Ableton co-founder opts for CDs over vinyl, citing environmental impact

by Jake Williams · July 19, 2022

The co-founder of Ableton (a digital audio workstation), Robert Henke recently took to Facebook to express his concern over the growing trend that places vinyl LPs over CDs.

The co-founder of Ableton starts off the post by admitting that he too does love a physical product however argues the fact that mass-producing big hunks of plastic in exchange for a physical product is doing much more harm to the environment as opposed to the CD counterpart. The lengthy, yet eye-opening post calls for more consumer attention to be placed on CDs and is backed with facts and statistics that one may not realize. “I consider not doing any releases on vinyl anymore, but fully embrace CDs. The last big physical media innovation, with a better signal to noise ratio, better channel separation, better frequency response than vinyl in a smaller package,” says Henke.

Throughout the post, Henke admits that he loves and encourages the buying and selling of vintage vinyl records, but states that the issue of the environment comes to play when brand new records are being pressed, packaged, and shipped globally. “Shipping is a big part of the problem and will become more so when prices for fuel go up. Shipping also comes with its very own ecological footprint, starting with the necessary infrastructure. We need to ship less stuff around the globe,” Henke states.

The post has gained popularity since it was originally uploaded on July 11th, amassing one thousand reactions and a couple of hundred likes, which you can read in its entirety here.

Image Credit: Zyanya BMO on Unsplash