New vinyl quality....

Yes digital is a curse. Several times now I have had records that sounded pretty good but not great, only to discover each time they had been digitally remastered. One of the worst, the Nautilus Rumours remaster, which despite being half-speed mastered sounded worse, turns out it was digitally remastered.

For years I could never understand how Famous Blue Raincoat managed to sound so good despite being a digital recording. Then one day reading an interview with Warnes it comes out that they weren’t happy with the result and so made a few copies one of which was dubbed onto analog tape, and all four of them preferred the analog tape. So that’s what we hear when we play the "digital" recording.

jameswei thinks he hates the noise embedded in the tracks. Well, at least with vinyl you stand a fighting chance eliminating the noise. At least with analog the noise is noise you know is noise. With digital the noise truly is embedded in the signal. With digital the noise is the signal itself.

Don’t take my word for it. Listening one night my wife exclaimed how quiet the record is. I said yes I cleaned it really good. She said no. Had to ask her a few questions to get to the bottom of it. She was saying what I just said, that with CD the noise is the signal. The music is the noise. It just doesn’t hit you as obvious as a pop or a tick. Its more insidious than that. Worse than that. Its why the same records, turntables, arms and cartridges, and phono-stages that were made 50 years ago are still prized, yet they have to keep reinventing digital every few years.

Right. And I have no idea why this works, but I've been using the Radio Shack Bulk Tape Eraser (a great big demagnetizer) on my records just before playing and it does make for a more detailed yet smoother more grain-free sound. Not huge but definitely noticeable. Does not last. Need to do it every time. Which makes me think its static not truly magnetic. Whatever. How something works matters a lot less to me than does it work. 

The Furutech gizmo looks like carbon fiber bristles hang down very near to but not touching the record. Carbon fiber is conductive. Is it grounded? I don't see any ground wire. Is the base purely for mass to balance the thing, or is there a battery or something inside? Looks pretty easy to DIY.

Vinyl quality? Huge and fascinating subject.

Back in the day, until the late 1970’s anyway, a lot of records were made to as high a standard as they could manage. Not all but you play them today and its just staggering to think back on what that must have taken back when they were recorded.

Nowadays, not only did digital not kill off vinyl but records are now into well over a decade of powerful growth that is, if anything, accelerating.

Unfortunately, in between (1970 to roughly 2000) the whole industry was decimated. A lot of equipment and skill that was once common is now scarce, just when we need it most.

That’s the view from space. The view from 10,000 feet is no two pressings are ever exactly the same. Listen close on a system good enough you may notice no two sides even of the same LP are quite the same. This appears to have always been the case.

The takeaway from this is you cannot judge "a" record by your copy of that record. I cold give countless examples, and if you come over play some for you, where two otherwise identical looking records sound completely different. I could play you some expensive audiophile reissues that sound like absolute crap compared to my $3 record bin copy. I also have two copies of the same LP, absolutely identical right down to the dead wax, that one of them sounds completely average the other so freaking beyond perfection you would swear I must have the studio Master if it wasn’t for the occasional bit of surface noise.

Vinyl records are capable of sound quality undreamed of by other formats, but the sad fact of the matter is it comes at the price of unpredictability. Inconsistency.

For myself, I have gotten so sick and tired of crappy reissues that unless one comes out with music I just have to have, AND the preponderance of reviews is they also did a superb pressing of it, then there is just no way. Pass. Better things to do with my time and money than chase long odds. Regular old run of the mill new vinyl? R U Kidding me? Forget about it.

No. If you are serious about sound quality then there are two and only two solutions to this problem. First, accept the fact that statistically speaking only one in 10 copies is pretty good, one in 20 great, and one in 30 demo quality. If that. Then you either play the odds, or pay someone else to do it for you. Take Your Licks or Pay The Man. That’s it. No other way. Anyone sees a third way let me know.