Sound quality of new vinyl recordings.

Yep Rock is another current label releasing new LP’s "cut" from analogue tapes.

The label has a world-class artist roster, including Nick Lowe, Alejandro Escovedo, Amy Helm (Levon’s daughter), Dave Alvin, Fountains Of Wayne, Jim Lauderdale (great songwriter and singer, formerly Lucinda Williams’ band leader & harmony singer), John Doe (of X renown, of course), Robyn Hitchcock, The Fleshtones (Garage Rock), The Rubinoos (a fantastic Power Pop band), Tift Merritt, and many more.

Contrary to those just repeat what they’ve heard someone else say, lots of labels and artists/bands are recording in analogue, and mastering engineers such as Bernie Grundman, Kevin Gray, Robert Ludwig, Ryan Smith, and Steve Hoffman are busier than they’ve ever been, cutting lacquers for LP production, using analogue masters tapes as their source. Go ahead, do the research.

Yes, lots of Rap, Dance, "commercial" (fake) Country, Pop, and other popular-with-the-masses music is recorded on hard drives (with lots of electronic manipulation applied), but who here listens to that sh, uh, stuff?

Do you know how hard Ry Cooder works to get his recorded guitar sound? He heard about the new recording format---early digital---and recorded his Bop Til You Drop album in digital---the first non-Classical digital album. He hated it, and went back to analogue. He eventually heard an LP on Water Lily Acoustics Records and flipped! Water Lily owner/recording engineer Kav Alexander was recording with a tube analogue machine, it’s electronics designed and built by tube expert Tim de Paravicini (who also designed and made his fantastic EAR-Yoshino amps and pre-amps, which most of ya’ll continue to ignore. So did Art Dudley, until he heard the EAR 912 pre-amp.), fitted with tubes from another tube expert (Roger Modjeski, whom you also ignored during his lifetime)---RAM tubes. To hear the best recorded sound you’ve ever (or never) heard, listen to Ry’s album on Water Lily, with V.M Bhatt---A Meeting By The River.

By the way: The Ry Cooder albums that MoFi reissued are pure analogue, not amongst the MoFi’s that include a digital step. The originals sound good (I have all in original Reprise Records pressings), the MoFi’s even better. Ignore Tom Port; he can hold only one thought in his mind at a time.

"99% or more of new pressings are sourced from digital files." "Only a few specialist companies like Classic Records will use all analog tape."

Let’s take care of the simple one first: Classic records has been out of business for about 15 years.

Chad Kassem of Analogue Productions (record company) /Acoustic Sounds (distribution) / Quality Record Pressing (LP manufacturing) bought the inventory (metal parts---from which LP stampers are made) and intellectual property (the rights to the name UHQR) when Classic closed down. Almost all his very excellent LP releases are made directly from analogue tape sources, and the few that aren’t are clearly labelled as being not. AP has hundreds of great titles in their catalogue, many of them the best versions of specific titles ever manufactured. There are plenty of comparisons between various pressing of LP titles available for viewing on YouTube, made by serious record collectors.

The German company Speakers Corner is another superior reissue label. I have about a dozen of their LP’s, all excellent, all made from analogue tapes. Vinyl Me Please is another company doing all analogue reissues, and there are a couple dozen more (one being Intervention Records, others Acony, Light In The Attic, Jackpot Records here in Portland, plenty of others) doing the same. Anyone who is unaware of them is not to be taken seriously when making statements about the percentage of LP’s made from digital files.

So how about new albums, not reissues? You’ll notice guys making the claim that 99% or more of LP’s use digital files as their source material never back up that statement with solid evidence. Do they frequent recording studios, and/or know any professional musicians, recording and/or mastering engineers? Upon what is the statement based? Source, please, with examples and numbers.

The great studio here in Portland where Bill Frisell records a lot (Flore Recording And Playback) does so on a 2" 24-track analogue machine (I’ve recorded there), as does the other studio in town I’ve been in. When I recorded with Emitt Rhodes he had an Otari 2" 24-track analogue machine, and well known recording engineer Tchad Blake (Los Lobos, T Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello) was taping onto a 2" 24-track Ampex when I recorded with him in the old RCA studio on Santa Monica Blvd. (in the huge room in which The Stones recorded "Satisfaction"!), as did engineer Jeff Bakos when I recorded with Evan Johns in Atlanta, Georgia.

Lots of people say lots of things; not all of them know what they’re talking about.