I've ranted against the cult of vinyl before. My opinion has softened slightly after experiencing vinyl in its many shapes during a project to digitise my aging vinyl collection, but the core of my dislike remains.

When people say "vinyl is better" I hear "it sounds better" and that is just wrong. "It sounds more interesting" I can handle, or even if you love vinyl for the collecting, the cover art, the product, the physicality of playing it, all fine. Just don't tell me it sounds "better". You sound like an idiot. There are a million cases of one sounding better than the other for a million reasons. There is no hard and fast rule.

So, I really enjoyed Tim Bray's recent blog about why he likes vinyl. The comments are interesting too.

I like that he admits that under any sensible measure, there isn't a difference, and yet:

Now, I’m an engineer and I like measuring things and it’s counterintuitive at least that 35-year-old vinyl should offer sound that’s “better” along any useful axis than modern digital. I’m perfectly prepared to believe that there’s a euphonious distortion of some sort tickling my pleasure centers. But boy, do they like it. And I have to say it sounds like truth.

He later goes on to hypothesise why there might be any difference between a properly made CD and a properly made vinyl, all of which sounds nicely plausible to me.

I still prefer CDs, even though the vast majority of them these days sound like crap. I guess I'm stubborn too.