Interesting thread - lot's of good points for and against vinyl. I'm chasing music, and keeping the best reproduction equipment I can prudently afford, in all formats. Here, we stream (Tidal HiFi+ and internet radio), listen to some good terrestrial radio stations when in Los Angeles and Los Osos, and while I sold much of my hi-fi equipment when we downsized out of our LA home, over 3000 vinyl albums and 1500 CDs went into storage, and my vintage but good quality turntable and phono preamp are boxed up here - when we replace our LA home, vinyl will return.
I was a pro trombonist for many years, and got into home sound as sublimation for no longer playing much when I started law school...and quickly found that my sense of "sounds good" or "sounds right" or "sounds like real music" didn't coincide with a lot of what's out there. I'm fussy about timbre and micro-dynamic resolution. But if you buy smart (in my case, that's high-quality used stuff, and particular attention to the UK audio industry, which designs exceptionally useful stuff for small and mid-size rooms), you don't have to spend a fortune - I've helped a lot of friends and family develop very good sounding systems, for surprisingly little money, and my system has evolved through different living spaces and budget points over the years, but if I had no alternative, I could be happy with the system I had by the Fall of 1987 - good UK turntable, good mid-level UK amp, good budget UK speakers, and a great boat anchor of a Japanese tuner. All bought used or on close-out - given my financial aid situation, I scrimped on other things so as to get good sound.
Having made my pitch for broadest possible media access (and also confessing that I'm a Luddite, so setting up an NAS is unlikely), here's the riff in favor of vinyl.
By time CDs started to appear, I had 500-600 vinyl albums, some dating back to my high school years in the early '70s. I'd taken pretty good care of the ones purchased after 1976, and they were my "research library" in a broad range of genres, particularly, jazz, salsa, and brazilian music, from which I learned how to play. No way I was gonna chuck those, in favor of buying the same music on CD! Plus, a lot of my collection was imported or low-distribution product, unlikely to see decent digital conversion - or even conversion, at all.
So I started checking out CD in the mid'80's, and they simply didn't sound good. The dynamic range and frequency capability was undeniable, as was the potential for limited degradation. But "perfect sound forever?" Nope, particularly on orchestral and acoustic music. Bright, shrill, a weird lack of timbral resolution (inability to distinguish english horn from oboe? Some truly awful clarinet sounds from world-class orchestras?), and unsatisfying. OTOH, popular music shifted quickly to digital editing and mastering, along with increased reliance on digital-based synthesis, so I ultimately bought a CD player and started laying in a supply of CDs, mostly recent releases that had originated or been mixed/mastered through digital techniques and were broadly rooted in rock/pop/R&B sensibilities.
I move to Los Angeles in 1989 with close to 1000 albums, and was blown away by the wealth of great used records ,available for pennies, as Los Angelenos dumped their vinyl. Between those opportunities and buying new vinyl - trying to avoid stuff with digital in the chain - my collection bulged. But I've also bought CDs - many of imported product that would not be findable on vinyl - and had a ball. The big news is that to my ears, by the early Oughts, classical recording and mastering was refined enough to make good use of "Redbook" CD parameters.
Yes, vinyl degrades over time, but my equipment is good enough to ameliorate degradation. And CDs can also develop scratch/drop-out problems! When reunited with my vinyl, and at that time hopefully done with my day gig, I'll need to do some pruning - based on condition, I'll probably jettison 15-20% of my vinyl collection, mostly on the classical side, due to condition. I'll also prune CDs that are not likely to see repeated listening. Maybe I'll transfer a lot of CDs to a hard drive, in FLAC format, but that project looks daunting.
Being without the collection means that I've been forced to explore streaming, and Tidal product at 16 bits or better is fine. Internet radio doesn't seem to exceed MP3 quality, but the range of material, from around the world, is undeniable. I can live with it. And I have to update my streamer to get the "beyond CD" formats off of Tidal - I'm looking forward to the results.
BUT... Call me old-fashioned, nostalgic, high-frequency-hearing compromised (too many arena gigs with no ear protection, back in the day), stubborn, Luddite, whatever...but when I settle in for serious listening, I go with vinyl. I've done side-by-side with vinyl and CDs (and over the last 15 years I had an excellent Accuphase CD player that was optimized for mid-range resolution), and the vinyl almost ALWAYS brought me closer to the music. Most importantly, truth in timbre, and incisive timing. Weirdly, CD often sounds more impressive in the way of percussive effects, but I think that's because of the dynamic range and high-end emphasis. But the time values don't hold together as well, and the timbres - good, nuanced jazz cymbal work, in particular - don't sound right. Interestingly, a lot of audiophiles go nuts over imaging, stage width and depth -- spatial cues -- that seem to come with digital. Those audiophiles subscribe to "you are there." I'm the opposite: I want the musicians here! Vinyl most consistently does it, for me.
So despite the hassles, I'll resume my thing for vinyl when domestic space permits.
