Todays new vinyl LP's better than LP's 40 yrs ago?

Back in the pre-CD era there were constant complaints about vinyl quality. The vaunted Mercury Living Presence series came in for LOT of criticism about noisy surfaces. Warps and off-center pressings were rife. One of the reasons CDs were so highly praised at the beginning was the abysmal quality of vinyl at that time. You had to be there to remember how bad things were. I was.

Today's reissues are by and large much better in terms of pressing quality, flatness and pops/clicks. I know folks have problems with this, but if they think things are bad, they should have been buying records in the past. I'm not talking sonics; sound quality (of reissues) hinges on the condition of the tapes.

Expectations for vinyl are high among a smaller dedicated group these days. That may be part of it.

In think the late 60s and 70s were the golden age of vinyl. It was during 80s they used recycle materials. I even have one with plastic straw embedded in the lp.

By the 1970s, quality control was going to pot, consistent with the increased production and sale of records and the petroleum/plastic problems around 1974 when OPEC cut oil production and a lot of regrind vinyl began to be used.

Agree the golden age of vinyl was years ago and things have changed a lot since. Seems delusional to me to think that can be recreated on a similar scale. Some small high end niche vinyl providers may succeed.

I also question whether we could successfully send a man to walk on the moon again today. Or at best, if we could, the cost would be astronomical (no pun intended).

Emerging world powers like China and others probably are still able to do these things and in fact are because their economies are still years behind ours and their costs have not skyrocketed out of control (yet).