2. analog
  3. 1247092305

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 4 responses by zenblaster

zenblaster
504 posts
 
I purchase approx. one new album /month and frankly am astonished at the condition these sealed records arrive. Everything from fingerprints, smears,smudges and always a good coating of loose cardboard dust. I would never subject my cart to this gunk so I always steam clean before using.
I wonder what the process of loading an album into its packaging is, anyone know? The last album i got was Dave Mathews latest and it was horrible when I opened it. Fortunately after a cleaning it played perfect and was nice and flat, otherwise back it goes. They look as though they were packaged by monkeys that just finished wrestling in mud.
zenblaster
504 posts
 
Aren't records mastered on metallic plates?
I know the 78's were from metal master discs.
zenblaster
504 posts
 
Thank you Axel for the great explanation. I found out about 78 rpm metallic masters from the NY Times article this past Sunday. Paramount Records in Wis. evidentley used these back in the 20's and 30's for their Blues artists. They have never found these original metal masters, some saying they were melted down for the war effort, others thinking disgruntled workers threw them into an adjascent river after the factories closing (divers have even scoured the bottom of the riverbed looking for them)
Check out the article (there is a link posted on the music threads)
zenblaster
504 posts
 
I did not notice any mis-information, but unimportant.

A fascinating subject if your into vinyl. Here is a link to the NY Times story
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/arts/music/12petr.html?_r=1&ref=music
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