Slashdot Mirror
Inside One Of the Last Vinyl Record Manufacturers
jonerik writes "The Nashville Tennessean has this look at Nashville's United Record Pressing, one of the last vinyl record manufacturers left in the U.S. Although LPs and 12" and 7" singles make up a tiny portion of the American music market at this point, the article reports that United's business is booming, thanks to consolidation within Nashville's record pressing business community, steady orders for the jukebox market, techno, dance, reggae, and rap orders, and this year's 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. 'Elvis has been good to us. I can't complain,' says Cris Ashworth, the company's owner."
This makes perfect sense that their business is booming. There's still no easy way for DJs to spin CDs on the fly. With a vinyl record, adjusting tempo is easily achieved by changing the speed of the turntable. And who could forget the popular "scratch." With a CD all you can do is fade the volume when it's time for the next song.
they're 'spinning' anything from mp3s to cds with final scratch.
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
In United States that may be true. In Europe, the situation is not the same. Electronic music and DJ culture have strong influence on producers of vinyls. Factory in Czech republic, in the city Lodenice is known for one of the best qualities available on the market. Even Madonna's SPs made from coloured vinyl were produced there.
you'll still be able to cut your own vinyl. A snip at only $10,000 and $7 a blank :)
Not technically difficult, though a "Blank" LP would need to be made of softer stuff that a normal pressed LP, as you need to carve the grooves in them. Because of this, they probbably wouldn't last very long, especially up to the kind of abuse a DJ would put on them.
Bork Bork Bork!!
Vinyl still has a massive hold on the DJ industry, but it's slipping... Just my 0.02.
Meow meow meow meow, meow meow meow meow...
It exists, it's called acetate. Like the other poster said, it's softer than vinyl, so it degrades after being played repeatedly. Acetate recorders (or whatever the technical term is) don't come cheap either, I was looking into them briefly, the price scared me off in a hurry.
So hard, that such a device has existed for at least a year now! :)
There's still a lot of punk bands making vinyl. I like how it looks and how it sounds. Go into an independent record store and you just might find a punk vinyl section with some new stuff, even major punk bands like NOFX still put out vinyl releases. My band Black Monday just did a run of 1000 7 inch vinyl singles (in red vinyl!) on a label named split seven records. Check out the site.
Hint: use the tape recorder output connections on your amp (consult you manual or figure it out). Already set at the correct levels. Few (good) turntables can be plugged direct into your soundcard. RIAA equalisation and pre-amplification are required for the best sound.
Yeah, I did find it quite amusing that the article had to explain what an LP was :)
Although I have made proper vinyl here in the US (through United, Rainbow, and a couple other mom n'pops now extinct) for releases on my indie record label (shameless plug - http://deathbombarc.com) I have been much more fond of making LATHE CUTS. A fellow named Peter King in New Zealand cooks up his own version of vinyl (actualy some type of plastic he makes which is clear!) and then cuts each record by hand. It would be impossible to make thousands of records this way, but it a miracle for small bands that can only sell may 30-100 copies of their album/single while on brief weekend tours and whatnot. Besides this, Peter can shape the records in anyway you like. I made a lathe cut through Peter that was shaped like an X!!! If you are interested, his only website is a fan site, but it does have pretty accurate rate info. Fax or call him for a quote though, as the fellow doesn't have an internet connection... http://home.attbi.com/~cassetto/kingcontact.html
we're just marketing. marketing our bad attitudes.
You're obviously not getting out to the dance/Hip Hop clubs then...
For years the family business has been a DJ/Karaokee business
Ah, wedding singer type DJs. They don't even mix the music. They cue up one track after another. Winamp can do that. I know people who would kill you for calling that DJing.
With high end CD decks, it's possible to do anything that can be done with a record, and in fact it can be done better.
Try telling that to Grand Master Flash. I'm sure anyone who has seen him live would agree that you can't do what he does on a CD deck.
simply rip the music you paid for the proper way, assuming you're doing it legal.
Most professional DJs (e.g. those with a club residency) don't buy the music. They get given it for free on white labels. It's a great promotion for the song, so I doubt the record industry is going to come after you for promoting their material... ;-)
Since cassettes came out, Vinyl has always had somewhat of a cult following. From audiophiles who liked the 'warm' vinyl sound better than hissy cassettes to the punk-rock scene, and of course nowadays, hip hop and techno dj's..
Sure, there's new digital equipment that lets you mix and even scratch .. but nothing better than putting your finger over the record, adjusting the pitch control and mixing a perfect beat.. As far as scratching goes, you can see the influence this has made in a lot of today's music. From rock bands with dj's (limp bizkit, incubus, linkin' park) to even jazz artists (courtney pine, herbie hancock). The turntable has turned into an instrument with the help of turntablists like q-bert, dj shadow, kid koala, etc.
As far as record pressers go, there's plenty of places out there cutting vinyl for hip hop/club/and techno producers. There's also a lot of independent places that do it for a lot less..
Recently, Vestax introduced a Vinyl cutter for under $10,000 (about 8400).
