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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.
I was born in the 1960s so I was brought up on vinyl, but I was bummed at all the hissing and pops and crackles even though I tried to take care of my records. The clarity of CDs was a revelation even though a certain warmth was sacrificed.
I won't ever miss the defects of vinyl, but today's common digital formats sacrifice far too much information, leaving the listener to "enjoy" the watery tones of overcompressed music.
Vinyl is the only consumer playback format we have that's fully analog and fully lossless
The article itself gives plenty of examples why vinyl isn't lossless, and it's easy to name a few more.
Hipsters.
Someone still makes buggy whips. If an infrastructure and supply line is established to fill the current market demand, that's where it ends. There's no growth here..
The fact is that given the same source content, high quality digital copies are by far higher quality, have better SN ratios and dynamic range than vinyl is capable of delivering, with a media that doesn't degrade the minute it's used.
It's not realistic to compare a highly compressed MP3 to vinyl. Compare a lossless audio file to vinyl and you'll find it to be significantly higher quality. Even if you don't believe the math.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Audio is just a crazy world of snake oil and placebo.
Really, the argument that's supposed to convince us is this?
> That warm vinyl sound: "I think this is what people like about it: it pins very closely to the way that human beings hear music organically," Gonsalves said. "It's very mid-range-y and very warm," a sound that flatters the fuzzy guitars of rock 'n' roll.
I'm sorry but I just don't buy it. There seems to be no obvious reason why you couldn't easily hack up a digital audio filter that makes stuff "sound like a vinyl". I'd even wager that it already exists?
Especially when you skip the compression and use FLACs. (But no, I'm not that kind of person who would claim to be able to distnguish 320kbps mp3 from a FLAC.)
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Some listeners think that vinyl reproduces sound better than digital
And some people buy Gold-plated Monster cables and Macs too. It just proves there's a sucker born every minute (at least).
some youngsters like the social experience of gathering around a turntable.
That's mainly because most youngsters' "social experience" has been limited to school (see "Lord of the Flies") and texting. Actually, y'know, MEETING UP with someone is a HUGE novelty these days. The turntable's just incidental.
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People are starting to draw back from the overwhelming complexity in all things.
E Proelio Veritas.
No need to spend $5000 on a DAC. The chips themselves are less than $5 a piece, and will get you 384 kHz, 32 bit stereo. Microelectronics has improved so much the last couple of decades, but if people are still willing to pay '70s prices for stuff, somebody will find a way to charge that amount.
Meanwhile, an industry pro WITH A VESTED INTEREST IN THE SUCCESS OF VINYL offers his take on the endless debate of audio differences between analog records and digital formats
There. Fixed that for you.
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THANK GOD!!!
To me , those "warmth" argument are really about psychological bias. Sound warmth is one of those term which are never really defined properly and means everything and nothing. The only really objective measure is amount of noise , and fidelity compared to the original signals. I have never met an analogue system (even a high range one) which objectively reproduced the sound as good as a digital HD one could. Not to mention you better replay your LP in vacuum , because no matter how careful you will to clean it, you will get snaps, pop cracks, dust, flutter, variation speed, etc...
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The best thing about an analog format is no digital rights management. You buy it, you own it. You will always be able to listen to it, no-one will be able to revoke your license.
Digital formats and DRM have made music a transient, throw-away experience.
With vinyl, the recording has history. The vinyl you buy in middle school will be still playable in middle age.
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I don't have a horse in either race, but I'm curious - Have any blind studies been done to determine if vinyl does indeed sound better? My audiophile father-in-law would tell you HD-CD sounds better than vinyl, but I don't have the ears to tell either way...
Yes. These are from my days of reading high-end hi-fi magazines that don't have the content online, so I don't have links, but one of the more definitive double blind studies proved that people who claimed they preferred the LP sound over CD (including both "golden ear" audiophiles and professional sound people) indeed were able to reliably identify and prefer the LP sound in controlled double blind experiments. But, when the same experiment compared with CD-R recorded from LP as source, they were not able to identify the difference at all. CD-R from LP as source was equally preferred over CD as LP.
This corresponds exactly with the science of the technical characteristics of the two technologies, signal theory and human hearing. The "warm, analogue" LP sound carried perfectly over to the CD-R, as it is distortion characteristics of LP playback that CD is perfectly able to replicate (Nyquist theorem).
HDCD is a different discussion. I was myself a HDCD supporter in my (luckily now behind me) audiophile days. But HDCD mainly sounded better because the mastering was better, not because of technical specs of the format. HDCD productions took greater care with quality of mastering, not at least avoiding the overuse of dynamic compression.
Ah, yes.... I rather vaguely remember a series of experiments I attended a couple of decades ago. My colleagues and I participated in several hours-long, herb-fueled, analysis sessions comparing cassette tape, CDs, and vinyl, with and without equalizers. We listened in sessions controlling for acoustic, heavy metal, synthesizer, etc.. I'm pretty sure the committee's conclusion was "put the money into the speakers". But I think we forgot to write it down anywhere.
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While "Hipsters" is the go-to answer to why vinyl records are all the rage, DJs are another part. Some songs are still pressed on 12" singles (most commonly EDM and hip-hop; frequently with instrumental versions as well), but the best selling vinyl pressing for quite some time now has been the Serato Timecode record. It allows DJs to use standard Technics 1200s (and newer models, like the Numark TTX and the Reloop 7000s) to still spin and scratch records, but without being limited by what's actually being pressed because it manipulates MP3 playback on a computer.
Amongst the reasons these records sell so well is because instead of having hundreds of records that get 1-2 plays a night, the same pair of records are played all night, so it's entirely realistic to go through a pair a month, depending on how much pressure is put on the needle. Serato is (or was-for-a-very-long-time depending on who's numbers you believe) the most popular DVS platform, with Traktor in second place, though it's more popular with DJs who use (MIDI) Controllers instead of vinyl. Serato and several other DJ software titles now support the vast number of controllers that have been released, so overall interest in DJing with timecode vinyl isn't quite as popular as it once was. Still, while Jack White’s Lazaretto sold over 75,000 copies this year, it pales in comparison to the number of club jocks who buy timecode records, in pairs, monthly.
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Having been around mastering engineers and lathes "back in the day", and during the change over from tape to digital, I can contribute a couple of points: 1 -tubes - for a long time lathes, and mastering consoles used tubes which naturally warm up sound. Tubes handle even harmonics differently from solid state. Mastering consoles also used stepped EQ's - that is, instead of a continuously variable resistor, they used a gang of military spec resistors on a rotary switch, and some mastering engineers swore the stepped mastering consoles sound better. 2 - LPs come compressed- way back it was discovered that the needle couldn't track lows and highs well - the needle would skip and bounce, so the RIAA came up with this compression / restoration scheme that rolls off the top and bottom during the cutting process, and restores it in the amplification process. That is why you LPs will sound thin if they are not plugged in to "phono in". That input has the RIAA curve circuitry built in, while the other inputs are "flat". With the development of laser beams in place of a needle, tracking is more accurate, but, because of the cutter. the RIAA curve is still needed. 3 - and one other thing and that is tape. Almost all LPs are made from recordings made on magnetic tape, and tape saturation will warm up a track. The signal alteration during the recording process - from microphone to console (desk) and through signal processors, to multi track tape machine to 2 track mix down, then over to the mastering lab to be mastered and made ready for the cutting lathe - a master cut onto acetate, then metal copies of that are made for the pressers, which use injection molded vinyl to create the finished product, is way different. Today, it's microphone into a digital recorder of sorts - Pro Tools, Cubase, even Garage Band, etc., then completely produced and mastered and outputted in digital. The only issue is file format degradation if the end product winds up as an MP3 or 4.
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CDs were mastered without too much level compression until roughly the advent of the Discman and other portable CD players. The cheap op amps used these players couldn't drive headphones at a volume that overcomes outdoor background noise. So labels started using level compression to master their albums hotter. Pushing everything up to full scale meant kick drums no longer had any punch to them. By the time of Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers and Ricky Martin's debut album, levels had become so hot that they were audibly clipping.
I always hate these kinds of discussions when there are too many engineers in the room. Of course, digital is better. You can prove it with Nyquist's theorem. In the long run, digital will win.
That said, there are numerous implicit signal-changing steps which tend to happen with analog equipment that people often find pleasing and which are not/haven't been sucessfully emulated in most digital audio equipment.
