Vinyl Record Manufacturer in Nashville Is Said to Be Expanding
- Thread starter Lesterbest
- Start date
Register to hide this ad
Record pressing plants are expanding and opening all over the world. If the vinyl revival is a 'fad', it is an enduring fad. Partly it comes down to this. A generation or more of multi-billions of people were told that records were rubbish and turned their backs on them. Many who grew-up in a vinyl-less existence, having never seen a record player, were a little bit shocked to actually hear for themselves the shunned medium. Despite having the latest consumer audio format available, they liked what they heard from vinyl.
The vinyl revival has in a substantial fashion been stimulated by those who were never exposed to record playing. From families where even the parents had never been exposed to record playing. Vinyl always had a presence at the High End of audio. It took the interest of the younger generations to fully revive the middle and lower ends of the market. They haven't abandoned digital. They simply have adopted vinyl into their listening habits. Substantial sales of records by millions of buyers have awoken an industry that was all but dead and buried.
The vinyl revival has in a substantial fashion been stimulated by those who were never exposed to record playing. From families where even the parents had never been exposed to record playing. Vinyl always had a presence at the High End of audio. It took the interest of the younger generations to fully revive the middle and lower ends of the market. They haven't abandoned digital. They simply have adopted vinyl into their listening habits. Substantial sales of records by millions of buyers have awoken an industry that was all but dead and buried.
Lesterbest
Super Member
Altho I posted this thread, lotta people were & are glad to put snap, crackle, & pop in their rear view mirror, yours truly among them. However, I give the devil his due.
Most ventures are resurrecting old abandoned machines or facilities. However a European(?) group are remanufacturing, brand new, not refurbished built from scratch machines which utilise 21st Century CAD and microprocessor monitoring of the pressing process. They tracked down a surviving designer of the last best of the old vinyl presses and asked him to collaborate in a brand new clean sheet review of what would be desirable and useful with 21st century technology. This means that there is the possibility of the pressing numbers and quality of new vinyl to be substantially improved on both counts.
No. I don't have a link. Google is your friend.
No. I don't have a link. Google is your friend.
Lesterbest
Super Member
This is mkt driven. New mfgs equipment is needed if new vinyl is to command top dollar. Remastering simply rearranges the warts on old chestnuts to recreate a customer base.
As all industry is.
New equipment is needed due to increasing demand for vinyl. Numbers sold rise year upon year.
Many remasters are better than any prior pressings. Not in every instance, but there is a valuable market for a higher quality release of previously beloved recordings. Some of these remasters have been responsible for reassessment of ultimate vinyl capability. The current era is the Golden Age of Vinyl. From the media to the replay side. State Of The Art digital struggles to better State Of The Art vinyl replay. Vinyl replay can never take the top spot, but at its best would and does surprise even the most hard-bitten detractors.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...ilding-new-pressing-machines/article28507701/
Canadian company is building modern, newly-designed presses. As well, a German company is building new presses, similar to the presses of yesteryear.
Lots of old recordings are getting the benefit of re-engineering, when the original tapes are available. As well, a lot of new music is being created and released on vinyl, and a great deal of it is done via an all-analogue signal path.
Canadian company is building modern, newly-designed presses. As well, a German company is building new presses, similar to the presses of yesteryear.
I'm curious about to what it is you are referring when you talk about "snap, crackle & pop"? If you think that such noise is an inherent part of vinyl playback, then I suggest you need to step up your analogue game.
Lots of old recordings are getting the benefit of re-engineering, when the original tapes are available. As well, a lot of new music is being created and released on vinyl, and a great deal of it is done via an all-analogue signal path.
Interesting that this is occurring just as some of the biggest players in the digital industry are working double time to get everyone's music onto their servers and transform our listening habits into monthly subscriptions. There is a lot of money at stake over who owns and who will simply rent music, with lots of articles written about how digital is superior, even mp3, and always streaming will be the only way music will be heard very soon now. I predict even more propaganda being written to try to stop this growing movement of home ownership of music in vinyl form from going forward.
I'm a vinyl diehard but the vinyl 'revival', despite not even being close to peaking, will always remain a revival of a dead and buried format. The steering of the music-listening populace toward funneling ever increasing money into the pockets of corporations is merely a reflection/subset of what is taking place in every sphere of human activity. The 1% get more from the 99%.
Lesterbest
Super Member
I had to look at that for a couple of minutes before I realized that you wrote your post inside of theophile's redacted post.
Back to the 'snap, crackle & pop' fallacy. Repeating yourself does not make it less untrue. Ditto surface noise. 'Limited dynamic range'? Well there is that, when compared to the theoretical limits of CDs, but when compared to the real-world usage of brickwalling commercial CDs, with almost zero dynamic range, I'll take the actual in-use 'limited' dynamic range of my records, thank you.
