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Why do records seem to age and wear so differently?

I really don't know the answer to this but I doubt every pressing plant uses the same vinyl. Today might have less choices, but back in the days their might have been many sources for the vinyl pellets to make into pucks, And the formula in the mix can change. We know that they had different formulas as I recall some of the records, RCA for one, advertising special additives to reduce static, And their are some really expensive pressings that use a special formula as the records were not even black. They use a chemical to keep the vinyl soft plasticsizers, perhaps some companies use less of the plasticsizers than other. If the vinyl looses the plasticsizers the vinyl becomes less soft and more brittle so it makes sense that the diamond would damage the record more easily.
 
I have a number of records that have hardly any play time and they have developed some noise, while most my others have not. In fact most my records have little play time, as I have many records and with how many records I have I don't often listen to the same record often.
 
Wow. Such a knowledge base in this group. I had no idea about all this stuff! Or that the oil crisis and recycling might have played into it. Yes, Columbia records--Dylan, Paul Simon, etc.--always seemed to sound and wear best of all. Thanks probably to your mom, Wolfie62! And so it seemed did Asylum and some Warners albums. At 13 years old, I remember thinking ABC records, at least the Jim Croce ones I played, lacked something right out of the plastic wrapper. But that could have been due to my cheap system.
 
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Moonwatcher said:
It mystifies me that while a Columbia recording of Leonard Bernstein conducting "On the Waterfront" and "West Side Story" in like 1961 sounds terrific, despite being played hundreds of times in all kinds of unthinkable circumstances (possibly even on a child's Mickey Mouse record player!), Keith Jarrett's ECM "Still Live" album (1986), purchased new and played only with high compliance styli, is chock full of pops and other noise after the second or third playing. Scratches seem to emerge from nowhere. I liked that album so much I bought another copy, and it too became almost unbearably noisy after just a few plays.

Washing it with recommended techniques--a drop of Dawn or alcohol and distilled water--yielded no improvement.

Why do some albums seem almost ageless--e.g., Joni Mitchell's "Blue" (Reprise, 1971), Dave Brubeck's "Anything Goes" (Columbia, 1966), "Jesus Christ Superstar" (Decca, 1970)--sounding much as they did decades ago, while others sound awful almost immediately? The Jarrett album was supposedly "audiophile"!
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I notice different quality of records but don't find any degrading quicker than others. I have thousands of records some since I was a kid and I am 48 now. D9nt see real differences in wear.
Chris
 
Doug G. said:
It is very doubtful that the major record labels used recycled vinyl on first issue, top catalog records, even during the oil crisis. I never saw any with the infamous "bits of label paper sticking out from the vinyl". I believe this has been a myth for many years. Recycled vinyl on cut-rate or reissues, maybe but, not on first quality product.

Doug
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Sorry, they did use recycled vinyl on first issue, top new records and back catalogue. There was an oil crisis, and vinyl was getting scarcer and harder to find to press records with. Reality. And increasing demand for new records to boot. In the UK, EMI had to prune their 4,500 item back catalogue down to 1,200 in print titles. And their new pressing plant they built in Hayes, Middlesex still couldn't keep up with demand. And had to be expanded further. And even UK and German records got thinner and lighter weight than they once did.
 
Some records with really soft surfaces and lots of quiet passages got noisy quicker and wore faster than other records did. ECM and Windham Hill were prone to this. Also, a lot of the recycled, reground oil crisis records got noisy faster under heavy playings. Older early 1960's RCA, Columbia, and Capitol wore longer than the later ones did, and were pressed with pure vinyl, and plated and pressed more carefully (and fewer new records got sold then, and pressings got more time to heat and cool in terms of cycle time with their full priced lines. Quality control also was better and more records got thorough inspection.
 
KentTeffeteller said:
Sorry, they did use recycled vinyl on first issue, top new records and back catalogue. There was an oil crisis, and vinyl was getting scarcer and harder to find to press records with. Reality. And increasing demand for new records to boot. In the UK, EMI had to prune their 4,500 item back catalogue down to 1,200 in print titles. And their new pressing plant they built in Hayes, Middlesex still couldn't keep up with demand. And had to be expanded further. And even UK and German records got thinner and lighter weight than they once did.
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Yep. Can't tell you how many old records from the 70s there are that were noisy pressings from day one. If anyone is doubtful about this, start shopping for NOS 70s vinyl, especially non-classical titles. Harder to find but it's out there. Even after a thorough RCM cleaning some of these records will be noisy out of the shrink. Old records with other pressing defects are also much more common than people think. Lots of people have rose-colored glasses or overly optimistic audio memory when it comes to this stuff. Odds are they were simply conditioned to accept a certain amount of noise, just like I was with cassettes when I was younger.
 
