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."

Comments

Market

[Nevermore-Spoon]

There doesn't have to be a huge market to support a business when there isn't much competition.

The Demand for vinyl from the DJ industry (techno, trip hop, rap, and the like) shouldn't be slowing down too much, Especially with new prime time hits buy groups like the Gorillias (Produced by Dan the Automator).

Obviously doesn't reflect the UK market...

[dan dan the dna man]

"Vinyl sales are also on the increase, thanks to exposure in films like High Fidelity and their popularity with dance music fans. Both single and album sales have increased in the past year. The vinyl market is now estimated to be worth £28.1m after growing 17 per cent."

From here

All my friends are DJ's. I see a lot of vinyl...

final scratch

[jrs 1]

they're 'spinning' anything from mp3s to cds with final scratch.

Re:final scratch

[cscx]

Actually recent CD decks give you extremely precise control. You mention time. My Pioneer cd player allows me to start within 0.01 ms, plus, speed the cd up/down +/- 100% while keeping the pitch locked. A Technics SL1200 can't do that.

The only reason that vinyl is still alive is because most dance/underground/techno is released on vinyl FIRST. That's why.

MPAA should take notice...

[tinrobot]

I'm still wondering why the MPAA doesn't just go back to vinyl for everything. Much harder to rip an LP than a CD. They could bill it as the latest new technology. I mean most folks under 25 haven't even seen an LP...

I'm glad Vinyl is making a comeback.

[cioxx]

All thanks to the portable adaptation recently.

I remember vinyl

[wiredog]

Cleaning the LP before you played it, to get every bit of dust off of it. Spending $300 (so years ago) on a direct drive turntable+needle to get good sound. Hanging the turntable from the ceiling from chains and springs, so you and your friends could dance without making the needle skip.

Nowadays you just stick a CD into a $50 player sitting on the table and get just as good a sound, and you don't have to worry about dust nearly as much.

I don't miss LPs.

I do miss the cover art, though. Cover art is why I still have about 50 of them.

Re:I remember vinyl

[Reality Master 101]

Hanging the turntable from the ceiling from chains and springs, so you and your friends could dance without making the needle skip.

Hey, nothing that a 500 pound piece of marble can't fix. :)

Re:I remember vinyl

[stratjakt]

>> Cleaning the LP before you played it

Thats a paddlin

>> Spending $300 (so years ago) on a direct drive turntable+needle

Thats a paddlin

>> Hanging the turntable from the ceiling from chains and springs

Thats a paddlin

>> stick a CD into a $50 player sitting on the table

You better believe thats a paddlin

Re:I remember vinyl

[aderusha]

i clearly came too late to suggest this to you, but there's plenty of ways of making your turntables not skip. mass is your friend. my fav is to bring 2 large empty plastic trays, fill them with sand, stack a couple cinder blocks in each tray full of sand, and lay a table surface across the top. you can dance yourself silly on stage with this setup and it won't miss a beat...

Vinyl market is not dying

[C0CT3AU]

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.

How fitting...

[da3dAlus]

For today's FoxTrot

When all else fails...

[Malcolm MacArthur]

you'll still be able to cut your own vinyl. A snip at only $10,000 and $7 a blank :)

Re:Last???

[Britissippi]

Well, I live with a couple of DJ's, and while vinyl still ha a huge hold on the dance music industry in particular, its fading due to the accessability, drop in price and general features of such decks as the Pioneer CDJ-1000. And it s been a while since I've seen a set decks without even a low end dual CD player - something such as the Numark CDN25. Makes CD-DJ'ing accessible for even the bedroom DJ's.

Vinyl still has a massive hold on the DJ industry, but it's slipping... Just my 0.02.

Elvis you say...

[elbowdonkey]

'Elvis has been good to us. I can't complain.'

I have a hard time believing that, seeing as he's been working at the 7-11 on the corner of my neighborhood for the last 6 years. The most good he's ever done for me is push the button on the QuickPicks machine, winning me $5.00.

Re:DJs

[Torgo's Pizza]

You are sadly mistaken. The technology to allow mixing and fading through software has been around for years. For that matter, you can scratch and mix CDs to your hearts content and have it sound pretty good. You can find beatmixing plugins to just about any MP3 player.

