So, CD is making a comeback. I didn’t realise it had ever been away, but this has me thinking more about the better documented vinyl revival and the multifarious reasons music lovers can give for choosing this less-than-perfect format over more convenient download/streaming options. 

For some it’s ‘the sound of vinyl’, the feeling that analogue records somehow have more musicality than ‘cold digital’. For others, it’s a preference for a physical artefact, though this could apply equally to a digital CD, just with smaller artwork and lyrics to peer at.

So is choice of format about sound or psychology? I remember noting that Bill Drummond’s meditation on recorded music, 17, makes clear that he far preferred his wall of LPs to his iPod, yet with no attempt to explain just why.

_{Picture: John G Moore}

The Blue Nile’s 80s albums (all analogue, no computer audio involved, thanks) were funded by Glasgow turntable manufacturers Linn Products, who believed that well-made vinyl could continue to compete with the new-fangled digital CD (tagline ‘Perfect Sound Forever’) and the analogue/digital debate has trundled on since then. Most recently, audiophile vinyl label Mobile Fidelity admitted that their ‘pure analogue’ process does in fact have a digital stage in the signal chain. It’s to a very high spec, but still involves digitising the music along the way, when their USP had been ‘no digital anywhere in the production process’. 

Still, there’s no doubt that even ordinary vinyl has a character, due to the physical limitations of the medium, and it might well be that working within these limits gives a warmer playback sound compared to more revealing digital formats. But I’d say ‘character’ rather than ‘sound’ of vinyl, because different cuts of the same music can sound really very different.

Meanwhile, though CDs have improved some since 1982, the file size hasn’t increased one bit (haha). Imagine you still carried around an 8Mb USB stick rather than 32/64Gb, now cheap as chips (haha again). Beyond physical copies (CD/LP) for last year’s release of When A Good Day Comes, we opted to sell three levels of download (MP3/CD/HD) direct from our own site to keep control of the file quality. But from this month we’re up on all the usual digital channels with an array of file sizes to choose from. Knock yourselves out, please!

When A Good Day Comes by PJ Moore & Co is available from pjmooreandco.com as well as the usual digital services; @pjmooreandco on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.