New vinyl's noisy little secret

Was your Hatari album sealed? If not, it was prabably played by somebody. I find that with albums pressed today, in lower volume production, a lot more mold release is applied to insure better quality pressings. HOWEVER, that means it's more important to make sure you remove it before playing the record.

Back in the day, playing the record would eventually get the stuff off (at least where the stylus contacted the groove) because the pressure on the groove with spherical or elliptical styli was much higher than with today's line contact styli.

So if you have a high quality vinyl rig (which you do) and a great (and extraordinarily quiet) cartridge like a Temper W, you're not going to like the sound of today's pressings right out of the box. You have to 'clean' them first.

Clean before playing.

The time it takes me to clean one album is approx the length of one side on the album.

That leaves me not complaining about today's pressings, just some grumbles about the time to clean.

Agree with Nsgarch and Bosrt.

There's no RCM listed in your system. There should be, and all LP's - new or used - will benefit from using it.

I don't enjoy cleaning LP's any more than Bosrt, especially new ones, but the sonic benefits (at least in my system) are indisputable.

Bosrt, You have evidently adopted a very onerous way to clean your LPs. With my VPI HW17, it never takes more than a total of 5-6 minutes to clean both sides, using my conventional cleaner (dilute non-ionic detergent in a water/alcohol mix). If I am using the Walker Audio enzyme-based cleaning method, it takes only a little bit longer (for the extra steps). I cannot imagine spending 20-25 minutes to clean one LP.

Kipdent, it's funny (to me) that you should mention this. Last night I played a Columbia LP I bought used for a few bucks some years ago, Dexter Gordon Quartet/Manhattan Symphonie. I was pleasantly surprised at the quiet and the quality of this pressing, altho there were a few crackles at the beginning of the first cut ("As Time Goes By"). George Cables piano playing on this LP is superb, not to mention the work of DG. Then I remembered having seen the re-issue for sale just recently, for $34, while I was placing an order with MusicDirect. And I was wondering whether that (new) pressing could possibly sound any better. (Mine is a "promotion"/"not for sale" copy; those usually do sound better than run of the mill pressings.)

Forty years ago, LPs cost $3 to $6. I used to save my money to buy just one at a time back then. I suppose if you correct for inflation that the cost was even higher than that of a CD today.

I read something, somewhere that discussed the new vs old pressing plants. In the old days they wer running full stream every day. The presses were making thousands of records a day.

These days the plants are making only hundreds of records in small, custom batches. As a result the presses are barely warmed up before they are finished with the run. As a result the vinyl isn't flowing as smoothly and imperfections are more prominent.

Now I have no freakin idea if this theory holds and water at all, but it seemed plausable to me when I read it.

Bob