Does anyone buy vinyl records now ?

Disagree. Depends on the release. Some modern pressings are just straight off the loudness-war mastered CD and sound accordingly.

You need to have both, unfortunately....
 
Re:

Some modern pressings are just straight off the loudness-war mastered CD and sound accordingly.

To add to that, with the exception of a few specialist analogue only recordings, pretty much anything recorded since the 1980s will have been recorded and mixed digitally in the studio. Therefore, even though your playback system may be analogue, you're still listening to a digital recording. :D

In addition, LPs aren't a pure and unadulterated sound recording and playback system, in order to fit 20 minutes on a side, the low frequencies have to be compressed via RIAA equalization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization. When you play back an LP, the phono amp then boosts the low frequencies to reverse the compression.
 
It is a myth that vinyl is generally better.

I have a couple of original Decca pressings of Rolling Stones LPs that sound LOADs better than the CDs - but that is quite possibly due to master tape deterioration or just a very skilled mastering engineer. I also have vinyl pressings of stuff from recent years that also sounds better than the CD mastering which is optimised for download.

But I also have CDs from the 90s that sound better than the same records on vinyl.

Other stuff that SHOULD, everything else being equal, sound better on CD (side 2 of Ritual de Lo Habitual by Janes Addiction, for example with almost 30 mins of music squeezed on there) which sounds better than the CD.... I have an old Dual 1219 with a basic Ortofon OM5 pickup and it still plays back better than a pretty high-end SA-CD/DVD-A player. Other stuff the CD wins....

Which of course makes it all the more fun.....
 
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