In the modern era of streaming digital music, the turntable continues to enjoy a renaissance.

Chuck Moses, a vinyl record collector and event organizer for the upcoming Port Townsend Record Show, believes the audio quality of analog recordings beats digital recordings.

“I have an old cat,” Moses said. “I could play anything on CD, and he would sleep through it. As soon as I put the needle on the turntable on anything, he immediately woke up to it. He could hear it. It is a distinct, richer, fuller sound than you will get with digital.”

That doesn’t mean Moses avoids digital music.

“I still play CDs,” he said. “I still buy CDs to collect them. They are great for indestructibility. You can throw them in the back seat of the car, pull them up, spill a sandwich on them, and they still play. Records are really sensitive, and you have to be really careful with them.”

Records also are collectible in a way akin to art, Moses said.

“They are only pressed at a certain time,” he said. “They are done by a certain engineer, a certain label. That is why people collect them. That is why some blues, reggae and punk rock records are so valuable, because they just didn’t make very many.”

PT Record Show

More than 20,000 vinyl records, many rare, will be available for perusal during the fourth annual Port Townsend Record show, to be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 2 at the American Legion Hall, 209 Monroe St. in Port Townsend.

About 1,000 people attended last year, Moses said.

Tables were sold to more than 30 vendors from Washington and Oregon, who will bring thousands of LPs, tapes, CDs, music collectibles and memorabilia.

“It is totally a hobby, and for young people who are collecting, it is to catch up with what their grandparents or parents gave to them or turned them on to when they were younger.”

One young hobbyist is Nate Malmgren, who also is organizing the show.

“It is kind of nostalgic but probably not as nostalgic for me as others because I was born in 1980,” Malmgren said.

“When I was in high school, I was buying CDs like everyone else. I discovered I liked the experience of collecting records and having a really good collection and listen to the compositions of side A and side B.

“There is stuff you can’t find online,” he added. “People assume everything is online, and it is not true. I have a few vinyls that haven’t even been digitized.”

There is a small window of great music that never came out on CD, Malmgren said.

“If something wasn’t remastered and put on CD, it basically doesn’t exist in the digital realm unless someone did it themselves, like an amateur recorded their record and put it online,” he said. “None of that stuff makes it into those mainstream databases online.”

For younger folks, vinyl remains popular even in the age of streaming because it is fun to experience music in a different medium, Malmgren said.

“It is kind of like people who still shoot photographs on film,” he said. “Why would you do that? You have all this digital technology. It is just a different format. For me, it is the experience (of) digging for records and discovering music. You listen to music in a different way. It is a different experience.”

That process is fun, Malmgren said.

“It is about sharing that experience of discovering and listening to music, to an album the way it was intended,” he said. “Each album is its own work of art and composition. That includes a side A, a side B and the cover art, which is really present and visible on LPs with a 12-by-12 piece of art that goes with the music.”

Moses is attracted to records for the same reasons, he said.

“One I may buy could be out of curiosity, an artist I don’t know anything about,” he said. “I bought one today from an artist I really like, but I don’t know that record, so it is a discovery thing. I might have eight of this person, but I don’t have this one. The other eight I have really liked, so I am assuming that this will taste the same. Whatever you’ve got, I’ll buy, because you are good.”

Trading records

Once an album has been digested, collectors often are ready to share it with the next person who has yet to discover it, Moses said.

“I would say most people buy them to sort of sell them and to add to their collection,” he said. “They will take them in and out of their collections to sell. I just bought 20 records here in Spokane. It is kind of this fluid thing where they go in and out, and people are looking for stuff. The record show will have rare records to discover, Malmgren said.

“Record shows tend to showcase and feature more collectable records, mostly second-hand records,” he said. “Some of them are really hard to find, anywhere from $1 per record

to $1,000.”