WAX ATTACK

Since vinyl LPs all but disappeared from mainstream music stores in the early '90s, there have been frequent stories trumpeting statistical blips that indicate records are making a comeback. For instance, when the RIAA released midyear sales numbers for 2006, vinyl's market share had doubled from 2005. (Of course that doubling was from .5 percent to a full percentage point, but still.) Surely, murmured music-nerd blogs across the land, this was an omen that the format was on the rise, soon to reclaim its place in the racks next to CDs.

Wrong. Vinyl will never again be a mainstream format for contemporary music. In a world filled with iPods (and iPhones), download services and 500 GB hard drives, the path toward a digital future for music distribution is set. Even CDs look positioned to suffer the same fate vinyl did in the late '80s.

But just because you won't be able to get the soundtrack to High School Musical V on wax doesn't mean that vinyl isn't making a comeback. The fact that it's held on at all through the past decade and a half is a testament to the devotion the format's fans have for it.

In 1989, vinyl LPs accounted for just over 10 percent of full-length album sales, eclipsed by CDs (with 28 percent of sales) and, unbelievably, the 62 percent stranglehold of cassettes. In 1990, vinyl accounted for about 5 percent of sales before settling, in 1993, for the .3 percent of market share the format would hang on to for the next 13 years. Cassettes would soon join LPs at the bottom of the market-share pool, but when was the last time you met a cassette collector?

The niche applications of vinyl — still the preferred format for DJs and audiophiles — have allowed many record stores to actually stock records, and a brisk trade in collectible vinyl on the Internet has made it possible for longtime stockpilers of wax to supplement their income quite nicely.

But those niche-dwellers have a tendency to fetishize records. While there's nothing wrong with insisting on specific combinations of playback equipment or with having a near-fanatical devotion to original pressings, sometimes a record — even a recent repressing played on an inexpensive turntable — just hits the spot.

With that in mind, a whole new type of record-buyer has entered the market.

"There are a few different mentalities that drive customers to analog," says Brian Tragash, a sales associate at Music Direct, an online store devoted to the needs of audiophiles. In 2004, Music Direct acquired the legendary Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs (of the "Original Master Recordings" series of high-end vinyl and CD reissues) and, according to Tragash, they've "definitely seen sales `of records` increase" recently.

"There's nostalgia, there's an audiophile's desire to experience music in high quality and, of course, there's a collector's mentality," says Tragash. "But with younger kids, it's gotten kinda fashionable `to buy records`."

Many independent labels continue pressing vinyl versions of their new releases — no punk rock store can be taken seriously without a section devoted to 7-inch singles — and recently, interest in contemporary metal has gone hand-in-hand with the enormously high resale values of vinyl outings from bands like Mastodon and Pelican. In England, vinyl sales of singles have increased tenfold since 2001; HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo told London's Sunday Mirror in October that the British music-store chain has "seen a huge resurgence of interest in 7-inch vinyl sales."

"The 7-inch vinyl is definitely very cool again," said Castaldo.

But the fashion goes beyond hip enclaves.

"I remember when I had such a surplus of Bruce Springsteen records, but now …" laughs Ray Ehmen, owner of Orlando vinyl store Rock 'n' Roll Heaven.

It's not just mint-condition first pressings of obscure Krautrock records that the hipsters are combing the bins for. Classic rock staples — from Led Zeppelin all the way down to dollar-rack fodder like Boston's debut — are getting the attention of young buyers.

"Boston's a good example," says Ehmen. "Personally, I can't stand 'em, but taste is taste. Here it is all these years later and that's the one everybody wants … and they want it on vinyl.

"I call it ‘flaccid rock,' not classic rock," he continues. "If you listen to the national radio stations, they play the same 620 songs over and over again. I don't know who deemed that shit ‘classic,' but it's not. `My customers` are buying that stuff, but they're also looking for all the colors and shades in between."

Ehmen is surprised by the number of obscure rock records that he sells. They're not always "obscure" in a good way.

"Would you have thought Europe records would be selling?" Ehmen laughs. "Somebody sampled something off that Europe record `1986's The Final Countdown` and that sonofabitch started selling for 10 or 15 dollars."

Why shell out a 10-spot for a full vinyl record when you can get a one-song nostalgia hit for a buck on iTunes? Does irony run that deep? Perhaps, but there's another possibility that's much more likely.

"In the mid-'90s, I wasn't really aware of why, but I thought CDs sounded wrong, something was off," says Music Direct's Tragash. "I just got frustrated and stopped listening to CDs."

The nonspecific "wrongness" of CD audio reproduction is something that may be turning people back to vinyl.

Audiophiles have always claimed that records were a superior delivery mechanism for music, constantly crowing about "warmth," "soundstage" and "dynamics" in ways that most casual music fans couldn't care less about.

In technical terms, vinyl has less of a dynamic range than CDs, due to the physical limitations of the format. So what's causing people to shun their CD collection in favor of playing a record? Simply put, the last decade has seen a confluence of mastering techniques that have made CDs louder and louder, but with less emphasis on contrasting the loud sounds with the soft ones. Record labels want their single to stand out on the radio, so they tell their mastering guy to make it a little louder than the last one; this process gets repeated ad infinitum by every record label.

These techniques aren't exactly the same as simply turning the volume knob up; instead, they ramp up all of the individual levels, giving a background cymbal crash as much emphasis as a lead guitar line. Imagine the "loudness" button on your stereo with 10 times the power; you wouldn't have to turn the volume up, but by pressing that button, your entire listening experience would be substantially different, right?

The outcome is that a large number of contemporary CDs, particularly in the rock genre, are just loud, with little emphasis on dynamics. It's the pauses between the loud bits that give your brain time to relax and catch up with the listening process. (Recording and mastering engineers grouse about this trend, but since the labels sign their paychecks, there's little they can do.) Combine that with the compression required to turn that CD into MP3s — a process which strips away "extraneous" audio information, requiring your brain to make up the difference — and you wind up with music that's exhausting to listen to.

"To my ears, it just gets grating," says Tragash. "It's like being screamed at. Very seldom do I hear people say, ‘I listened to CDs for hours last night.' But with vinyl, you end up staying up until 1 in the morning."

It's not so much that records sound better than CDs (although they do), it's just that it's a less trying listening experience. For a generation surrounded by music on their phones, their iPods, computers and CD changers, it would seem ridiculous to position a bulky, 12-inch vinyl record that needs to be cleaned regularly and stored properly as an alternative, but many younger listeners have been doing just that, perhaps as a reaction to the way the music they're hearing from those digital devices sounds.

While purists will continue to make playing records seem like a near-transcendent experience — granted, of course, everything is set up just right on your multi-thousand-dollar system — "the kids" have deemed vinyl simply to be more enjoyable. The "fetishism" over big cover art and the assertion that a vinyl record results in a "tactile engagement" with its listener are smoke screens for the fact that a lot of people — and apparently a lot more recently — just like to play records.

As Ehmen notes: "Vinyl never really went away."