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Last song on most LP's pressed with compression

Over the last few yrs, I have spent more time with my cd player than analog rig. Anyway, the winter is here and I'm feelin the groove and started listening critically to LP again. What bothers me is the last song on a side is often compressed. You have hear this as a reduction in sound quality, akin to what an MP3 does to a cd original. Now if you inspect the LP closely that bothers you. You can see visually that the grooves towards the end are actually cut into the record differently. They are compressed together. I don't care what cartridge or equipment you use, the distortion is there..period . Once your brain locks onto it, listening thru this distortion is very difficult. Now before the experts chime in, I'm not talking about inner groove distortion here. Nor is there anything wrong with my alignment,VTA, tracking,azimuth etc. If you can't hear this on your rig (with an LP that is cut compressed on the last track- not all are)then no doubt your system is not resolved enough. Part of my LP collection (about 500 records)are 12" singles. These do not suffer from this problem for obvious reasons. But I'd bet that 60% or more of regular LP's do. What all this means for me is that the days of investing big $$$ on LP playback are over. What I have is what I have and when it eventually wears out, I doubt that I'll replace it. Yup, I am that bugged by wasting a portion of my valuable listening time listening to a lower quality signal. I modify my own equipment to achieve the highest quality signal that I possibly can. So subjecting myself to a flawed LP format is a step backwards. Before I play an LP now, I examine that groove pattern towards the end. If it looks extra compressed, then back on the shelf that title goes. I'll pick the original (non maximized) cd version every time.

Feel free to chime in.
reb1208
stanwal's avatar
stanwal
3,147 posts
 
If you want the best possible sound try to find direct cut records. Very limited catalog but amazing sound. Were made in late 70s and early 80s.
jdaniel13
129 posts
 
The Perfectionist side...try not to go there. I've done it, but thank Darwin I don't have endless amounts of cash and therefore limit wasted time--it's so bad for the music. The first thing that happens is the culling of great performances for so-so performances on other formats. If you're like me, you'll be buying back (or digging in the closet for) the imperfectly rendered great or favorite performances again.
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
01-25-09: Jdaniel13
The Perfectionist side...The first thing that happens is the culling of great performances for so-so performances on other formats. If you're like me, you'll be buying back (or digging in the closet for) the imperfectly rendered great or favorite performances again.
Your experience reminds me of one of J. Gordon Holt's early maxims: The quality of the recording is inversely proportional to the quality of the performance.

--or something like that.

Of course there are great exceptions, but back when he first wrote that, the LP bins were rife with the middle-of-the-road (MOR) "bachelor pad" drivel put out on Command Records, superbly recorded on 35mm mag film like the 1st gen. Everest recordings vs., for example, the RCA mono pressings of Toscanini's Beethoven Symphonies.

It seems to me that the true potential of the analog record was never really reached. Imagine what great sound we could have had on 45 rpm 16" discs, played back with the minimal tracking angle error of a 12" tonearm. A 16" disc would have allowed at least 20 mins per side (like a 12" 33-1/3), but with seriously higher groove speed for less compression and more clarity owing to greater space for the groove modulations.

I also concur that the direct-to-disc recordings offer the most superb, transparent, and dynamic home playback I've heard in any format. The first couple of Sheffield discs were also pretty MOR, but I have later recordings they did with the Harry James Big Band and the great Oakland funk band, Tower of Power. I also have a couple of Buddy Rich D2Ds on American Grammophone, one featuring Mel Torme! Now THOSE have both superb sonics and legendary performances.
halcro's avatar
halcro
2,664 posts
 
"If you can't hear this on your rig (with an LP that is cut compressed on the last track- not all are)then no doubt your system is not resolved enough."
Hmmm........I don't hear it on ANY records so I guess I need to get rid of those damn arms (Copperhead and DaVinci Grandezza) and get a decent turntable to boot (rotten Raven AC-3?).
Perhaps you might enlighten us as to the brand of your super-resolving turntable and arm?
And then you might inform us as to what tool you use to adjust the arm/cartridge geometry?
kirkus
502 posts
 
"Compression" is absolutely the correct term . . . it's dynamic range compression and it's common practice to apply this to the inner tracks during mastering. As others have pointed out, this is done because the linear groove velocity has decreased, and thus a given stylus acceleration corresponds to a lower modulation level. And the tracking performance of ANY cartridge is of course related to the stylus acceleration.

Simply looking at the groove spacing, however, will only give you very little indication of how much compression has been applied. In the 1970s, sophisticated computer programs were developed to control the progression of the lathe's cutting head as it moved across the record, to maximise the utilisation of the available space for the recording . . . and a visual check will only give you an impression of how effectively this was done. Had the groove spacing been increased . . . the compression would still be there.

Groove spacing does affect the amount of "pre-echo" heard, but this is of course much more noticable at the beginning of the record, not at the end . . . and there are other things that affect this, like the processes of plating the lacquer and making the stamper.

The reality of the situation is that we owe a great debt to the mastering engineers who have given us those records that sound great from start to finish, in spite of the necessary compromises involved in doing so. And while some of the harshest words on Audiogon forums are reserved for the CD format . . . this is THE format that brought us extremely consistent performance across the entire recording, in one contiguous block of time.
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