Vinyl Records

Now that Christmas is over I can share a gift that I picked up for my wife: a record player. Naturally I also had to get a record for her to play. I recently received the Top Gun soundtrack as a vinyl record and so I threw that in with the record player and wrapped them both together.

On Christmas morning, my wife opened the gift and liked the record player. My kids, on the other hand, had never even seen one before. They had only heard about them. When compact discs first emerged, we were all told that they did a better job of reproducing the sound than cassette tapes and vinyl records. Everyone believed that to the point that those older forms of media almost completely disappeared. Now the trend is reversing and experts are saying that analog signals provided by a record are superior to digital signals provided by streaming services, mp3 files, and CD audio discs. Personally I believe that record companies are figuring out a way to become relevant again and are bringing back vinyl. Will it last, I'm not sure but I did get a record player for my wife.

My wife is not the only one that wanted a record player for Christmas. My oldest son's sister-in-law also wanted and got one. My son enjoyed listening to it on Christmas morning as he spent time with his wife's family. It is a more basic one than my wife's and so when we finally set up the one I got, it blew him away that the tone arm moved by itself when I started the record. I had to laugh as I explained that this is not new technology. I find it funny that an electronics device phased out 20 years ago seems amazing to my children. They say that if you wait long enough, old becomes new and that is the case with vinyl records.