Todays new vinyl LP's better than LP's 40 yrs ago?

I find new vinyl just as erratic as old vinyl. Some are great, a lot are mediocre, and some are poor.

If you read about the process of making LPs, there are so many steps involved (and each one is an opportunity for something to go wrong) it is kind of a miracle any LP makes it out of the factory in good shape.

And even if great care is taken during manufacturing, whether new production or old, somebody has to get the LPs from the end of a production run before they replace the stampers.

Audiofeil wrote: That is the flaw in your argument.

There was more consistency and higher quality years ago.

You seem fond of telling me about my own experience. Interesting!

I've been transferring my well cared for LPs to digital for my music server over the past 7 or 8 years. This has involved substantially more than 2,000 LPs, many from the era you laud.

My experience is that truly pristine and exceptional pressings have never been routine or commonplace. The majority is certainly acceptable, but I don't get too excited about lauding mediocrity.

Perhaps we just looking for different things. ;-)

Audiofeil wrote: Disagree.... But take a random sample of 100 albums from the 50's, 60's, and 70's and compare them to 100 new releases and you'll find far more problems sound quality, warpage, etc. than you'll see/hear in the old stuff.

I agree with your disagreement. Your experience has been different than mine. I came across an absolutely pristine looking Savoy Brown album from 1971 the other day. The background noise was constant and quite annoying. I was routinely aggravated by the brand new DG's classical releases I bought in the 1970s.

Interestingly, one of the best pressings I've seen the past few months caught me completely off guard. It was the 1965 release of Lightnin' Hopkins on Tradition Everest (2103) - hardly a big name in record labels.

One can argue about the relative ratio between new and old of good pressings to bad but I think my central point is that LP quality has always been and still is the luck of the draw. When an LP is good, they are a wonderful way to listen to music. However, get a bad one with constant gravel, warps or whatever, and listening just isn't much fun.