Latest audiophile mumbo jumbo I heard. Curious if there is any truth to this.
What I was told a few days ago is that vinyl is resilient and can "spring back" after being deformed by the needle riding through the grooves. But it needs time to do this. If you give 24 hours between record listening, it gives the record a chance to "recover" from needle damage and can help minimize wear on your records.
Google doesn't give me any actual verifiable data or pictures of record grooves before and after playback, along wish shots 24 hours later, so I am unable to verify this claim myself. And, of course, audiophiles never have anything in their knowledebase to help back up most of their lunacy.
Has anyone heard of this phenomenon?
No, I haven't heard of this. But I heard of the one where the vinyl record gets so hot during use that you must let cool down for a while.
Wear and tear is basically that. If you purchase an album, you may actually want to play that album a couple of times if you like the music in single day which means more wear and tear naturally. The whole problem with vinyl is that it wears from being played. I can see where the nonsense probably comes from but I feel music is meant to be enjoyed and listened to and not sit around seldom played and a couple of plays in a single day isn't going to kill a record (i.e. encore please).
Sounds suspiciously like many other audiofool myths - it sounds vaguely plausible, scientifically, but where are the studies and where's the evidence? As pointed out above, vinyl wears out when played. If that's not acceptable, don't buy it or don't play it.
even if this was true, sounds like a ridiculous reason to use vinyl over digital because it's still uncomparably worse in about everything (except that you can sort of - kind of - play vinyl without electricity at all)
If a digital copy isn't available, play it ONCE (or once more since it probably isn't new) and digitize it! :D
In real world use, damage does somehow accumulate so the fewer times you play it, the better it will be preserved. (Back in the vinyl days I tried to take care of my records but they did "develop" clicks & pops.)
Well, if you think about it, how should this really work? Basically you have scratches and deformations from your needle in your plastic.
Even if there were some kind of mending capabilities of PVC (none that I know of), how should the material know the original configuration to correctly represent the music? And not just accidentally "heal" wanted bumps needed for the music or even the groove itself to get a smooth surface.
Pointer to a short discussion (no conclusion either way) and a long list of further reading:
https://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/viewtopic.php?t=27421