The problem with streaming

Funny someone mentioned Deja Vu. From the time it came out, I always thought it sounded exceptional.

@reubent 

As usual, you nailed it.

(right up top)

Right on. Tunehead 

Pesky wabbit hit it !  Invest in what you  enjoy !

There is a lot of vinyl rubish also.

The title of this thread should have read ’The problem with bad pressings’.

Maybe to some it is ’part of the hobby’, but the mere fact that pressings can be bad and that one has to search for a good one already is reason enough to me to stay far away from vinyl.

And even a good pressing is a bad one. If one considers the countless electrical, mechanical (!) and chemical (!) steps in between the master tape and the signal going into your amplifier ... the audio compression to limit the dynamic range, the RIAA compression to limit the bass groove amplitude, the cutting of the master disk, the wear of the master disk, the chemical and heat treatment steps with pressing the disks, the wear of the vinyl, the dust and (micro) scratches, the shape of the needle, the player rotation speed error, the disk non flatness and non centeredness, the arm angle and weight correction, the wow, flutter and rumble, the process of translating mechanical movement into a tiny delicate electrical signal, the problem of stereo separation, the need for great amplification, the introduced noise floor, the reversed RIAA correction ... it’s even a miracle that any decent sound can be retrieved this way from what once was the master recording.

If the sound is bad, it could be a bad pressing. Or it could be a bad master recording / mixing ... a good pressing won’t make the sound better ... on the contrary.