Warps on 'premium' records - getting worse?

[Woodface]

Lots of ways in which you can support the artist, no reason to suggest that vinyl is somehow more supportive. I still get the odd thing but with new music.i tend to go either with a Bandcamp download or CD via Amazon.

 

[robbyd]

I don't notice it being any worse then normal..

Though my main deck has a screw-down clamp that I wouldn't ever be without.

After a 'session' LPs are all over the room, all laid flat, stacking on each other - sometimes for a week or more, and I don't seem to suffer warping from that either.

 

[chartz]

Records are great because you do get the impression that you really buy your music. It has value, like CD (although CD has less perceived value, being so small), unlike online files or streaming. I can see why the newer generation (the 30-something, my kids) now find records and record players attractive.
All the new three or four slightly warped records I have were unfortunately bought like that during the last decade.

 

[Woodface]

Funny isn’t it, back in the day CD was a premium product, priced above vinyl. Was it valued more then?

I remember when you couldn’t give records away. How things change.

I am very agnostic when it comes to the media, I just want the music in the most faithful fuss free way.

 

[robbyd]

Records are great because you do get the impression that you really buy your music. It has value, like CD (although CD has less perceived value, being so small).

You're right, of course, but I'd like it to be true that the next generation (we're already into it!) that buys records, does so because of the sound quality and not because it's something to touch & hold.

Hypocritical of me because I do appreciate that aspect, however. But it's not the end-all...

But owning it - that's a real point...

I came really, really late to even buying a CD player, but I have one I can listen to; just not many CDs! And so long as LPs are around, why would I choose to change that?

What was this topic about?!

 

[guydarryl]

I buy a load of current vinyl and I don’t feel it is any worse than it was in the late-70s and especially ’80s. I’d argue the period from about 1988 through to 2000 was by far the worst period. Just so much dubious likely recycled vinyl served up without ‘groove-guard‘ contour (the raised run-in and label designed to protect the surface from auto-changer damage which also really helped against sleeve scuffs etc). Just nasty stuff that on the whole hasn’t survived, e.g. go out and find me a genuinely mint original pressing of Peter Gabriel’s So! All destroyed by the inner unless the original owner popped it straight into a Nagaoka or similar inner.

I do agree warps are more of an issue now. That’s a 180g thing. There is no excuse for it. 140g is the right weight.

One thing that has improved hugely is colour vinyl. It sounds absolutely fine now, even extreme splits and splatters. I remember the days of say the gold New Boots And Panties or the luminous vinyl of Penetration’s Moving Targets (former sounds awful and is noisy, latter just noisy).

Mailers have improved hugely too. It is very, very rare I get a corner ding on a new record these days. Pretty much inevitable with mail order in the 80s-2000s.

I particularly agree with your comment on 180g records, I’ve never been convinced that heavier records necessarily sound better - is it just a marketing thing based on the perception that more is better?

Greater mass of molten plastic will need more time to cool and, i would think have more stresses in the disc during the cooling period.

 

[Tony L]

I particularly agree with your comment on 180g records, I’ve never been convinced that heavier records necessarily sound better - is it just a marketing thing based on the perception that more is better?

Pure marketing IMO. Wasteful and worse. Viewed purely from a pressing perspective (i.e. leaving mastering to taste) nothing beats a typical 1970s Japanese record; flat, quiet, perfectly centred, proper run-in and label contour, supplied in a nice tip-on sleeve with poly inner and on average 140g. That is peak vinyl.