Overall, I'm glad vinyl is still around after all these years. I doubt it will go away anytime soon.
Frequency Response: digital music *must* filter out everything above half its sample rate (plus or minus a few hertz for data). Conventional CD's filter out everything above 22kHz. some people can hear a 25kHz pitch, some cannot. but nearly everyone can hear the interaction of 24 and 25, which can manifest itself within their hearing range. recording techniques improve this situation, and higher sampling rates are coming, but this is still a fundamental limit.
Dynamic Range: analog music naturally compresses from the quietest to the loudest portions in much the same way the human ears work. when you go to a really loud concert, does the sound clip? no, your ears compress the sound. digital music can emulate this with algorithms, and some of them are quite good, but again, all decent analog equipment does this as a side effect, and no digital recorder will ever get this excatly right (although digital recordings can best the 96dB range that good tape machines can offer, does anyone listen to music in a *totally silent* environment?)
Simplicity: no processing is required to record/play analog. the medium is a physical imprint of the sound waves in the room as a function of time. all you need is a magnet and some energy.
Of course, analog media is not as convienient as modern digital media, but since I have a home with the space in my home, I will keep listening to my big, bulky, dusty records because they just sound better.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Digital music has exactly zero distortion. I have tried this, output a sine wave and link it back to the input on a Sound Blaster. Doing a FFT on the result shows no harmonics at all above the noise floor, which is 100+ dB down.
You are right in that tube amplifiers do introduce a coloration, but this is mostly in frequency response. I have recently done a search, both over the web and in my dead tree files, for tube circuits to build. All of the schematics I could find, from the simplest single-tube amplifiers to a 10 tube per channel RIAA phono pre-amp, have worse performance, from the frequency flatness point of view, than very simple solid-state amplifiers. This is because tube amplifiers have very high output impedances and they interact with the following stage input capacitance.
About the even-odd harmonics, the worse culprit in solid-state is the output AB-class stage. If the bias level on the output stage is not adjusted exactly to spec (in most amps it isn't adjustable at all), third order harmonics can be very high. Of course, some people debate this point endlessly, but I'm not certain that second-order harmonics are intrinsically more pleasing to the ear than third order. I think it's more the absolute level of the distortion that matters.
It's not the last place pressing. I get all my records pressed at Erika. There are others, too, such as Alberti in California, Europadisk in New York, Rainbo in Berkely.
For a list of a bunch of record pressing plants, check out indiecentre.com.
And here we have yet another Slashdotter doesn't know what they're talking about. They seem to come crawling out of the woodwork every time the "vinyl is better" boobs start slinging their BS around.
> FACT: most people can hear up to at least 30 kHz.
FACT: Nobody can hear up to 30kHz. People *might* be able to hear harmonics of sounds above 20kHz, provided those harmonics fall within the range of human hearing, but they won't be able to hear the actual pure tones themselves (as you yourself indicated). Since any medium - such as CD - that records sounds up to 20kHz will also record the harmonics of tones above 20kHz, provided they fall within the range of human hearing, what exactly would we be missing? And apart from percussion or certain electronic instruments, what instruments are out there generating gobs of ultrasonic information, anyhow? And what microphones are capable of picking up such information? And what analog tape decks are capable of recording such information? And - here's the kicker - how many speakers are capable of reproducing such information? The answer to each of these questions is, vanishing few. Many tape decks filter out or fail to record tones much beyond 20kHz. Few microphones can pick them up to begin with. And most speakers are lucky to maintain a flat frequency response even out to 20kHz, let alone to 25 or 30kHz. You'd practically have to live in a laboratory to record and then accurately reproduce ultrasonic information. A 50-year-old format like the vinyl LP certainly isn't ideal for such a thing, given its noise, distortion, dynamic range, separation and phase issues. Only the high quality analog tape decks found in professional studios or digital recording formats utilizing higher sampling rates than 44.1kHz could hope to accurately record and reproduce such audio.
>Yes, such transients are reproduced on vinyl.
Maybe on audiophile grade, quarter-speed mastered vinyl played back on a $5,000 turntable equipped with a $1,500 cartridge run through a $2,000 preamp they are. Poorly. With oceans of harmonic distortion and waves of crashing high-frequency noise. Assuming, of course, the original performance was picked up using microphones and mic preamps capable of dealing with much of anything beyond 20kHz (such mics cost in excess of $2,000, and the preamps aren't much cheaper) onto tape decks capable of recording much of anything beyond 20-25kHz. None of which is likely, outside of studiously recorded audiophile sessions.
>Your final star'ed points are just dumb. You don't give any references,
>because of course you don't have any.
You must really enjoy looking like a boob. Hey, if you want to play the (in your case, irrelevant and apparently unavailable on the web) references game, I'd love to! (Actually, one "reference" you posted is available on the web - marketing material from a stereo company plugging their overpriced audiophile gear. You should have provided us with a link to the guy selling $10,000 tinfoil hats to protect us from government mind control rays, too.) Here are my bullet points, plus any references I could dig up (though much of this should be obvious to anyone with a brain in their skull):
* Loud tics and pops caused by stray dust and wear, resulting in a *negative* signal to noise ratio - i.e. the noise can become louder than the music! (with N'Stynk, I suppose this would be a blessing in disguise . . . or simply redundant.)
