• The move to the new server is done. There are some software and database maintenance updates in process. This has us passing the hat around to help out. We appreciate any donations. Seriously, even a dollar helps. The payment page may be found here - https://www.audiokarma.org/support.html

Quality of Picture Discs/Coloured Vinyl

M

mjr4077au

Active Member
I was wondering on general opinion... Does anyone think there is a quality difference between picture discs/coloured vinyl and regular black vinyl

I put a post here regarding a 12" maxi I was after and the quality or picture discs popped up. I thought more vinyl guru's would be here to help. Cheers, Mitch.
 
Register to hide this ad
In general, I think they are less than standard LPS.

IIRC, I had a Rush Hemisphere's picture disc that clearly stated thet the quality of the pressing was not as good as the black vinyl.
 
yeah, i do believe they were inferior as they really werent meant to be played...i use to have around 50 picture discs and a ton of colored vinyl...:sigh: those were the days :tears:
 
I have several picture discs, they have a lot more surface noise than the regular pressings. Other than that, the sound quality is about the same; as long as the music is well above the noise floor. I have also seen the disclaimer about sound quality on the packaging. It says "Sound quality may not be comparable to the standard edition". Colored records, on the other hand, I've not noticed much difference in noise level on the ones I have compared to regular black records. They can be a pain to cue up, though, because the grooves are harder to see most of the time.
 
They sound worse. No doubt about it. As I mentioned in the Gwen Stefani thread, it seems that pic discs are the worst, then single colored vinyl, then black licorice.

As previously mentioned, the grooves are indeed hard to see for the most part.

I've got quite a few rare pic discs, too bad they sound not-so-great.




Other thread:

From my experience, picture discs sound horrible. I am not sure why. I actually listened to some a few (very rare) of them this past week as I was reorganizing stuff.



Metallica - Ride The Lightening, Japanese pressing
Mineral Compositions - Early 80s Japanese Industrial Compilation
Creatures - Boomerang
Psychic TV - Godstar (with Brian Jones on one side, swimming pool on the other - morbid)
La Vagina - Sex (Nude woman with her neck missing flesh :screwy:)
Freedom In A Vacuum - Early 80s German Industrial Compilation




They are all very obscure LPs, some are actually filled with some pretty great music & they're really neat lookin'



They all shared one thing in common:

They all sound like sh*t.

There is just something about picture discs - they all have crappy sound quality.


If u want her picture disc, get it to display, not to listen to.
 
The colored LP's I play I can not tell from the normal black vinyl, not in playback. If there is then these old ears can't hear it.

The first one I played on my moded TD150 was Grand Funk - We're An American Band. Besides they look farout when you spin one. :smoke:
 

Attachments

  • TD150-1.jpg
    TD150-1.jpg
    181.1 KB · Views: 31
Actually Picture disks and colored vinyl should be in two different catagories. The colored vinyl is almost always a virgin pieces of vinyl and as such normally pretty high quality stock. While a Black vinyl album could be and after about 1973ish usally was a recycled material.

And remember The Vinyl is naturally a clear or white color NOT black
 
Yes, I'd forgotten that vinyl is clear/white.

I've got a few colored vinyl that are as good as black. Maybe the small amount of colored vinyl I have is just old.

But, I do have clear mint condition Faust LP that sounds excellent!

clear.insert.jpg
 
Most picture discs are actually a cardboard picture in between a layer of clear vinyl on one side, and a layer of PVC on the other. The PVC side sounds terrible, the vinyl side not so bad. The ones with molded in pictures (Heart-Magazine) for example, and the colored vinyl ones sound as good as the black ones to me.
 

Attachments

  • KISS-Crazy Nights back small.jpg
    KISS-Crazy Nights back small.jpg
    35.8 KB · Views: 20
Last edited:
Well atleast I am reassured of coloured records as I have some on order from eBay. I will steer clear from picture discs if possible. I want vinyl records to listen to... not to put on the mantle piece.

I was at a Salvo's store and there was this school there buying records. I thought they were from the music class and learning some classics but they were from the art depertment and using/destroying them for sculptures. I DIED...
 
Nitro said:
Most picture discs are actually a cardboard picture in between a layer of clear vinyl on one side, and a layer of PVC on the other. The PVC side sounds terrible, the vinyl side not so bad. The ones with molded in pictures (Heart-Magazine) for example, and the colored vinyl ones sound as good as the black ones to me.
Click to expand...


I thought PVC stood for PolyVinyl Chloride :scratch2:
 
Yep, it does. There's a member on the Record Collector's Guild who worked at a record factory.
 
Nitro said:
Yep, it does. There's a member on the Record Collector's Guild who worked at a record factory.
Click to expand...

But your saying there is a vinyl side and a PVC side but PVC and Vinyl are one in the same.
 
Wikipedia.org said:
There are many uses for PVC. As a hard plastic, it is used as vinyl siding, magnetic stripe cards, window profiles, gramophone records (which is the source of the name for vinyl records)
Click to expand...

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride


Wikipedia.org said:
LPs, 45s, and 16s are usually made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and hence may be referred to as vinyl records or simply vinyl.
Click to expand...

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record
 
I was aware of the wikipedia page, but going by your assumption, the composition of PVC pipes, vinyl siding, and vinyl records is identical? OK, I give up.
 
I have Beatles White Album on white vinyl, Beatles 62-66 on red vinyl, Beatles 67-70 on blue vinyl.

The red and blue vinyl are more like a clear vinyl with color. The white vinyl appears to be a solid vinyl color like black.

The red and blue sound great, as someone else mentioned the clear vinyls might be virgin vinyl material.

However the White Album white vinyl does not sound as good as it's black counterpart, and also has more surface noise. It may be due to the vinyl just being worn, of course that is really hard to tell on white vinyl!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom