Vinyl Record Pressing Plants Struggle To Keep Up With Demand

An anonymous reader writes The WSJ reports that the revival of vinyl records, a several-year trend that many figured was a passing fad, has accelerated during 2014 with an astounding 49 percent sales increase over 2013 (line chart here). Some listeners think that vinyl reproduces sound better than digital, and some youngsters like the social experience of gathering around a turntable. The records are pressed at a handful of decades-old, labor-intensive factories that can't keep up with the demand; but since the increased sales still represent only about 2 percent of US music sales, there hasn't been a rush of capital investment to open new plants. Raw vinyl must now be imported to America from countries such as Thailand, since the last US supplier closed shop years ago. Meanwhile, an industry pro offers his take on the endless debate of audio differences between analog records and digital formats; it turns out there were reasons for limiting playing time on each side back in the day, apart from bands not having enough decent material.

Comments

Re:Not really missing vinyl

[marcello_dl]

The difference in the steps, AKA quantization noise, is minimal since smoothing is applied. But the DA conversion vs. the groove picked up magnetically is possibly the culprit, together with different compression, while noise and different EQ response are less significant factors (simply adding some vinyl noise and EQ profile to digital does not make it sound like vinyl).
Possibly, the less linear analog chain is somehow more pleasing for the ear.

Then there is the issue of stereo encoding on the single groove, which limits the source material in ways which might actually be good for listening (impossible to have big phase differences in the bass range or the record skips).

I would still not classify vinyl as better than digital, it's just different.
Hipsters should anyway concentrate on more esoteric stuff, like hi end analog tape, or analog satellite HD transmissions (still unrivalled IMHO)