Interesting Article


http://www.factmag.com/2015/05/07/pressed-to-the-edge-vinyl/
terrybbagit
Whatthe: After 45 years of listen to records, seriously, I'm pretty sure I can tell the diff between defective vinyl and defective equipment. One type of distortion I kept noticing last night is something I call "groove lettuce". This intermittent sound is kind of like an amplifier clipping and is probably "my bad" for not knowing how to dial in my cartridge to perfection.
While we're on the subject, how could my phono head-amp (Ayre) be causing click and pops? I'm using XLR out to my BAT and XLR equipment is usually pretty quiet.
Please explain.
Moonglum - I didn't recall Peter Cook's contribution to Consequences. I enjoyed it very much and played the heck out of it back in the day. Persons looking for it now might do well to search under Godley & Creme as they were the creators.
I buy a lot of used vinyl, much of it collectible now. I'll usually hold out for minty condition records, but given the subjective nature of record grading, not all are in the high level of playing condition I prefer. For the records I truly care about, I will sometimes be forced to buy multiple copies of these old records to get a dead quiet one. Sometimes, I think this is simply the result of abuse, not of defective manufacturing; in many cases, the older records clean up extremely well after a serious cleaning.
I don't tolerate pops and clicks, and for the most part, the records I listen to are very quiet.
I occasionally buy 'new' vinyl, but those purchases are limited to newly released music or the occasional remaster of an old record that is very hard to obtain at a reasonable price. My experience with new vinyl today is probably about the same as it was during the 60's and 70's- some quality control problems, including bad pressings, bad masterings (which I didn't know much about 30 or 40 years ago), off-center spindle holes or other defects that a good cleaning won't rectify.
I'm not going to wade into the digital v analog quagmire- I think, like politics, you rarely convince somebody of the opposite view once they have made up their mind. But, I do think you can achieve quiet noise free vinyl listening- it takes some time to sort, I have relied on outside expertise to help me (though I've gotten pretty good at dialing in my arm/cartridge). I also agree that some cartridges and phono stages may emphasize surface noise more than others.
Whether the current vinyl 'craze' is a fad or not, I'm pleased that there is renewed attention to the manufacturing process. I don't know much about sourcing raw lacquers, but the neglect of the rest of the vinyl manufacturing "infrastructure"- from presses to cutting lathes- sounds accurate. It does seem that the article was Euro-centric.
Ghosthouse, you must have blinked. It's all explained here... ;^)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_(Godley_%26_Creme_album)

Cheers,
:) :)
...or not...the system has rationalised the link and given a full list!

From the list shown scroll down to the "Consequences Album" which will hyper-link you to the correct page.
(might even be quicker to google Wiki yourself!)

If you read some of the production notes, you'll see references to how they did the burial scene. I think someone in the studio mentioned that they were actually shovelling "rubble", not sand, down the studio stairs.

When you look at the lengths they went to when "mechanically" simulating the sound of a saxophone, we ask ourselves, "why didn't they just use a saxophone?"
It was probably because they didn't want to compromise the purity of their original intent in fully exploiting the "gizmotron".