I'm asking this seriously as a long-time vinyl enthusiast -- I was collecting records long before most members of this group were born, starting with my first album (the Rolling Stones' "Made in the Shade") in the early 1980s.

My collection grew over time to a few dozen, then a hundred, then several hundred and finally about a thousand LPs. I schlepped them all over the country as I moved through college, graduate school, and a couple of post-doctoral moves.

Basically as soon as it was technically possible to do so, I started ripping my LPs to digital files. I have done blind and double-blind tests between the LP and the digital file, and satisfied myself and several audiophile friends that, in fact, the digital rip can capture that "warm LP sound" that we all like -- including the "silent sound" of the bass rumble and the gentle hiss/pop of the high end in a well-loved platter. So I'm pretty sure that the "LPs just sound better" answer isn't it: a good rip of an LP sounds ... exactly like an LP, and even the most skeptical audiophiles I know can't tell the difference.

Playing LPs wears them out, and their sound does evolve and degrade. Even in the 1980s and 1990s, the Dolby B and C, and even the short-lived DBX, came around so that people could treat their delicate vinyl as a personal master and play music off cassettes (saving the vinyl from wear). So digital ripping is equivalent to the long practice of using cassettes for the same purpose.

15 years ago, album art was a big hole in the ripping process. Album art is awesome. But modern displays are awesome, and can display good album art in all its glory as your music plays.

On the other side, I love that I can fit literally hundreds of records into my pocket and reproduce that "warm sound" experience from my Abby Road or Telegraph Road rips from pretty much anywhere, without hassle or the worry of losing my album.

So please enlighten me: I just don't get it. Why use vinyl instead of digitally ripped vinyl? What, exactly, do you get from having a gigantic, immovable old-school shrine to vinyl, that you don't get from ripping your vinyl, scanning the album art, and burning the originals (or donating them to a thrift shop to make someone else happy)?

Edit: Thanks, I think I get it now. Aside from some audiophile griping, everyone seems to focus on the ritual and the effort, and how that focuses one's attention on enjoying the music. Several good folks talked about the connection the analog medium makes them feel to the studio, or how the physical artifact serves as a nice physical token. Others talked about the fact that an LP enforces a longer form to the music, with less mixing and random shuffling compared to single-song selection in the digital medium. I don't get that as much, since I don't so much cherry pick songs from my digital collection, as play whole albums from it. But I do recognize that the longer form enforced by albums creates a very different experience from mixed-up singles.

For the most part the discussion has been interesting and acrimony-free. Thanks, /r/vinyl! Keep on bein' you...