Last song on most LP's pressed with compression


Over the last few yrs, I have spent more time with my cd player than analog rig. Anyway, the winter is here and I'm feelin the groove and started listening critically to LP again. What bothers me is the last song on a side is often compressed. You have hear this as a reduction in sound quality, akin to what an MP3 does to a cd original. Now if you inspect the LP closely that bothers you. You can see visually that the grooves towards the end are actually cut into the record differently. They are compressed together. I don't care what cartridge or equipment you use, the distortion is there..period . Once your brain locks onto it, listening thru this distortion is very difficult. Now before the experts chime in, I'm not talking about inner groove distortion here. Nor is there anything wrong with my alignment,VTA, tracking,azimuth etc. If you can't hear this on your rig (with an LP that is cut compressed on the last track- not all are)then no doubt your system is not resolved enough. Part of my LP collection (about 500 records)are 12" singles. These do not suffer from this problem for obvious reasons. But I'd bet that 60% or more of regular LP's do. What all this means for me is that the days of investing big $$$ on LP playback are over. What I have is what I have and when it eventually wears out, I doubt that I'll replace it. Yup, I am that bugged by wasting a portion of my valuable listening time listening to a lower quality signal. I modify my own equipment to achieve the highest quality signal that I possibly can. So subjecting myself to a flawed LP format is a step backwards. Before I play an LP now, I examine that groove pattern towards the end. If it looks extra compressed, then back on the shelf that title goes. I'll pick the original (non maximized) cd version every time.

Feel free to chime in.
reb1208

Showing 1 response by onhwy61

As others have pointed out, compression is the wrong term. Vinyl mastering is far more difficult than its digital counterpart. One of the secrets to effective vinyl mastering is getting the proper song sequencing. With digital there are no physical considerations in the song sequencing and it's purely an artistic decision. However, with vinyl you have to take into account the side A/side B issue plus the dynamic challenges of inner groove spacing. Add to that the artistic element and you've got several variables to juggle. For symphonic music the situation is even worse than for pop/jazz. I've noticed that many vinyl releases are now two record set. I speculate they would have been single disks back in the day. It's something of a hack solution, but it's better than the alternatives.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the visual spacing of the grooves is not necessarily related to the music's dynamic range. You can have widely spaced grooves and not have wide dynamics. Narrowly spaced grooves have less potential dynamic range, but depending upon the music it may or may not be a factor.