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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?
kipdent
ptmconsulting
1,000 posts
 
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
mapman's avatar
mapman
22,536 posts
 
Other issues aside, if you want to reap the sonic benefits of vinyl, you had best always be prepared to clean as needed first before panicking when something doesn't sound right.

Having said that, when I used to buy new records, my expectation was that they at least started clean, but I know even then that that was not always necessarily the case.
zenblaster
504 posts
 
I purchase approx. one new album /month and frankly am astonished at the condition these sealed records arrive. Everything from fingerprints, smears,smudges and always a good coating of loose cardboard dust. I would never subject my cart to this gunk so I always steam clean before using.
I wonder what the process of loading an album into its packaging is, anyone know? The last album i got was Dave Mathews latest and it was horrible when I opened it. Fortunately after a cleaning it played perfect and was nice and flat, otherwise back it goes. They look as though they were packaged by monkeys that just finished wrestling in mud.
larryi
4,136 posts
 
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).
dan_ed
2,451 posts
 
I don't know. The releases I'm getting from Music Matters play very nicely. I do, however, clean new vinyl always. Premiere, steam, AIVS.
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