A mature discussion about sound quality and vinyl

[swoopdog]

A decade ago a record generally cost $7.50 -- $10. Even if you take inflation and cost of living increases into account, that's a ridiculous increase.

This has more to do with manufacturing costs than people collecting colored vinyl. Good luck putting together an LP that looks decent and sounds good for 7.50 a disk.

edit: coloredvinylwaaaaarrrrrrrr!

[konk]

So you're saying that if I own two colors and don't know which is first and which is second press, I should be able to tell by playing them? If the matrices match.

It's not absolute.

But if it were a record with a considerably large print run and then half a decade between pressings, you might tell a difference.

As mentioned earlier, I just got the NOFX Frisbee on color. I was going to give away my black, but did a sound test first and the black sounds fuller. The color has pops, surface noise (yes, I cleaned it) and a shallow sound.

Well I think they're both 500 and probably not that long between presses.

[oakland]

I think $12 is a reasonable and doable price for a black vinyl record that sounds good. Everything doesn't have to be 180 gram swirly blue and orange vinyl in a fancy letterpress sleeve. I kind of miss the days when you'd just get a fucking plain old record because a. it was cheaper and b. it sounded better. But like I said, whatever. It's not like I'm going to quit buying records because they cost too much.

[thieves]

stampers get changed out relatively often. on a single pressing of a big band like nofx they're going to go through several sets. the only real wear and tear stampers get are actual bends in the metal (caused by foreign objects between the stamper and mold) and actual scratches caused by foreign material in the vinyl. you could theoretically press 3-5000 records on a single set if you had a really nice setup and were using super clean vinyl and the last one would sound just as good as the first.

and as far as variants are concerned, they hurt sound quality of a whole run of a record. if you're doing a record that's like 500 copies and have four different colors, you don't give the press operator enough time to really have the machine dialed in for that specific color. each color behaves differently, so going from one to another involves a lot of tweaking of settings on the machine. if things aren't dialed in right, you can have grooves not filled in, bits of grooves being left behind on the stamper, warping issues, etc etc etc. if you're pressing a record and truly care about sound quality, you really shouldn't be doing any variant with less than 250 copies, unless your entire run is less than 250, then just choose one color, probably black... as the press your small-run record will go into probably just ran a larger black record order before it and is pretty much set to run yours as good as possible.

[thieves]

and if you have two records that have the exact same matrix, there is no way the actual eq/color of the sound could be different between them. one could be noisier, but there's not some magical way to color the sound of a record differently after the masters have been cut.

[kriss]

And my preference for black vinyl has a lot to do with principle. I think it sounds better, yes. But I also dislike the culture of colored vinyl collecting.

I have nothing else to add re: the stamper debate, but I will say I absolutely agree with this. I know the overwhelming majority of you guys enjoy colored vinyl and that's totally cool, but I've seen some folks take it to fetishist heights that are just completely ridiculous. I get bummed during pre-orders when the black vinyl is sold out and the color is all that's left (I've actually found myself getting annoyed if I have a band's full discography and there's a stray record that is colored while the others are black - that has its own weird collector quirk to it though, so I'm not pointing fingers).

[bearchuck]

stampers get changed out relatively often. on a single pressing of a big band like nofx they're going to go through several sets. the only real wear and tear stampers get are actual bends in the metal (caused by foreign objects between the stamper and mold) and actual scratches caused by foreign material in the vinyl. you could theoretically press 3-5000 records on a single set if you had a really nice setup and were using super clean vinyl and the last one would sound just as good as the first.

and as far as variants are concerned, they hurt sound quality of a whole run of a record. if you're doing a record that's like 500 copies and have four different colors, you don't give the press operator enough time to really have the machine dialed in for that specific color. each color behaves differently, so going from one to another involves a lot of tweaking of settings on the machine. if things aren't dialed in right, you can have grooves not filled in, bits of grooves being left behind on the stamper, warping issues, etc etc etc. if you're pressing a record and truly care about sound quality, you really shouldn't be doing any variant with less than 250 copies, unless your entire run is less than 250, then just choose one color, probably black... as the press your small-run record will go into probably just ran a larger black record order before it and is pretty much set to run yours as good as possible.

Thank god ... someone who actually knows what the shit he's talking about.

And just to clarify, when you talk about several variants hurting the overall sound quality of a pressing (assuming the stampers haven't been damaged) it's more about defects like clicks / pops / static and general mistracking, right? It's not like you'd listen to two variants of the same pressing and think that one has more bass or warmth than the other. Or am I reading that incorrectly?

[thieves]

yeah i mean more variants means that the settings on the press have to be/should be adjusted for each one to account for surface noise, edge trimming, label placement, etc etc etc. if you're just pressing like 40 of one color, you won't get a very pure color AND it's probably just going to have multiple problems.

[moonbeams]

stampers get changed out relatively often. on a single pressing of a big band like nofx they're going to go through several sets. the only real wear and tear stampers get are actual bends in the metal (caused by foreign objects between the stamper and mold) and actual scratches caused by foreign material in the vinyl. you could theoretically press 3-5000 records on a single set if you had a really nice setup and were using super clean vinyl and the last one would sound just as good as the first.

and as far as variants are concerned, they hurt sound quality of a whole run of a record. if you're doing a record that's like 500 copies and have four different colors, you don't give the press operator enough time to really have the machine dialed in for that specific color. each color behaves differently, so going from one to another involves a lot of tweaking of settings on the machine. if things aren't dialed in right, you can have grooves not filled in, bits of grooves being left behind on the stamper, warping issues, etc etc etc. if you're pressing a record and truly care about sound quality, you really shouldn't be doing any variant with less than 250 copies, unless your entire run is less than 250, then just choose one color, probably black... as the press your small-run record will go into probably just ran a larger black record order before it and is pretty much set to run yours as good as possible.

Thank you so much! This is really interesting to know. Plus 1

[moonbeams]

yeah i mean more variants means that the settings on the press have to be/should be adjusted for each one to account for surface noise, edge trimming, label placement, etc etc etc. if you're just pressing like 40 of one color, you won't get a very pure color AND it's probably just going to have multiple problems.

The NOFX records that sparked this topic do sound very different. The brown repress (in a multi color, blue/brown/orange, the browns range from light to almost black; the oranges range from salmon to bright red, to murky brown diarrhea) I have has pops and it's difficult to describe, but a meh sound. When listening to it, I think "this album is ok."

The black sounds great. When listening to this, I think "wow, the engineer and recording staff did an incredible job!"

I used to collect variants and listened to all of my records. I've only heard minor differences in the past, but these are have stark differences.

[tannerbnd]

IMO its more of a placebo effect than anything