The difference is the interface. The tactile involvement of vinyl is the biggest key. It's just not the same scratching with a mouse on a screen. There's just something that feels right and easy with two turntables and a crossfader in front of you. There has been progress with some of the newer simulated turntables that plug into a USB port of a computer, but it still doesn't come close to what is needed to spin at a professional level.

It's just a matter of time before hardware designers come up with a proper interface to allow the flexibility and style required for a DJ. Until then, Technics turntables and vinyl record producers still have a place in the world.

Re:Vinyl writers?

[cscx]

So hard, that such a device has existed for at least a year now! :)

PRESS RELEASE! HOLY COW! hi-tech!

[herrd0kt0r]

NASHVILLE, TN (Reuters) - With the expansion of the vinyl industry, executives are looking towards technology to further their cause.

It has been a long time since music aficionados flocked to the record stores for vinyl records. With the advent of digital media such as CDs, CD-Rs, and the internet, it is possible to get the music you want quickly and easily, without having to leave your home. Furthermore, fans can make their own mixed compilations of their favorite music.

The vinyl industry here in Nashville is trying to capture that magic. Engineers are hard at work on the LP-R, and the LP-R drive. LP-R stands for Long Play Recorder, and is a throwback to the lingo vinyl enthusiasts used.

"We were gonna try for 7"-R, but saying 'seven-inch-arrr' just wasn't catchy enough," Buckaroo Banzai said. "Instead, we're going for the behemoth of vinyl, the LP!"

Here at the test labs of the Hong Kong Cavaliers, the press was introduced to the world's first LP-R drive. Fitting in the 5.25" bay of a personal computer, and expanding to a full-sized drive at the touch of a button, the LP-R drive can take blank LP-R media and burn LPs on the fly!

"We've only got it recording at 2x speed right now, but pretty soon we're gonna introduce the same technology we used to make splat-proof watermelons, and up the burn rates to 52x," one engineer stated.

The industry is buzzing with talk of LP-RW drives, and even a portable unit codenamed "the iLPod." Fan reaction has been phenomenal, with one fan exlaiming: "Holy CRAP! i've been waiting for this for YEARS! vinyl sounds so warm and smooth, and i can't WAIT to burn all my mp3s onto LP-Rs! Hell, even 32kbps mp3s sound MAGICAL!"

Another fan bared her breasts in support of the Hong Kong Cavaliers.

Re:Last???

[glesga_kiss]

Actually, few DJs use records unless it's just for show

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... ;-)

Breakage in the production line

[dpilot]

I wonder how much breakage they have in the production line for vinyl records.

After all, the RIAA subtracts an 11% 'laquer breakage' allowance from artists' royalties. They don't do laquer any more, but I wonder what the breakage is for vinyl, or even for CDs.

I know, pointless barb, but I'd like to see a lawyer go after this one. No doubt the padding would appear somewhere else.

analog

[farnsworth]

Reasons that analog is better than digital:

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.

Re:analog

[sunspot42]

Why do uninformed ramblings keep getting moderated as "Insightful" here at Slashdot?

First, farnsworth's post asserts that some people can hear a 25kHz pitch. Yeah. Right. Maybe if they're six months old. The reality is, there are probably a handful of adults on the planet who can hear a 25kHz pitch, and I doubt any of them live in the noise-drenched environments of western civilization. Most adults are lucky if they can still hear anything out past 18kHz, especially if they listened to a lot of loud music at any point in their lives.

It's also vital to note that even then, the sensitivity of our ears to sound at high frequencies is extraordinarily low. In other words, a sound at 20kHz would have to be phenomenally loud for us to hear it compared to a sound at, say, 5,000Hz, where our hearing is much, much more sensitive. Few musical instruments produce loud sounds at or above 20kHz as a result - at least, not intentionally. There could be harmonics at frequencies in excess of 20kHz (for example, perhaps cymbals produce such harmonics), but by their very nature, those harmonics are going to be soft in relation to the rest of the signal - and again, most adults don't stand a snowball's chance of hearing them anyhow, even if they were deafeningly loud, which they're not.

