The pressing plants probably received a 1/4" dub off the mixed master. In the 80s, that's also what studios received to edit music videos.
how were copies of vinyl made in "third-party" countries
I have some LPs from the former Yugoslavia, Holland, Hungary, Russia (bought them way back when in bulk) and now I wonder what the process was and how close they are to the original?
I assume they weren't digitized, they were released in the 70s and early 80s. Anyone knows what they would receive from the recording studio/company/warehouse? Tapes, the "negatives"? Are there copies considered better than others?
Showing 6 responses by lowrider57
+1 @bdp24 |
I agree with the terrible quality of pressings which came from Russia and Czechoslovakia, same with their CDs. I also look for the country of origin of the band and it's record label. There are so many UK albums with good SQ. I have also found that many German releases are superior to US, maybe it's better QC or they don't have the philosophy of cranking out product. One more thought; I've found Decca pressings to be outstanding. I have an issue with the budget Angel releases, they sound like they were made with inferior masters. No resemblance to Decca or London. |
@bdp24 I was not aware of this. I know the engineer had free reign to make changes for technical reasons; eg, using compression so that a bass heavy passage wouldn't affect the other grooves, length of run-in and run-out grooves, limiting peaks and transients. It doesn't seem right that he could make non-technical tweaks that change the creative decisions made by the production team.
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This meaningless grading of used records has only been happening since the vinyl resurgence. In the original era of vinyl, the grade of a used record meant something. There were no internet sales and used record shops knew how to grade using the Goldmine scale (or their own). Most shops would let you preview a record.
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You always have some cool "insider" stories. The production master comes with a spec sheet which has a checklist. Maybe an oversight or the cutting engineer thought he knew better how to transfer the tape. I received a master to transfer for a band's music video. I transferred it according to the Dolby spec. When the band came to the studio to preview the video, they remarked how great the audio was, it sounded better than the album. I later called the original studio and found out they cut the record without Dolby. The album sounded very flat.
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