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New vinyl's noisy little secret

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the current crop of vinyl formulations just have higher noise levels than LPs made years ago. A case in point--I stumbled upon an old, original copy of Henry Mancini's 1962 soundtrack to the movie "Hatari" in my collection a few days ago (I had never even played it), and was astonished at its deathly quiet playback. Simply no surface noise. What gives? OK, you may make fun of this black-label RCA pressing (LSP-2559) for its content musically (though it's actually pretty fun), but it sure reminded me what we are missing with new releases--super high quality vinyl with very low surface noise. Even the occasional mechanical clicks from scratches seemed subdued. Most of my (expensive!) new vinyl comes replete with very onerous surface noise. Is it just impossible to make this old-generation type of vinyl currently?
kipdent

Showing 1 response by nsgarch

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nsgarch
2,524 posts
 
Was your Hatari album sealed? If not, it was prabably played by somebody. I find that with albums pressed today, in lower volume production, a lot more mold release is applied to insure better quality pressings. HOWEVER, that means it's more important to make sure you remove it before playing the record.

Back in the day, playing the record would eventually get the stuff off (at least where the stylus contacted the groove) because the pressure on the groove with spherical or elliptical styli was much higher than with today's line contact styli.

So if you have a high quality vinyl rig (which you do) and a great (and extraordinarily quiet) cartridge like a Temper W, you're not going to like the sound of today's pressings right out of the box. You have to 'clean' them first.
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