Take guitar amps. I've got a couple of decent Roland digital amps. They do an OK job of modelling a few different old tube amps. Do they sound like my friend's old blackface quad reverb? Oh god no. There is some magic going on there that the digital guys haven't figured out how to reproduce. Even vs. odd harmonics? Yeah I think we get that now, but there's more in there and we're not successfully modelling it. I can enumerate a lot of factors we're probably missing(power supply brownout at high volume, capacitive and inductive feedback loops, tube nonlinearities, transformer nonlinearities, temperature fluctuations, microphonic components... etc etc etc) but there are still more we haven't really considered yet.
That said, there are still people who prefer solid-state guitar and HiFi sound to analog colored sound. A lot of it is what you're used to. People hear different things, sometimes due to culture, sometimes due to physiology... it's complicated.
Back to vinyl records - they do have a nicer sound in many cases, clicks and pops aside. It's probably a result of the RIAA EQ and the physics of a needle riding over vinyl, but I don't really know. One thing I do think has value is the act of listening to a complete record. Not only are you appreciating the artists' complete work as they intended it, the ritual of listening to a record often entails setting aside time and space to solely enjoy that record. You can't compare listening to, say, Dark Side of the Moon, while lying on your couch in a dark room to listening to a few out-of-context songs on your headphones while riding a bus.
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It is well known that differences in audio quality between digital formats (CDs, MP3, FLACs, etc.) to Vinyl are due to different mastering for the respective media. HA has also set up a wiki page regarding misconceptions about Vinyl mastering and Vinyl as a medium. Vinyl is an inherently flawed medium, with problems like wear, necessitating expensive gear and knowledge for playback, and low audio quality compared to digital media. That some people still prefer Vinyl releases shows that they either don't really have good hearing, or that contemporary music is mastered so that a medium with roughly 13 bits of dynamic range is sufficient for even "critical" listeners. That means CD quality audio is simply excessive for that audience. Interestingly enough the same Vinyl crowd will glady buy 24bit/192khz releases, which are even more excessive.
"Some listeners think that vinyl reproduces sound better than digital,"
No, it's just that this generation has got hearing damage from the free, crappy, white iPod/iPhone earbuds and MP3s rely on a normal hearing capability.
So this sounds different for them.
Not to mention how the hell are we gonna clean weed on CD covers or iPods?
You could de-seed a whole oz. in 5 minutes on a good double album and a card back in the day.
But then, the weed today isn't half seeds like it used to be, either...
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CD's however can (and do) have built in hidden signals that allows the software police to track the origin of any ripped tracks.
Feel free to prove me wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they can't (and don't). CDs are mass produced from glass masters. How could they have "hidden signals"?
Once ripped and compressed, sure, you're going to see differences between files of the same track (unless the same software was used with the same settings, and the rip was error free).
Not sure how practical any "tracking" would be, either - at best, finding the same rip on two computers tells you... well, it tells you that it's the same rip. It doesn't really tell you anything about how it got there, and it certainly doesn't tell you that it came from computer A to computer B.
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Maybe modern hi def digital audio formats exceed anything that can be practically extracted from vinyl. But, we could do things with equally modern analog technology that would blow digital out of the water. Imagine a physical family photo that you can hang on the wall, but also high resolution enough to make 100x magnified reprints with simple optical equipment. Now add a reasonable assurance that a photo will be still viewable after 100 years for your grand-grandchildren. Magnification may degrade, but whatever is left can be accessed with hardware made based on simple instructions. How do you like the chances of preserving and especially being able to read and display a JPEG over that timeframe?
Different technologies have different characteristics, and I guess one has to use one's personal weighting function. I had a pretty good system (AR turntable, top-of-the-line Shure cartridge, electrostatic earphones) and I love digital audio and honestly don't know how anyone can stand vinyl.
I used a dust bug, I used a DiscWasher, I treated my records very carefully, but there always came the dreaded moment when I would hear: "tick." And at that point, I'd always tense up, and only relax 1.8 seconds later if I didn't hear a second "tick." Three consecutive "ticks" 1.8 seconds apart would seriously interfere with my enjoyment of the sound. My success rate on removing them by cleaning was very low--more often then not, the cleaning attempt (even with the best D4 fluid etc.) would simply add a very delicate, light background crackle.
