Last song on most LP's pressed with compression


Over the last few yrs, I have spent more time with my cd player than analog rig. Anyway, the winter is here and I'm feelin the groove and started listening critically to LP again. What bothers me is the last song on a side is often compressed. You have hear this as a reduction in sound quality, akin to what an MP3 does to a cd original. Now if you inspect the LP closely that bothers you. You can see visually that the grooves towards the end are actually cut into the record differently. They are compressed together. I don't care what cartridge or equipment you use, the distortion is there..period . Once your brain locks onto it, listening thru this distortion is very difficult. Now before the experts chime in, I'm not talking about inner groove distortion here. Nor is there anything wrong with my alignment,VTA, tracking,azimuth etc. If you can't hear this on your rig (with an LP that is cut compressed on the last track- not all are)then no doubt your system is not resolved enough. Part of my LP collection (about 500 records)are 12" singles. These do not suffer from this problem for obvious reasons. But I'd bet that 60% or more of regular LP's do. What all this means for me is that the days of investing big $$$ on LP playback are over. What I have is what I have and when it eventually wears out, I doubt that I'll replace it. Yup, I am that bugged by wasting a portion of my valuable listening time listening to a lower quality signal. I modify my own equipment to achieve the highest quality signal that I possibly can. So subjecting myself to a flawed LP format is a step backwards. Before I play an LP now, I examine that groove pattern towards the end. If it looks extra compressed, then back on the shelf that title goes. I'll pick the original (non maximized) cd version every time.

Feel free to chime in.
reb1208

Showing 3 responses by eldartford

Grooves being close together is not what is meant by audio "compression". What is compressed is the dynamic range...loudest passage to softest passage. This may, as a secondary effect, permit grooves to be more closely spaced. Minimal LF signal content would also permit closer groove spacing (that's what RIAA equalization is about). Maybe the record producers select which track to put on last with these considerations in mind.
By the way, the inner groove problem that Herman mentions will also affect the visual appearance of the grooves.
Some boxed sets of classical music would put third and fourth movements of a symphony not only on the flip side, but on the next disc. This was OK if you used a record changer, but single play people like me had to put one LP away, get out and clean the next before the music resumed.

The vinyl record technology is flawed in so many ways that it is amazing that it sounds good at all.