Worse, vinyl doesn't stand a snowball's chance of reproducing such ultrasonic information with any kind of accuracy. The format was never designed to record high frequency signals - engineers have enough trouble squeezing 60Hz - 15,000Hz out of them reliably, let alone with any kind of fidelity when compared to CDs. I have no doubt that LPs produce a fair amount of ultrasonic signal, but again, most of that is going to be unintentional - clicks and pops, surface noise, electrical noise, and harmonic distortion generated by the stylus and cartridge as they vibrate. Any "real" ultrasonic information on the record would be swamped by all the fake ultrasonic garbage. You also seem to be assuming that the master tapes contain such ultrasonic information. They don't. The usable frequency response of even the best analog tape decks used historically for studio recording typically topped out at around 25kHz. Beyond that the levels fall off so rapidly as to be useless, and even there, the levels are going to be pretty low. And this assumes the deck doesn't employ filtering beyond around 22kHz, to eliminate unwanted ultrasonic noise that can impinge on the bias signal. Many do. Older or lower-quality equipment (and/or tapes) won't even make it to 25kHz (except for all the hiss!).

Even if the decks can record 25kHz sounds, in order to get them onto the tape the microphones would have to be capable of picking up such ultrasonics to begin with, which of course they can't. 99.9% of the microphones used over the past 60 years to record audio in the studio or concert hall are lucky to have a usable frequency response out to as far as 20kHz - most begin a pretty severe rolloff at 15kHz, and by 20kHz only a handful manage to maintain a flat response, with performance dropping off rapidly thereafter. Anything they're picking up beyond 20kHz is going to be so faint as to be inaudible once it passes through the gauntlet of noise and distortion inherent in the vinyl format. Here's a sales listing for the legendary Neumann U87, a mic that's been the studio standard for vocal recording since the '60s - the Beatles used this mic, and singers & engineers continue to choose this mic over all others even to this day. Its frequency response tops out at 20kHz. So much for recording ultrasonics. And the instrument probably most likely to produce ultrasonics - the cymbal - is typically recorded using a mic like the Shure SM57, which has been a standard for recording percussion since its introduction over thirty years ago. Its frequency response tops out at a measly 15kHz. What ultrasonics?

Of course, it's all utterly inconsequential compared to the trashing of the original waveform caused by all of vinyl's other numerous limitations, including the damage done in the crucial 50Hz-5,000Hz range where human hearing and perception is so much more sensitive, and accuracy therefore so much more important. You're lucky if you can get a flat 50Hz - 15,000kHz response out of vinyl. Most signal above and below those limits is likely to be noise (rumble and hum below 50-60Hz, clicks, pops, hiss and harmonics above 15,000kHz).

Next, you make the ludicrous assertion that, "analog music naturally compresses from the quietest to the loudest portions in much the same way the human ears work." Eh? Human hearing most certainly does not "compress" the audio signal, and even if it did, what could possibly be "natural" about adding an external layer of compression to the signal? The only time our hearing "compresses" is when a really loud sound (think thunderclap) happens nearby - IIRC, the hammer will be temporarily pulled away from the eardrum, but that's a reflex that lasts only moments. With a dynamic range well in excess of 90dB (far greater than vinyl's pathetic 60dB under absolutely ideal circumstances), CD's and DVD's don't need to utilize any compression, unless they're recording the sound of a jet taking off six feet away or something. Nor do vinyl records magically compress the natural dynamic range of recorded music into their paltry 60dB of dynamic range (more like 40dB for virtually all consumer vinyl) - that compression is done by mastering engineers. You could perform the same signal-degrading compression before mastering the sound to a CD if you wanted, but what kind of an idiot would do such a thing?

Finally, this statement of yours the kicker: " 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." No processing, eh? Apart from the already mentioned compression, of course, to get the natural dynamic range of music shoehorned into vinyl's pathetic dynamic range. And then there's the RIAA equilization, required before one can even attempt to squeeze high fidelity performance out of vinyl. Here's the standardized curve. Looks pretty processed to me. Bass frequencies are cut by almost 20dB at 20Hz (they have to, otherwise the needle would pop out of its groove trying to reproduce bass), while at 19kHz treble frequencies are boosted by almost 20dB in an attempt to drown out all the vinyl noise. Then it all has to be reversed on playback. That's some serious processing.

