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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."
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).
I have great faith in fools; My friends call it self-confidence. Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1845
From here
All my friends are DJ's. I see a lot of vinyl...
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
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...
All thanks to the portable adaptation recently.
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.
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For today's FoxTrot
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
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...
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... ;-)
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