Used records (2)

Recently I got stuck on this website where people were discussing the merits of record washing machines. According to the people who run this site, apparently the only way to get true high fidelity sound of vinyl records is to regularly wash them with one of these high-tech contraptions.

Never mind that I believe that the term "high fidelity vinyl record" is actually an oxymoron. Don't get me wrong, vinyl records can produce excellent sound that can be vastly superior to any compact disc, but unless you define hi-fi by the terms of the somewhat outdated DIN 45500 standard from the 1970s, the technological principle behind records and record players is fundamentally flawed, and not even with the finest technological tricks to circumvent rumble, resonance and tracking can you ever get pure sound out of a vinyl record, because every time you are playing a record, it is being damaged. It follows that the only way to get the best possible sound out of a vinyl record is not to wash it, but to never play it.

I can also think of better ways to spend €3000 than on a record washing machine, but then I'm one of these dilettantes who would also consider spending the same amount of money on a record player slightly extravagant. Even if that record player would inflict next to no damage at all to my precious records.

But that's hardly the point. It's mostly the human obsession with permanence, which is an oddity itself, especially considering that we ourselves are hardly permanent.

The dirt in the grooves of a vinyl record is nothing other than the dust of time settling there; the damage inflicted on the record by the needle each time you play it is little different from the things that shape you or wear you out every day. The record washing machine is something like the shower you take every morning, which makes you feel slightly fresher as you take it, but it won't ever prevent you from getting older and, eventually, dying.

And like the record washing machine, the shower will clean your body, but it won't ever clean your soul, which is pure or rotten based on totally different things.

Interestingly, having a shower installed in your flat also costs around €3000 these days.