I was part of the indie-crowd of the 1990s that spawned the hipsters, or sort of morphed into them as what was a smaller crowd became much more popular. As such, I identify with them and also can't stand them to some degree. A friend of mine is 22 and I talked to her at length today about them, as she's more in the thick of it than I am any more. She said the worst she's heard recently is of a group that all ride their fixed gear bikes to the lake and listen to Russian classical music on ipods while reading the New York Times on iPads. As in, that's their thing and they're very snobby about it. Oh, and that she saw three people in the past two weeks carrying turntables down the street. Not playing them...just carrying them. She very much recognized playing records as a hipster thing, though she's a fan of music.
They're an odd bunch for sure. I'm glad they're having fun but they're really an arrogant bunch. But I guess my group of indie-snobs wasn't much different, and for no good reason. All the bands we were so high-and-mighty about are mostly forgotten and weren't that good to begin with. Every generation has its version of this behavior.
Me..I put my VPI back in play and forgot how much the Juicy Music Tercel lifts the performance of the whole vinyl rig. It makes a bigger difference than switching tables out, to be honest. Its a fantastic phono stage. But also part of the pain and expense of running the whole rig. Without it, the rig doesn't match my digital setup. With it, it does. Sometimes. Depending on pressing, cleanliness, condition of the record, which way the wind blows, you name it. So many variables. My digital setup is either better or equal most times, and is far more consistent. That consistency is really attractive to me, but I can't say that my records sound bad at all. They sound great, but it comes at a cost that I'm losing patience with paying.
It will probably be the last surviving hard media format as a niche product. 