If you rest on the basis of that peripatetic and anemic case, then I'll request a summary judgment and walk away the winner. If what you describe is your experience in vinyl playback, and is that upon which you base your case, then I contend you've never heard an analogue front end worthy of the time and effort. Mine is a long way from the best I've ever heard, and I get none of what you claim to be the norm. You want to be careful when you argue, that you avoid generalizations.
There are many members here who would stand with me. Our exceptions, if you wish to call them that, disprove your argument for universality. One would do, but there are many.
Last edited:
Even my freebie SL1401 with near entry level AT440MLb doesn't snap, crackle pop unless it is a dirty or abused record in which case I sometimes digitize it using software to reduce or eliminate it. I've been going through a lot of jazz on vinyl that was given to me and on a lot of it the SQ is some of the best I have listened to. It is almost like people in the recording industry as a whole cared about sound quality more in the vinyl heyday.
Lesterbest
Super Member
Analog listeners are so inured to the downsides, that they just listen thru it. Nobody changes their position, nor would I expect them to do so. The faults of vinyl are not audible in live venues.
Jazz is great for serious listening, less instruments, great dynamic ranges (trumpets and such). I've also been hearing so many things about that specific cart, and how it handles mildly damaged records. Have to get me one of those.
You remind me of a buddy of mine. He's genius-level intelligent, and dj'ed thru the heyday of vinyl. He HATES IT. I can understand, due to being a dj myself for many years.
However, when I cue up some amazing cut (Steely Dan's "Aja" or some such) and it sounds thick and lovely, he scoffs. Says all he needs to do to make something sound like "vinyl" is to add some noise, roll off the highs, and he's set.
Talk about being inured. That's a level of stubbornness I do not understand.
bjlefebvre
Super Member
I would suggest digital is no longer a replacement for vinyl. Digital is now a replacement for radio. Streaming has killed CD buying - if you want great, clean sound but don't want to deal with scratched CDs, shelf space issues and crap plastic jackets, streaming is the way to go. But for me at least, streaming is more for "put something on while cleaning the house/reading the paper/driving the car" kind of thing - like radio. If you want a great, special sound, vinyl is a good choice. More for relaxing with a beer, sharing a musical experience with a friend, settling down for a critical listening experience, etc. IT also gives you the chance to go to stores, dig through stacks, etc. Sound quality ranges - I've got crystal clear sounding vinyl as well as a few with snap, crackle and pop - but as I get more experience in what to look for, I've definitely gotten more ofr the former than the latter.
If folks in the market are building more machines from scratch, that means they say a payday for it. Which means the revival, if a fad, is going to be a multi-decade fad. Unless nuclear war or whatever.
If folks in the market are building more machines from scratch, that means they say a payday for it. Which means the revival, if a fad, is going to be a multi-decade fad. Unless nuclear war or whatever.
Djcoolray
Addicted Member
The Germans are making new modern pressing machines.....
I've never understood why they consider vinyl a fad because one way or another enthusiast have always been buying vinyl. Maybe not new vinyl from record stores, but online and from the Goodwill. So there has always been many price points to consider when buying vinyl. It's just cheaper these days, I remember when Issac Hays died, his Stax recording of "Hot Buttered Soul" was over a hundred bucks a pop if you could find one. It's just that people have finally come to their senses....
I've never understood why they consider vinyl a fad because one way or another enthusiast have always been buying vinyl. Maybe not new vinyl from record stores, but online and from the Goodwill. So there has always been many price points to consider when buying vinyl. It's just cheaper these days, I remember when Issac Hays died, his Stax recording of "Hot Buttered Soul" was over a hundred bucks a pop if you could find one. It's just that people have finally come to their senses....
Cutting Edge digital would convert even State Of The Art vinyl-replay digiphobes. Most, if not all of the processed nature of digital lies in the implementation. a few mavericks have exposed the flawed implementation of most digital chips. How digital has been delivered by even very sophisticated engineers, has compromised what could have been. With new insights, it is and will always remain the future of Cutting Edge audio.
Most critics of vinyl replay have never heard even half-way decent vinyl setups, let alone some of the better mid-priced excellence which is around today. The cutting edge of vinyl replay would have the vinylphobes peeing their pants in shock. Despite that, digital rules and will continue to rule.
Most critics of vinyl replay have never heard even half-way decent vinyl setups, let alone some of the better mid-priced excellence which is around today. The cutting edge of vinyl replay would have the vinylphobes peeing their pants in shock. Despite that, digital rules and will continue to rule.