Re: Rather than like buying a BMW
Isn't going down the vinyl audiophile thing more like buying a Morgan or a Bristol - loads of money spent on something not as good as mainstream and makes the person who buys it feel special (but look a tit)?
Well perhaps not a exactly a Morgan or Bristol but until recently I had classic car, by any subjective measure it was inferior to a modern car. But who gives a F*** about subjective measurements. Modern cars like BWMs are comparatively boring to drive and of course you don't really drive them, there's a computer buried in the heart of it which does a lot of the driving for you, so there's no sense of satisfaction in all the little actions that go into driving. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want use a classic as an everyday car, for merely getting from A to B or for popping down to the supermarket the classic would be a PITA but for those bright Sunday mornings when you want to go out and have some fun no modern I've ever driven comes close.
When it comes to convenience MP3 is fine. Now that Amazon do "autorip" I've got rows of CDs on the shelf still in their wrappers. But without the convenience of autorip I may well not have bought them. I like to have the physical media, I want something I can feel that I can touch and I can own. But for the vast majority of my listening MP3 is good enough and it's really convenient and everything plays it. I can't see a car manufacture in the near future producing a car "radio" that doesn't play MP3, can you?
My classic had a radio when I bought it, but it had an oil leak so I removed it. :-)