And I am not even talking about tape hiss, surface noise, warp wow, rumble, and a little trace of 60 Hz hum that I never could quite get rid of. And ugh, getting to the end of a symphony and having the big loud glorious coda come up in the inner groove (vinyl was pretty good at the outer edge, but no-kidding-obvious-problems in the slower-moving inner grooves).
And taking the occasional bad pressing back to the record store and arguing with the store clerk about exchanging it.
And changing the darn record every 20-30 minutes... and feeling guilty if I left it unattended and came back later to find it had been playing the end-groove for hours.
Even with a good tonearm and lightweight cartridge, vinyl does not sound as good on the tenth playing as it did on the first.
Digital audio may have its faults and if people enjoy the characteristics of vinyl, there can be no dispute about tastes. But to me the positives outweigh the negatives--by about a factor of ten.
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The best thing about vinyl is the campfire effect. It comes built in. :)
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Many young people can hear frequencies higher than the 22.05 kHz maximum of 44.1 kHz sampling. I could hear up to about 27 kHz at 30 years old; both I and a friend of mine found places with so-called ultrasonic alarms painful.
Similarly, 16 bit audio is good for no more than 98 dB, but it's well established that the human audio dynamic range is at least 120 dB.
If the tests are set up to make the differences between 44.1/16 and 192/24 easy to detect, many people can detect the difference. If the tests are set up to make the differences difficult to detect (for instance by trying to distinguish between two highly distorted highly compressed pop songs) it may be that nobody or only an extraordinary person can tell the difference.
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I'm not going to bother touching on the ongoing debate of which sounds better or which format is generally better. I personally believe the difference of vinyl and other audio formats is the process involved with vinyl and the a lack of a better word the intimacy people have with it.
I always tell friends who ask about my collection that vinyl is to digital media what home cooked meals are to microwave dinners. Some people don't like cooking and choose easy and fact meals they can just eat so they are no longer hungry. While other people enjoy the process of cooking for hours to make a meal they are proud of and enjoy. Is the home cooked meal better? To the person who cooked it yes it most likely is because of their involvement.
These days with digital media you simply browse a site/app click a few buttons and the song or album is lost into your collection. It becomes background noise after listing to it a few times and has no real relevance to the person. With vinyl (specifically hard to find albums) a person can spend years searching for the album. They might go to stores weekly talking with employees and building friendships so they can get items held for them or called when a big collection just comes in, or spend hours walking around the city searching all the stores. Nearly all my records have stories like this.
There is also the process of playing the albums vs simply hitting shuffle on your computer. You have to search your collection deciding what you want to listen to, start up your equipment, maybe you have to clean the record before hand. You also have a tangible object you need to interact with. There is involvement.
So like I said; some people want quick and easy music that requires no involvement. Some of us do. I love the process and thinking about what I went though to get an album I'm listening to, or who I talked to when they suggested something or the show I picked the album up at. Personally I could care less if one or the other sounds better and I still personally listen to streaming music/mp3's when I simply want background noise, but when I want to listen to music I turn to my vinyl.
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A lot of this argument IMO hinges on when you grew up/got into music. I'm quite happy to accept (as an old git) that high resolution digital audio beats an album on vinyl hands down in terms of true fidelity. However, to *my* ears, because I grew up with vinyl, I find that sound more appealing and enjoyable. I have albums on everything from cassette, vinyl, CDs, MP3s to FLAC. Even some 24bit high res files. Yes, there's some incredible detail in there with modern formats. However, for whatever reason, I just don't enjoy listening to it as much. In many cases it's because they're mastered too hot and have stupid waveforms with almost no dynamic range, although the high res formats are better in that respect. I find vinyl just more enjoyable and relaxing to listen to. Plus of course there's the well worn stuff about the cover, reading the lyric sheet without a magnifying glass etc. As far as crackles/pops/wear and tear goes, I've got records that are nearly 40 years old but still more enjoyable to my ears/brain. It beats me how people's records get so beaten up, are they tracking too heavy? Pouring grit down the sleeve? Maybe 5% of mine from 30+ years ago have anything more than a little surface noise when the stylus hits the lead in groove. After that, no pops or crackles.
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