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Vinyl inconsistant

mikeg said:
It used to be said that black vinyl sounded better because black carbon was used which strengthened the record but coloured dyes don't.
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I've read that too. And that the carbon in the record reduces static build up. Who knows!

I also wonder if they made the new fangled microgroove vinyl records black just so they looked similar to the 78s everyone had been buying for the previous fifty years.
 
paulfromcamden said:
If the coloured vinyl doesn't sound any good there's a good chance the 180g will be rubbish too. Almost certainly the same master, probably the same stamper pressed at the same plant.

There's nothing magic about 180g records and some folk have claimed they're more prone to warping during manufacture.

From memory all the coloured vinyl I have sounds fine. As @linnfomaniac83 says picture discs are another matter - they're like a couple of flexi discs pasted to a picture.
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Totally agree with this. Not bothered about 180g vinyl. I much prefer the old floppy type on my Gyro, flattens easier with the clamp.
 
paulfromcamden said:
If the coloured vinyl doesn't sound any good there's a good chance the 180g will be rubbish too. Almost certainly the same master, probably the same stamper pressed at the same plant.

There's nothing magic about 180g records and some folk have claimed they're more prone to warping during manufacture.

From memory all the coloured vinyl I have sounds fine. As @linnfomaniac83 says picture discs are another matter - they're like a couple of flexi discs pasted to a picture.
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Yes I have some 180g pressings which are awful!
 
paulfromcamden said:
I've read that too. And that the carbon in the record reduces static build up. Who knows!

I also wonder if they made the new fangled microgroove vinyl records black just so they looked similar to the 78s everyone had been buying for the previous fifty years.
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Carbon weakens the PVC and no, it has essentially no effect on static - it is dispersed within the PVC, not in any continuous track/layer/string/whatever.
Carbon black was added to make PVC look like shellac, the previous material to be used.
 
Regular record making vinyl might be more slippery which might reduce surface noise a bit. Otherwise neither here nor there.

Unless the alternative versions of the Alt-J are from different masters they will sound the same. What is the actual problem with the sound?
 
i have a decent vinyl set up and stream too from a laptop. my experience is that there is a pretty clear relationship to a point between expenditure and quality of sound with analogue, but you can get very good sound from streaming for not much at all.
 
Paul Hindle said:
Coloured vinyl, or picture discs as we used to call them are a sonic disaster. THey should be sold with a warning label for the unsuspecting.
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Whilst I agree with you regarding picture disks there is no issue with coloured vinyl. These days it is exactly the same as black vinyl, which is obviously coloured vinyl too (it is coloured black, just as say red vinyl is coloured red). Uncoloured vinyl is clear to a milky translucent white.

The early days of coloured vinyl back in the ‘70s and ‘80s could be hit and miss, especially clear for some reason which tended to be noisy. Even so I’ve a fair bit from that period (first Police album (blue), Television Adventure (red), first Devo (splatter) etc) and it is all fine IMO. Even the luminous vinyl Kraftwerk Neon Lights 12” sounds ok, and still glows in the dark!

Even things like this Moses Boyd:

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or this Flaming Lips:

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They sound absolutely fine. Really nice quiet pressings with plenty of punch to the mastering.
 
IIRC picture disks aren’t even vinyl, it is some other plastic more akin to a flexidisk stamped over a card picture. I only ever list them as ungraded collectables, to my mind they have no audiophile value. The only one I own myself is a 12” of War by FGTH which I think has a mix unique to that format. It is noisy as one would expect.
 
Tony L said:
Whilst I agree with you regarding picture disks there is no issue with coloured vinyl. These days it is exactly the same as black vinyl, which is obviously coloured vinyl too (it is coloured black, just as say red vinyl is coloured red). Uncoloured vinyl is clear to a milky translucent white.

or this Flaming Lips:

50375077491_51e8b0a832_b.jpg


They sound absolutely fine. Really nice quiet pressings with plenty of punch to the mastering.
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The colour combinations and light reflections make this look quite disturbing in the photo. Like it is bubbling up off the turntable platter. If it looks even a bit like that in the flesh I would be worried when trying to cue it up. :eek:
 
poco a poco said:
The colour combinations and light reflections make this look quite disturbing in the photo. Like it is bubbling up off the turntable platter. If it looks even a bit like that in the flesh I would be worried when trying to cue it up. :eek:
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It looks even worse when rotating, more like someone very ill has thrown-up on the platter!
 
I have bought a fair quantity of new vinyl over the Covid period across a variety of different genres & hardly any have disappointed. Even the knock off Russian ones that some say avoid have sounded superb - take Waltz for Debby as an example by Bill Evans. Not only are the pressings great, but the album covers are quality too. In particular, some of the remasters have been superb. In stark contrast to the shitty Nice Price stuff I bought 30 odd years ago!
 
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If it’s a gz press and no lacquer info in the deadwax, then they’ve ‘mastered it’ which means, no mastering, they do a flat cut through a prism audio interface, which really is no benefit at all at streaming or having the cd running through a good dac.
 
GZ do not use Soft lacquers. GZ Cut on a DMM lathe with hard copper lacquers
Audiophile labels never use DMM , pressed at Pallas , QRP & RTI soft lacquers only
Kevin Gray , Bernie Grundman etc only cut to Soft lacquers

Conventional disc mastering, where the mechanical audio modulation is cut onto a lacquer-coated aluminium disc, DMM direct metal mastering cuts straight into metal (copper), utilising a high frequency carrier system and specialized diamond styli,
 
Tony L said:
Whilst I agree with you regarding picture disks there is no issue with coloured vinyl. These days it is exactly the same as black vinyl, which is obviously coloured vinyl too (it is coloured black, just as say red vinyl is coloured red). Uncoloured vinyl is clear to a milky translucent white.
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The only 'non-black' LP I have is an issue of Miles Davis 'Blue'. Colour is nice. But the large warp isn't.

I did buy a few LP sets after CD took over. In general they had a mix of sound quality, and often had an annoying flaw. e.g. one side of a Hendrix set of discs-in-a-box was wildly off-center

Whereas the 'Chasing the Dragon' LPs I bought were and are superb.

So now as in days of yore my conclusion is simple. That in general big companies can't be bothered with quality control. If it doesn't come back, they simply keep on. If it does, that customer was a pest, not a reason to improve QC. Its the money that matters.
 
Picture discs are pressed by using two pucks of PVC instead of one. The picture is printed on paper that sits between the two pucks, and then the whole lot is pressed.

In my very limited experience, the paper tends to end-up off-centre within the final sandwich/record so that it intrudes slightly into the groove on one side of the other. They usually play fine on one side, and dreadful on the other. There must be some that play OK on both sides, and some that are at least partially dreadful on both, but it is likely to be totally random.

Coloured vinyl is NOT, the same as black - black is obtained my milling crabon black (hi tech soot), into the PVC - it is a very fine powder. Coloured vinyl contains a dye - a compound that is dissolved within the PVC, no particles (if it is filtered correctly). Opaque coloured vinyl contains a dye and a pigment, almost ceratinly a cheap white powder, possibly even chalk, possibly kaolin, or the relatively expensive titanium dioxide.
 
Picture discs have a vinyl core, but what actually plays is the acetate that protects the ‘picture’. I have lots of coloured vinyl and they sound great - I have even more coloured vinyl if you include the ones that have been coloured black ;)
 
TBH I suspect the companies make picture discs assuming the buyer mainly wants to hang it on the wall as a trophy / work of art. Not really for listening to. I'd be happier if they threw in a 'free bonus' CD copy that was well made. But that might cause some fuss... 8-]
 
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