I recently got a vinyl player, after years of humming and hawwing about whether it was worth it, whether I'd have the space, and on and on. I finally did, and it's been awesome! I did lots and lots of planning before I finally decided on a set-up. I put everything in this [[The Record Player Wishlist|Wishlist]] of stuff that I wanted, and places I could get vinyl. After lots and lots of research, I finally grabbed the LP60X for the added Bluetooth functionality, a shelf, and some studio speakers. All of the stuff came on different days, which was pretty funny, because my mom looked at each new box like "???" wondering what the hell I was building in our not very sizable apartment. Ironically, the player itself came last. RIP. When it finally came in I spent the day building the desk. It had 3 tiers and I thought that I could put the speakers in the middle and the records at the bottom, as intended, but I did NOT measure the speakers and they ended up way too big for the middle section. So I put the record brush in the middle and the speakers at the bottom. I've since made space on my shelf to hold my records. Luckily the player doesn't take much space! It did-so more in my head than anywhere else - guess I should have done more actual measurements in general, haha. I'd love to put it somewhere other than my office as a "listening space," but that isn't exactly possible in an apartment...plus I usually listen while working anyways, as I work from home and am also bound by the chains of capitalism, RIP. Putting the record player itself together was a little stressful! The instructions are textless, which isn't ideal when you're dealing with such a delicate piece of machinery. I ended up watching a YouTube video to make sure I didn't mess it up - and definitely would have otherwise, particularly the band that allows the record to spin. On top of that, I thought I broke the player when I accidentaly popped the needle off...when I just needed to reatach it, again after watching another video. Would have been nice to have that all in the documentation, but oh well! It worked out in the end. ![[Vinyl and Me-20240421112105718.png]] Once the fear had passed, I finally got to put my first record on - the first two I picked up were a copy of the *Scott Pilgrim vs the World* movie OST, as well as Passion Pit's first EP. I went with *Scott Pilgrim* first. One of the coolest things about vinyl to me is the giant art that comes with it - it almost feels like you get a poster with each record. *Scott Pilgrim* is one record, so it didn't have a lot of complexity, but the vinyl itself was red! Which was cool! This was a great first pick for a vinyl because it let me get a range of genres to put the system through its paces. And let me tell you: it held UP y'all. I instantly became confident in my hyperfixation LOL. The speakers popped and the music sounded lovely. We were absolutely cooking. And now, sorry to say, vinyl has become my personality haha. I've gotten a small library built up since, from various online retailers, as well as a trip to a dingy little hole in the wall record store with my sister. I've uh, frontloaded my purchases, so I'm gonna slow down now, but I do plan to buy a few more a month after properly rebalancing my budget, to continue to build that library. ![[Vinyl and Me-20240421112128281.png]] But what's most interesting about vinyl is how well it meshes with my method of listening to music. Now I've said it here before but I'll say it again: I absolutely *adore* music. And I mean that. I have hundreds of albums and thousands of songs in my library. That said, according to my sister I am a weirdo because I almost exclusively listen to albums from beginning to end. I have very few playlists, and of those that I have, they're usually just a collection of all of an artist's albums so I can listen to them without switching. Vinyl works the same way! There's no way to skip tracks you might not enjoy so you can only listen to your favorites. You have to experience it from beginning to end, taking in the album as a whole. This leads to two things, in my experience: 1. Careful consideration of what vinyl I want to purchase. If I'm gonna listen to something front to back, I have to make sure I love at least 80% of what I'm listening to, which leads to a thoroughly curated library of bangers. 2. A deeper appreciation of tracks I might not have liked before! Sometimes It's not that I dislike a track, but more that I was impatient to get to the track I liked afterwards. Now I'm forced into patience and see the appeal of tracks that I once tried to move past. In a digital world it's easy to commoditize music to the point that you forget that every track is a work of art. They're slotted into playlists, reduced in playtime so that the Spotify Gods of Capitalism are appeased, disrespected by listeners. A vinyl rejects all of that, and reminds you of what music is: purposeful. Deliberate. Beautiful! So yeah - I'm a vinyl guy now. I apologize but also won't be changing this. It's a lot of fun! ![[Vinyl and Me-20240421112200845.png]]