Ken Boyd said:
I really don't know the answer to this but I doubt every pressing plant uses the same vinyl. Today might have less choices, but back in the days their might have been many sources for the vinyl pellets to make into pucks, And the formula in the mix can change. We know that they had different formulas as I recall some of the records, RCA for one, advertising special additives to reduce static, And their are some really expensive pressings that use a special formula as the records were not even black. They use a chemical to keep the vinyl soft plasticsizers, perhaps some companies use less of the plasticsizers than other. If the vinyl looses the plasticsizers the vinyl becomes less soft and more brittle so it makes sense that the diamond would damage the record more easily.
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Even with very few sources for pellets these days, not all plants use the same grade of pellet, and some plants today still use a certain amount of regrind in the mix. One newer plant I know of brags about how much edge trim and defective pressings they recycle back into the next pressing run. Of course they have problems with surface noise.
 
KentTeffeteller said:
... Quality control also was better and more records got thorough inspection.
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And quality control also extended to the retail environment. Where I am, the consumer would be given a replacement for any defective records by the retailer, and the returned record returned to the store stock to be sold. There was always the chance that when buying a new record you were getting one that had been returned, after being played on goodness knows what type of player.
 
I bought quite a few records in the 70s with visible paper in the grooves. What was normal in the 50s into the 60s, when records were expensive prestige items, and vinyl was cheap, isn't relevant to the 70s when record sales were massive and vinyl scarce. Even those records without paper scraps in them often were warped, because of the pressure to produce records faster and faster, taking them out of the presses even before they were fully cooled.
Add to this that records bought through record clubs, including Columbia's, were generally thought to be of lower quality than those bought in stores, not surprising given that they were less expensive.
Having said that, it is also true that record companies were trying to lower their costs even in the early 60s, as exemplified by DynaGroove, which clearly was, at least in part, an attempt to cut back on vinyl costs. Leaving aside whether tailoring frequency response to make cheap record playing systems sound good is actually a good idea, what possible reason is there for making a record thin enough to be rolled up without breaking other than saving on raw materials?
 
Nat, DynaFlex was the means to cut vinyl costs. DynaGroove was intended to improve the quality of playback on budget phonographs. Big issues were, it did not, and it made sound quality horrible for those who owned quality playback equipment owned by audiophiles and music lovers (who also tend to be the people who buy more records than most). RCA kept the name but by 1964 had quietly done away with DynaGroove's more severe processing.
 
Was that the thing where it had some sort of inverse noise built-in to the recording with the idea that the noise they put in plus the noise from the crappy player would somehow cancel out?
 
I don't remember inverse noise (and don't think it is even a possible thing) but certainly it was a terrible idea to make records that sounded more and more crappy the better your system was. Even the staunchest objectivist might be glad for J Gordon Holt's crusade against Dynagroove.
Kent - certainly they were trying to lower their costs. I was poking fun at the attempt to sell cheapness as a feature because you could roll your record up - who wants to do that?
 
Dynagroove - Wikipedia
...The intent [of Dynagroove] was to boost bass on quiet passages, and reduce the high-frequency tracing burdens (distortion) for the less-compliant, "ball" or spherical-tipped playback cartridges then in use. With boosted bass, tracing demands could be reduced in part by reduced recording levels, sometimes supplemented by peak compression. This added top-end margin permitted selective pre-emphasis of some passages for greater perceived (psychological) brilliance of the recording as a whole...

...[founder of Stereophile] Holt... slammed Dynagroove as introducing "pre-distortion" into the mastering process, making the records sound worse if they were played on high-quality phono systems.
Holt was technically correct, as the Dynagroove process used tracing compensation, which pre-distorted the record groove to cancel out the distortion created by playback with a conical-shaped phonograph stylus, which could not track the record groove accurately in the high frequencies, especially in the inner grooves of an LP. The process worked well with playback via a conical stylus, typical of most phonograph cartridges prior to about 1964. However, if one played a Dynagroove record with an elliptical-shaped stylus, this pre-distortion became audible. As the decade of the 1960s progressed, high quality playback cartridges increasingly used elliptical styli. This development made tracing compensation obsolete by about 1970, and RCA quietly stopped using the technique.
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