Our favorite format, the record, the imperfect medium
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- čas přidán 6. 09. 2024
- Ah, records. We love to hate the format sometimes don’t we? Can we ever get a perfect quality record? Check out the video to hear my take.
#vinylcommunity #records #vinyl #trueaudiophiles #trueaudiofiles #jimcarter
I’m with you, Jim. Great post.
Thanks for the video. I'd listened to Shellac a-side before watching. A couple of clicks. Listened to b-side immediately after watching your video. I found the sound good. The bass came through for me especially. I hesitated on making purchase because of the E word. I'm enjoying the listening experience. I held off on Billie lp. Regards, Iain
The mastering is fine in the Shellac, it’s the surface noise that is bad.
Nice job as usual. I know I should know this, but how does lowering the volume allowed for increased music on one side?
The groove becomes narrower.
The only records I return are any that are off centered. I can’t stand the pitch getting all wonky. Other than that, I have ways to take care of everything else. But if it’s a soft acoustic folk record and it sounds like Rice Krispies are popping, I may exchange that or just return.
Been buying records since 1966, can live with odd pop's clicks etc, constant noise not acceptable, do I expect totally silent? No. Under UK sale of goods act parts of that policy may not be legal in the UK. Shipping damage is not the manufacturers issue. Warped, off centre, scratched new records is not acceptable, lack of QC was part of the factors that killed records in the 90's. If the record fails to play then in the UK it's not of merchantable quality and can be returned no matter whet the seller states. I recently had 5 failed attempts to buy a Blue Note Classic (huge edge warp), when the online seller tried to stiff me I stated the UK law to them and advised that they were liable for the consequential loss (damage) to my £9k stylus, that shut them up. Got full refund from them. Then cancelled £1200.00 of pre-orders with them.
I agree with most of what you say here. I will dispute that QC played a factor in the decline of records in the 90s however. CDs, then MP3s along with cassettes that were all portable were the reason. Sales just didn’t justify making records for this reason. People were going away from records for convenience not because of QC. Actually records made in the 90s were typically higher quality pressing in my experience and I am sure much of ghat is because the demand was not as much so the plants could take their time to make the records right and spend more time QCing them.
My main point on records is if the visual aspect of the record doesn’t affect the playback then there is no reason to return or exchange it. Certainly if it does affect playback you should get a new copy.
We are in broad agreement, re 1990's QC my experience was in the UK it was hard to buy a playable LP warps, dirt and grease were prevalent, I tried CD's but disliked the sound, but as vinyl fell out of favour I was able to buy several shops entire stock of new & used vinyl for a pittance so there's always a silver lining