Brand new vinyl - what’s acceptable to you?
I just ordered a dozen new albums - this time all 180 g variants. The Norah Jones had a scratch on it coming out of the paper sleeve the first time. (Separate gripe - why do they package ostensibly “audiophile” albums in crappy sleeves which might actually damage a record?). I’ll return the Norah Jones. But, the Miles Davis album has a noisy spot 1/4 the way through the first track. I’ll try cleaning the record but usually don’t have to for a new album. Or should I as a better practice? (This old dog can learn new habits).
Fortunately, the Pat Metheny is dead quiet - thank you ECM! All my ECM vinyl - even from decades ago are quiet. However, my experience is that ECM is very much an outlier: that most labels will come with some noise.
I’m working my way through all the albums but it made me want to poll the group: How much noise do you accept on a new pressing? Do you have a rule of thumb for what to reject?
Thanks,
“How much noise do you accept on a new pressing?” Zero noise. As many pointed out, every record I purchase gets treated with UCM bath, fresh MoFi sleeves before it gets played. I am using Degritter MKII with distilled water to clean my records. As far as Norah Jones, not sure which version you purchased…I found AP’s Vinyl version sounds the best!
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@billstevenson My rationale is that by using the Loricraft first, I am removing gross contamination from the record before it goes in the Degritter. It gets vacuum dried by the Loricraft's clever mechanism. Then when it goes in the distilled water in the DG there should be very little for it to remove, and thus very little left to be dried on the surface. I did go as far as taking the wet record from the Degritter back to the Loricraft for a vacuum dry, but there were two problems: I have to place a wet record down on the platter and dry the uppermost surface, then flip it and put the newly dried side onto the wet platter. So I got an extra platter mat. Using this contributed to the second problem: it took too much time to go through the whole process and began to make me want to play CDs and SACDs more. So I struck a happy compromise and I find the results very acceptable. I have had conversations here with Neil. He had me do things like air dry a drop of the used solution on a mirror and look for residue (there was none). |
I’ll accept more than most. Being an imperfect medium with variance is part of its charm. Vinyl LP records today (70+ years later) still deliver on their original promise: "high quality for the masses". Guys who insist on returning records until "perfect" are just driving up costs for the rest of us. This is one of those generational differences I guess (I’m late gen X / millenial). It especially drives me crazy when guys talk about retuning for minor edge warps. It happens on 180g - just buy something else!! Also, if you’re going to be so picky, at least learn the pressing plant differences. A United pressing is generally going to be filthy compared to a Music on Vinyl. Generational differences! |