Well, this one is obvious. Whenever a tick or pop is louder than the music (happens a lot with vinyl, and even with tape during quiet passages), the signal to noise ratio goes negative.
* Rumbling caused by the turntable's motor and the friction of the stylus as it passes through the groove
Another obvious point. Many turntables even include rumble measurements in their specifications, though that's for the platter only and doesn't take into account additional noise caused by the friction of the stylus dragging through the groove.
* Wow and flutter, caused by speed irregularities in the turntable's drive system and by any imperfections in the geometry of the disc.
Another spec that's included for most turntables and even analog tape decks. Hard to see how this one is, "just dumb", unless you're so ignorant you've never looked at the specs for a turntable or tape deck.
* Phase irregularities caused by the RIAA equalization and the subsequent need for the preamp to de-equalize the signal.
Another obvious point. Anytime you process the signal to emphasize or de-emphasize certain frequencies, you're going to introduce phase discrepancies. Here's a $2,000 preamp from Daniels Audio that attempts to compensate for the phase issues. Notice I say "attempts". Even a manufacturer of $2,000 stereo components won't claim to be able to eliminate such issues. And who knows what issues all that additional processing is going to introduce.
* Frequency response irregularities caused by the RIAA equalization / de-equalization process
Again, a no-brainer. If the frequency response curve used to produce the wax master doesn't precisely match the frequency response curve in your preamp (and it never will), certain frequencies are going to be emphasized upon playback while others will be de-emphasized. Here's a big page detailing the design issues faced by folks trying to build the RIAA de-equalization circuits for a preamp. Notice the difficulties he's having making the response curve come close to the RIAA ideal. Even by the end, he's off by more than a quarter dB at many frequencies, including some smack dab in the middle of the most sensitive range of human hearing.
* The inability to reproduce loud bass accurately (the cutter making the wax master would pop out of its groove if it tried to reproduce the kind of bass CDs can handle effortlessly)
For references, please see this, this, this, or this.
* The tendency for the turntable, platter and even the disc to function as microphones, picking up room reverberations and - particularly - the sound being produced by the speakers, smearing and distorting the audio in numerous ways
I should think this one would be obvious. Lots of turntable manufacturers sell heavy weights to sit on top of a record while it's playing. If you don't believe this is true, jump up and down next to your turntable while it's playing, or set it on top of a speaker pumping out a lot of bass. You'll get an "extreme" demonstration of the effect, but the truth is it's happening all the time.
* Cartridge / tonearm misalignments, causing inaccurate stylus pickup, accelerated record wear, or both.
Again, an obvious issue. Good luck getting it right!
* 30dB of stereo separation, vs. CD's 70+dB of separation
See this, or the specs for the cartridges themselves here. You'll be lucky to find a preamp that can come close to the 70-90dB of separation even a cheap CD player can provide, let alone a pickup.
* A theoretical maximum of 60dB of dynamic range for virgin vinyl of the highest quality (and only at certain frequencies - obviously, not in the low bass) vs. around 90dB of dynamic range from even the cheapest CD players, across the entire spectrum.
References to this abound. If you don't believe me, take it from an expert.
* In practice, roughly 40dB of usable dynamic range across the majority of the spectrum
See the reference above.
* A relatively flat frequency response from only around 60 Hz to 15 kHz, with severe rolloffs beyond those limits.
This one has been covered already.
* The need for mastering engineers to severely compress and re-equalize the signal in order to steer clear of the format's limitations relative to CD, which requires no such distortion-educing compensation.
Again, see the references above.
* Pitch and frequency errors caused by the speed difference between the cutter used to produce the wax master and your turntable.
That's another obvious fact to anyone but a blithering idiot.
* The tendency of the media itself to wear out as its played, and to be damaged during routine handling with audible results
Well, duh. On to dissect the remainder of your post:
>The reverse of most of what you say is true. E.g. your claim
>of 60dB dynamic range is nuts: the range is over 100 dB.
>You are confusing the noise floor of a high-hiss record with
>dynamic range--but you can hear 20 dB into that noise, and a
>good record need not have high hiss. Vinyl has poor bass???
>It's much better than CD. And so on.
Oh my. There doesn't seem to be anything left to dissect. I've already covered these points up above. Vinyl is *lucky* to hit 60dB of dynamic range with audiophile pressings played back on incredibly expensive equipment. No "confusion" with vinyl's truly outrageous noise floor is necessary. And the dynamic range decreases drastically as the length of the record increases - a problem digital formats don't suffer from. And as for vinyl's bass performance, I think half the links I posted up above note how crappy vinyl is at capturing loud, low bass.
Next time, you might want to learn something about a subject before you proceed to open your mouth and cram your foot down your throat.