I suppose this would also be a good time to mention that, if you want to put more than about 10 minutes worth of material onto a single side of a vinyl LP, you're going to have to further compress (or eliminate) any loud, low bass. The grooves can't be made wide enough to handle it. And of course, de-equalizing that RIAA curve on playback is an imprecise science, leading to all sorts of frequency response irregularities and phase issues. Whoops!

Ah yes, the wonderful, "naturally" compressed, unprocessed sound of vinyl. To summarize:

* 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.)
* Rumbling caused by the turntable's motor and the friction of the stylus as it passes 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
* Phase irregularities caused by the RIAA equalization and the subsequent need for the preamp to de-equalize the signal
* Frequency response irregularities caused by the RIAA equalization / de-equalization process
* 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)
* 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
* Cartridge / tonearm misalignments, causing inaccurate stylus pickup, accelerated record wear, or both.
30dB of stereo separation, vs. CD's 70+dB of separation
* 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
* In practice, roughly 40dB of usable dynamic range across the majority of the spectrum
* A relatively flat frequency response from only around 60 Hz to 15 kHz, with severe rolloffs beyond those limits
* 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
* Pitch and frequency errors caused by the speed difference between the cutter used to produce the wax master and your turntable
* The tendency of the media itself to wear out as its played, and to be damaged during routine handling with audible results

You're clearly uninformed from a technical standpoint. If you prefer the "sound" of vinyl, that's your business. But don't try to cloak your preference in technobabble you obviously don't begin to understand

Vinyl Shortage in Europe + Digital Mixing

[szyzyg]

BEcause the DJ scene is so important in europe there has recently been shortages in vinyl manufacturing capacity. I hear a lot of UK companies are having to outsource their vinyl pressing to the Czech Republic to make their release dates.

Personally I'm a vinyl junkie, I spend over $5000 a year on hard to find vinyl, and I DJ a few weekly events. Of course all this is funded by my day job as a software developer (I was working at napster until recently). I wrote a digital mixing application for linux about 6 years ago, back then mp3 wtill wasn't really standardised so I used Raw CDR audio, or Mpeg Layer 2. The UI on any digital mixing application sucks compared to vinyl, Final scratch is close but has too many shortcomings (where's the vorbis support?).

The other somewhat dubious advantage of vinyl is that the music industry's lawyers see to be more tolerant of short run vinyl bootlegs of tracks which could never get released legally - Usually mashups of Britney Spears vs Nirvana over a 4 to the floor beat. If that was put out as an mp3 or CD they'd probably be more aggressive, but vinly tends to only go to DJ's who can make a decent argument about promoting music. I'm not saying litigation is uneard of, but It's very rare.

Underground Dance

[Tokerat]

I DJ a bit, techno/house/jungle/hardcore etc. and even with all this hype about CD turntables and "iPod DJs", vinyl is the choice medium. Most promos and singles are released on 12" long before CDs, and definately long before they are included on any album.

Besides, digital cannot reproduce the rich fullness of broken-in vinyl basslines, especially at high volume. Needle wear, and even the initial recording process produce extra curves in the recorded sounds, whereas digital picks up every single square corner of the wave accurately and completely, which gives it that "clear but cold" sound which so many audiophiles complain of. Vinyl adds some smoothing to the process. Worn midrange-highend also adds a bit of character (not too worn, mind you, there is definately a cutoff point), as the slight distortion not only gives the impression that the sound is louder than it really is but helps clarify it amongst the heavy low-end.

That, and it's just not as much fun to spin a plastic controller wheel to align beats as it is to actually spin the platter with your hand. Vinyl is a truely interactive medium. A CD turntable is just that: a CD player with advanced fast forward/rewind, but a turntable is like dragging a bow across a string, you are actually the generating vibrations, not some DAC in a black box.

It is for these reasons I believe vinyl will never die. However, I don't believe it will ever be anything but a niche market.