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Colored vinyl?

I've found that clear, translucent seems to sound best to me where I've sourced it. After that the colour doesn't really seem to matter in terms of sound quality unless it's a picture disc.

I find the sound quality of picture discs to be poor in general being noisy. I've also got a Dido repress which is half red and half black and I can hear when the needle crosses from one colour to the other twice a revolution. Annoying as hell.

With new vinyl I'll take clear, translucent vinyl over anything. Otherwise anything is fine so long as it isn't a picture disc or mix of colours. I will now buy a CD in preference to wasting money on a shitty noisy sounding LP.
 
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I found a real oddball of a colored vinyl LP recently. A seemingly normal copy of Lyres - On Fyre, it looks like regular black vinyl to the naked eye, but when you hold it up to a light source, you can see that it's actually dark blue/purple! Not entirely sure why they bothered, really.......... :dunno:
-Adam
 
Well back in the day you would once in a while get something put out on solid translucent color vinyl. It was a gimmick to get you to spend money or they just thought it would be cool for a limited run. I would say the majority back then didn't sound that great opposed to the black carbon copy. A lot of times these color copies where imports that didn't do good pressing work in the first place. So most old timers don't like color copies because it's a risk on how it will sound. Back then they also didn't do a lot of marble pressings, one does come to mined on a first pressing is Dave Mason: Alone Together in 1970.

Today is another story and if your buying new records you can't avoid it if you wanted to. I probably have at least 600+ titles that are color/marble. A lot of times these days they do a limited run of the fist pressing on color disc prior to the standard run, so if you like first pressings you got no choice.

They are doing far far to many mixed colors, splatter & marble and IMHO these will not be the best sounding process for a record. These records contain different mixes of vinyl and most of them are made from recycled scrap from making the solid color disc. They save the outer lip trimmings and regrind it to use again. The worst records are the ones they hand make the pucks, forming pie shapes with a distinct line from color to color. Really? this is bad :no:

Me I like the best masterings and pressings using the best vinyl on a record, that tends to be made of performance vinyl. That would not be all these colors they keep pushing on us that IMO is a gimmick for the youth. I like a black color record as you can see it's clean or dusty for starters. But I also like limited runs and first pressings so it's a catch 22. So some times I buy the limited first pressing on colors and then get the standard issue on black vinyl to play.

Some colors I have been very surprised at some times at being quiet and sounding good.
Solid White
Clear
Blood Red

Now others can sound good but these tend to be pretty consistent. And as with any record they can all sound good if the production quality is there. The problem is, many color records are not geared to the audiophile looking for the best quality pressing, as it's still a gimmick that is selling color vinyl over the quality of the work.
 
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Have this one. Always liked the early Simple Minds.
 
AdamAnt316 said:
I found a real oddball of a colored vinyl LP recently. A seemingly normal copy of Lyres - On Fyre, it looks like regular black vinyl to the naked eye, but when you hold it up to a light source, you can see that it's actually dark blue/purple! Not entirely sure why they bothered, really.......... :dunno:
-Adam
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Perhaps that is one of the proprietary Japanese vinyl formulations like Quiex II? They are pretty dark, but translucent when held to a strong light. They can be brownish black, but that may be close to a color you are seeing?
 
Tiver said:
Perhaps that is one of the proprietary Japanese vinyl formulations like Quiex II? They are pretty dark, but translucent when held to a strong light. They can be brownish black, but that may be close to a color you are seeing?
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It's definitely a different color than what I've seen from Quiex II, aka "Super Vinyl" as MFSL referred to it. One other possibility I can think of is styrene, but not many LPs were pressed using it, AFAIK, and the styrene 45s I've seen are generally a more reddish purple than what I'm seeing from this LP.
-Adam
 
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