading the bittorrents) I would opt for the LP instead. I thought the bass was fine. I'd compare it against the CDs, it sounded approximately the same. I hear what you're saying with bass making the needle jump, but that problem was pretty much fixed around 1965. I can't help but suspect you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:Vinyl was already immortal...

Oh please spare us the elitist "higher range" of sound nonsense. On a vinyl album, you hear artifacts and noise introduced in the recording and by the player. If you're really fond of noise overlayed over your music you should be able to find some suitable sound mixing software to add it in with your digital audio. Alternatively, you can capture directly from Vinyl at maximum bitrate without any noise filtering and all your "higher range" enhancements will automagically appear in your digital music (assuming you have a decent setup to record from analog). If artifacts enhance your listening experience, more power to you, but "beyond the range of human hearing" means "beyond the range of human hearing". The sample rate of a high bitrate encoding is not flattening any sounds that a vinyl album is carrying to your ear. Now, if you are comparing vinyl to MP3's that you are downloading, then you're comparing musty old apples to scratch and sniff oranges.

Re:Vinyl was already immortal...

Wait a minute. The fact that vinyl has many disadvantages does not imply that it is a completely inferior format. Problem is, a lot of "audiophile" airheads have no idea what they're talking about because they don't understand anything except "I paid $2000 for this turntable, therefore it must be better". Subsonics is a big point for me. If you have a decent setup or truly high quality headphones this does not go unnoticed and gives a certain atmosphere to records which I have not, to date, been able to reproduce with CDs. This is notable in the Dark Side of the Moon LP, as well as any jazz record with contrabass. And while people go all around claiming that a vinyl record is unable to reproduce many shapes of frequencies, the PCM encoding used in CDs is unable to either (neither can reproduce a square or sawtooth wave), so we can call it a toss-up. What matters most to me is the fact that the mastering of the time of vinyl is of much, MUCH higher quality than today's. Despite the higher noise floor of the vinyl medium, audio engineers of today feel the need to compress an entire album to a range of a only a fraction of the potential of PCM. My god, there's CLIPPING in modern records, for God's sake. The loudness war on CDs is taking a toll on the quality of modern music. That being said, there is absolutely no reason for vinyl to come back. While it is my perception (this cannot be objectively measured) that vinyl sounds more pleasing to the ears, it is too much of a hassle to maintain it in a proper condition, and the inevitable degradation of the medium and the scratching make it too inconvenient, not to mention that if the mastering of a record is done digitally, the analog conversion loses any advantage it might have had. Conclusion: records from before the use of digital mastering == good. After that == waste of your time and money.

Urggggh...

The statement "Vinyl has better audio quality" has to be qualified. Heavily. In most cases it is effectively not true, either because the audio equipment is too crap for you to tell the difference - or the record is worn and has lost fidelity. (If you own a record player (and Microphone/neeedle) that costs under $250: it's not High Fidelity.)

If you have audio equipment that cost more than $3000 (purchased in the last 5 years), AND you know how to balance your mm/mc arm, and you go to classical (perhaps Jazz) concerts so you know what the music sounds like, you can ignore this post.

  Boring details below.

It is true that as a medium, a LP record (or even a 45) inherently has truer fidelity than a CD. However this means that the records have a truer version of the music than the CD. (Some qualifications, assumes that the origional recording is done in analogue, or at a higher sampling bitrate than a CD. Decent transfer process, etc...)

To go from "Records are better recordings of music than CDs" to "Vinyl has better audio Quality" in the sense of the statement made: (e.g. it sounds better) is a bit of a leap. This leap requires High Fidelity equipment.

High Fidelity Equipment means 1) Good Audio Equipment (Speakers & Amplifier), 1a) Including good isolation for the record player (vibration: Bad), 2) A Good record Player, 2b)A good Mic and (unworn) needle, 2c) Correct wieghting for the playback arm for the needle; 3) An unworn / undamaged record. Some people have this equipment (not many), and the ability to set it up (pay to have it setup) correctly. Most people do not have this equipment.

For example: You will *may* hear better sound from a $250+ Amp with $400+ Speakers and a $250 Turntable/mic. (I'm assuming that amps have gotten much better than they used to be. In any case, you will need a minimum of $1000 in sterio equipment to hear an difference from Vinyl to CD. (True, and fake, audiophiles will say I'm wrong: it costs more.)

The USB Record Player I have seen was about $90. This means you can play records, not in High Fidelity. You need to have High Fidelity to hear the difference between a CD and a Record. Using your computer to play music pretty much rules you out. And what the hell, Ipods have a tactile feel too.

So effectively, the origional post is wrong. Records have the same crap sound as CDs, in most cases. If you can hear the difference between a Record and a CD, probabily your record is damaged or your needle is. Either that or you have a ground loop on your mm/mc that you think sounds nice.

Bite me: I'm Jealous because I used to have a music system where I could hear the difference between a good LP and a good CD (Say DSOTM), now I don't

Baloney

This post is but one of dozens here in support of the "superior" sound quality of vinyl that are complete hogwash and reveal through their descriptions of digital recording that they have no technical knowledge.

First of all, it's time to stop confusing a CD recording with a compressed, encoded recording. Compressing to too low a bit rate and/or with a poor algorithm will of course degrade sound quality. However, let's stick with the CD, since, like a vinyl album, it's also a physical object that one can own if one wants to.

A properly recorded CD can accurately reproduce the entire audible frequency range, from 20Hz to 20KHz with a completely flat response and with distortion that is far below detectability. No frequencies in this range are lost ... none. The sampling process simply requires that there be no content in the signal prior to sampling that is above 22KHz. There are precious few that can hear a signal this high in frequency and no studies that have demonstrated any perceived difference between music with or without frequencies above 20KHz filtered out ... as long as this filtering doesn't disturb the frequencies below 20KHz that one wants to keep. The best way to do this is to oversample the music by at least 2x, moving this filtering requirement to 44.1KHz, which is easily done in the analog domain without disturbing below-20KHz information. The rest of the filtering to remove the above-22KHz data and resample down to 44.1Ksamples/sec can be done in the digital domain. The result is flat frequency response and a noise floor of -96dB ... completely inaudible in most music (unless you turn the volume way up) and far better than with any vinyl.

On the other hand, the analog signal for a vinyl record goes through an intentional frequency and dynamic range distortion (i.e. intention dynamic range flattening to fit the capabilities of the medium, followed by an "undoing" of this process upon playback). The actual vinyl stampings are made from an original master, introducing further distortion. The stampings have an inherently higher noise floor compared with 16-bit/44.1KHz digital recordings and, in addition, are subject to artifacts from any dust or defects that might be present in the grooves. The grooves degrade further with each playing, too. Plus, there's the issue of wow and flutter from difficulty in controlling the rotation of the platter accurately.

Any preference for vinyl stems strictly from either comparing a poor CD recording to a great vinyl one, to preconceived notions that influence opinion, to nostalgia or to an actual preference for the types of distortion that vinyl produces. In the latter case, the vinyl sound can be completely simulated by intentionally applying the same distortions to CD output. As one poster mentioned, you could play back the signal from a vinyl album being played on a quality, high-end turntable and record it digitally onto a CD. The result would replicate all the effects that the vinyl lover formerly attributed to some superiority in the medium.

Here's an excerpt from the recording submission instructions of a commercial vinyl album-cutting facility that can be found online:

"As such, cutting a loud dynamic record presents many challenges not typical to the conventional recording and mixing process. Trutone's mastering engineers enjoy decades of experience specific to the analog format. This expertise facilitated by their use of our classic, vintage analog tube compressors, limiters and equalizers, afford our engineers the ability to provide all final EQ and level adjustments as your music is being transferred to the analog master. The result? A rich warm sound that transcends the digital phenomena, indicative of why vinyl remains the medium of choice for promoting and marketing music."

It's amazing that they make this last statement given that they practically tell you why and how they get this sound ... through a variety of intentional distortions req

Re:Baloney

What distortion are you talking about? Digital sampling will perfectly reproduce waveforms up to half of the sampling rate. At 44.1kHz sampling, that means you will be able to perfectly capture and reproduce sounds up to 22kHz. Your output is capped there and frequencies above that are not reproduced. There's no "distortion" even above that, unless you're using some misconfigured or poorly designed equipment. If you attempt to record sound waves above the capabilities provided by your sampling rate (e.g. 23kHz sound recorded at 44 ksamples/sec), the sound will not be recorded correctly. Perhaps that's where you're getting your claims of distortion. But, again, this should only arise if the recording was done improperly.

Vinyl sounds "warmer" because vinyl DOES distort the sound. It is extremely imperfect, and those imperfections lend a certain quality to the reproduced sound that is common to vinyl but absent both from the original sound, and from the sound reproduced by CDs.

Digital sampling is capable of preserving 100% of the information, provided your sampling rate is double the maximum frequency you want to capture, and your analog sound source and speakers are of sufficiently high quality. (The latter problem is common to vinyl as well.) If you don't believe this, please don't make the mistake of assuming your anecdotes trump science. Take an introductory course in DSP and learn what it is doing.

Re:Baloney

I also believe 100% that vinyl is inherently better-sounding than digital recordings.

Well, that's the whole point isn't it? What you BELIEVE is not necessarily true.

It makes perfect sense...

A lot of things makes perfect sense when you first hear it; world is flat, intelligent design, psychic abilities, etc... Just because it makes "sense" does not make it so. Otherwise, you would be able to demonstrate it in a repeatable test.

Waving your data around isn't going to change anyone's opinion,

If you ignore facts when it does not fit your "reality", then that is really YOUR problem, not his.