Yes, good quality vinyl, for the purpose of making records, is no longer available. I read an interesting article about a new pressing facility in New York City. The proprietors admit that even the best vinyl they can buy falls short of the quality that could easily be had years ago. They compensate, as well as they can, by taking the new stock and "regrinding" it themselves (not talking about using old records that have been ground up to make new records, but carefully grinding virgin vinyl to achieve the right consistency).
New vinyl's noisy little secret
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the current crop of vinyl formulations just have higher noise levels than LPs made years ago. A case in point--I stumbled upon an old, original copy of Henry Mancini's 1962 soundtrack to the movie "Hatari" in my collection a few days ago (I had never even played it), and was astonished at its deathly quiet playback. Simply no surface noise. What gives? OK, you may make fun of this black-label RCA pressing (LSP-2559) for its content musically (though it's actually pretty fun), but it sure reminded me what we are missing with new releases--super high quality vinyl with very low surface noise. Even the occasional mechanical clicks from scratches seemed subdued. Most of my (expensive!) new vinyl comes replete with very onerous surface noise. Is it just impossible to make this old-generation type of vinyl currently?
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- 49 posts total
- 49 posts total