Listen to Vinyl Music and Add To Your Music Collection - Without Spending on a Record Player

Vinyl. It sounds like a nice hobby, but then you start to think - the hardware cost and for me the worst part - adding more "stuff" that takes up space. Like many of you, I've "downsized" my books, memorabilia and "stuff" over the years as a part of the going digital process.

Vinyl has a warm sound to it - even on an average soundbar, you can hear a more ambient and even darker sound.

Even if I had the hardware, I'm sure my rips wouldn't be as good as someone who's been doing it for years. On the commonly known file sharing sites, you will find vinyl rips - tons of them. Search for a band's name and "LP" or "Vinyl" and you will find thousands.

They are often in higher resolution - 24/96 or more.

For me, it's the softer stuff that sounds better - Simon & Garfunkel, Stan Getz, The Byrds..

There's tons of Beatles, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones vinyl rips out there - almost all in lossless FLAC. Even Archive.org has a vinyl collection, but it only goes up to 1959 from what I saw.

Vinyl rips take up a lot of space - typical album size is 1-2 GB. Shorter albums will be less - but most of them are ripped at a higher than CD rate.

My favorite vinyl rips are Simon & Garfunkel - all of their albums and Getz/Gilberto, the classic album that features The Girl From Ipanema.

What are yours?