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| - Most people will tell you that vinyl gives a much warmer sound than anything digital - be it CDs or downloaded music. That may or may not be true. There are, however, problems with vinyl.
The first is that vinyl is a royal pain to keep clean. Remove an LP from its sleeve, whether it is one you have only just opened or one that you have carefully cared for all of these years, and the chances that it will play all the way through without a single skip are at best 50-50. Often much less.
For most of us regular non-audiophiles, the sound is probably not worth the hassle of dealing with the headaches involved in getting the thing to play: Cleaning each and every side of every LP each time you want to play it, just to have a chance of hearing the whole record. Setting (and resetting) the stylus. Removing the record sleeve, then the record. Reversing the process. CDs are so much easier, to say nothing of digitized music.
Is it better? Very likely. But is it worth it? That is up to you to decide.
Once you have decided that you need some vinyl, there are only so many options left. In Charlotte, Lunchbox is a great place to go to pick up some old records on the cheap. I mean really cheap. In many cases, just a dollar or two for the bargain bin. Maybe five bucks for something better. Of course, this is for old releases. Newer stuff will set you back a bit more (and yes, new content is coming out on vinyl).
You can even pick up turntables, both new and used, at Lunchbox, both the traditional kind and the USB sort in case you want to transfer your existing LP collection onto your computer so you never have to deal with those records again. Note that this process is not simple, but it can be done.
Naturally, the problems with vinyl cannot be attributed to Lunchbox - that is inherent in the media. But if you have decided to make the jump, this is the place to go if you need help, or just want to explore and see if it is for you. Definitely a resource to have on your list.
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