Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Sam Tornow writes about Thurston Moore and The Smell of Vinyl for Discogs. Moore is a famous vinyl aficionado who stuffs his apartment with records.

“I kind of have to draw some limitations with my responsibility toward my own budget. I can’t just be living, building furniture out of records. I [still] have a pretty healthy Wantlist on Discogs, though. I continue to buy records all the time. I’m always interested in going to record stores, and I get my Discogs alerts for records I want. I would say I purchase on Discogs at least two or three times a week.”

This happened to a friend of mine, who was once named by the News & Observer as the biggest record collector in Raleigh. He eventually ran out of space for his collection and moved on to clothing.

I found the position Moore now takes on CDs interesting. 

Originally sticking to vinyl and cassettes, CDs have also made their way into his collection. At first he was apprehensive of the medium when it initially exploded in popularity, but now he thinks they aged well.

This sounds a lot like the conclusion I have come to. With the right DAC, CDs can sound fantastic. The most recent CD I was looking at (an upcoming Pains of Being Pure At Heart collection) was also a quarter of the price of the record. That’s hard to beat, especially if you’re on a budget.