Analog & Digital *

Today, listening to vinyl doesn’t necessarily offer better sound quality—but it brings a sense of ritual, and perhaps releases a little more dopamine.

In many ways, shooting on film is similar to listening to vinyl. Film captures images through photochemical reactions: countless microscopic silver halide crystals continuously respond to light. This non-pixelated recording process gives each frame theoretically infinite resolution—what’s captured is a complete, continuous image of the world at that moment. A digital camera, on the other hand, relies on a sensor’s photosites to detect light signals, converting them into pixels. No matter how high the resolution, the image remains finite and quantized.

The same logic applies to vinyl records. Their analog audio signals are carried by the continuous grooves etched into the surface—physical textures that translate into a naturally smooth, unbroken sound curve. Digital audio can approximate this endlessly, but it can never truly replicate it. In theory, vinyl has a higher potential for sound quality, yet modern records pressed from digital masters have already lost that analog advantage. The early records, recorded directly in analog, were once the purest expressions of sound—but decades of use and storage inevitably left them with dust, scratches, and wear. Their sound is no longer what it once was.

Of course, people today turn to film photography not for ultimate resolution, but for its distinctive color and texture; they listen to vinyl not for perfect fidelity, but for the atmosphere—the act of “listening” itself. In an age when any song is instantly accessible through a few taps on a screen, we long for something irreplaceable—a ritual that cannot be digitized.

Lying in bed before sleep, as the needle slowly drops and the music begins, listening to the 1976 original pressing of Songs in the Key of Life, the sense of awe remains beyond words.

April 6, 2025