When Thomas Edison recorded his voice singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" in 1877, music took a quantum forward. No longer would artists' masterpieces vanish into thin air as soon as they were played. When the first list of commercial recordings became available in 1890, the American public began a love affair with collecting music.

But after a little over a hundred years of availability and numerous improvements from cylinder phonographs, magnetic tapes, compact discs to MP3s, why are collectors turning back to one of the oldest standards — records?

The record has gone through almost too many incarnations to count. Vinyl was first offered as a production material in 1929 for radio stations, but world record standards weren't introduced until 1958 . Though technology has offered numerous competing standards the LP has persevered even in the digital age.

One reason for vinyl's staying power may be that audiophiles swear LPs offer better sound quality than CDs. The debate may never be settled, but hardcore LP fans point out that the benefits CDs offer are not necessarily unique. When CDs first came on the market, Sony and Phillips, the companies that devised the standard, advertised them with the motto "perfect sound forever."

While CDs have high sound quality, best estimates put them at lasting for about 100 years. LPs have consistently defied expectations; at this point it is uncertain how long they can last.

CDs claim to perfect sound isn't necessarily perfect either. Most vinyl fans know that those pops and clicks that consumers associate with poor aging of LPs is actually caused by dirt and dust in grooves. Even CDs are affected by the quality of the player and physical condition of the disc, they are just more durable. In fact, with an investment in a decent player, a little bit of cleaning and proper storage, only a true audio guru could tell between CD and LP playback.

Though CDs can produce sounds in higher frequencies than LPs, which accounts for the "brighter" sound of the recording, LPs have a low-end than is far beyond what CDs can reach, which is the reason club DJs prefer LPs. Audiophiles also contend that CDs only offer a digital sampling of music while the analog process of LPs reproduces the whole performance.

"If you have a good hi-fi system, LP sounds better than CD. The range is so much larger on LP. It sounds so much more mechanical, so much more clean. The real world has the pops and click of an LP," said third-year law student and vinylphile Matt Holmes.

Despite CDs' claim to sound superiority, quality has never really been the reason for technological medium changes. Looking back, VHS won out over Betamax, a video format with superior quality, because it was marketed better and was more convenient to use.

But unlike Betamax, LPs never went out of production. In fact, record companies still regularly produce LPs. For smaller labels and independent artists, pressing LPs offers higher profits and can produce smaller yields than minting CDs. Music connoisseurs looking for something off the beaten track can find it readily available in LP.

For those looking backward, as the Baby Boomer generation has aged, more and more of their album collections have ended up in second-hand music shops. At a time when CD prices are pushing $17 or more for older music, $5 LPs have become an affordable alternative for those addicted to buying albums.

Vinylphiles also contend that listening to LPs are more experiential than CDs. The convenience of that advanced technology affords the music consumer is not necessarily a good thing. The average CD pushes 80 minutes of straight playtime while LPs offer much less.

Even worse, MP3s offer instant access to music. The digital age of music has ushered in a type to attention deficit disorder; the skip track button looms and. Changing songs on a record player requires a bit more work.

Artists record albums, not just a collection of singles. Too often music fans may find themselves playing the hit single to death without listening to the way an album is constructed as a whole.

Lastly, records used to be produced in smaller runs than CDs, which are produced in large international releases. One of the oldest traditions of the LP era was cover art. The Beatles' "White Album" was known by its cover not by a name.

Who can forget the burning zeppelin from Led Zeppelin's I or the psychedelic look of the Grateful Dead's albums. The small space on CD covers and non-existent art of electronic distribution have made this art form a rare one indeed. Modern art exhibitions have recently been running collections of LP covers as whole shows.

"When you get a CD you get a, little four by four picture… In the old days of rock and roll, cover art was a way to express as much on the outside of an album visually as in the album did itself inside. There are liner notes written by Shel Silverstein, important artistic works themselves," Holmes said.

While CDs and electronic music are the wave of the future, LPs aren't dead. And with the recent strength of the LP publishing industry, it doesn't look to be going anywhere anytime soon.

Vinylphiles may never win to ongoing debate fought in college dorm rooms and online music discussion groups, but each year more and more music aficionados are going back to their vinyl roots.

Contact C. Spencer Beggs at beggs.3@nd.edu

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