What is meant by IMPORT?

Listening is important. Some import pressings have been better than US pressings, and some have been worse. I find Xiekitchen's statement that vinyl quality has a lot to do with how good an LP sounds to be true more often than not. Island Records UK has pressed many excellent LP's that outshine their US counterparts, to cite one example. Whether you want to pay a premium for that is always your own choice (what is the price of better sound?)--Mrmitch

Audiofeil..
Well, you must have had better ones than me.. I think I had two U.S. pressings of Royal Scam and both suffered from noisy/distortion sounds like bad vinyl or vinyl with 'dirt' pressed into it... I had a 'shootout' of sorts with a german import, uk import and the said u.s. pressings. German Import won.
BUT.. I don't have a 10K table with a Triplanar arm (sure wish I did) and a Loricraft cleaner.

Mrmitch:
You are right about the Island UK pressings.

For all:
I recently picked up two very clean import pressings of two of my favorite records thinking/hoping they would be better.. when they were not.
1st was a UK import pressing of Weather Report's "Heavy Weather" now I used to have the orig. U.S. pressing bought as a teen back in 1977 but that one is long gone (and worn out by cheap shure carts) I have now the U.S. Columbia Half-Speed "audiophile" pressing of Heavy Weather, but have always thought it was a bit 'tipped up' in response and timbre. Alas, the UK pressing is good, but the 1/2 spd. still has better depth and space microdetails...Wayne Shorter's sax on some cuts I think is more accurate tone-wise on the UK pressing.
the other record is Jean Luc Ponty's "Imaginary Voyage" again used to have orig U.S. atlantic bought same year but again long gone worn out... Now I have a Japanese pressing of "Imaginary Voyage"... I just bought a German import pressing, and in a shoot out.. the German is NOT as good as the Japanese... I would have thought it would be the other way around.. German import must be using 2nd gen. tape as the sound is a little more 'processed' and somewhat lacking in immediacy esp. in the highs.
Oh well... I'll stick to the ones I had.
But it is fun to compare pressings...

Xiektichen,
There is much variation among pressings.

I'll give you 2 examples. I have original pressings of "Eagles" and "Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory". Both records were purchased new and on release.

Both suffer from higher than average surface noise despite carefully handling, many cleanings, and of course they've been played on properly aligned equipment.

The surfaces look perfect but the damn records are just plain noisy.

Go figure.