I've just recently got back into making frequent purchases of new sealed vinyl. Each of the last 3 lps I've purchased has some form of pressing defect. None of these were re-issues from 3rd party labels such as Wax Time, etc. These were all produced by the original issuing label and cost me almost $100 CAD total for the 3 of them. The sound is excellent on all 3 records but they each have pressing defects that probably wouldn't have been there 20-30 years ago when I was paying about $13-16 each. I don't think I encountered 1 in 30 issues with purchases back in the 80s & 90s when I was purchasing most of my material.

Here's the 3 new sealed lps I purchased this week and associated issues:

Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (Sony Legacy 180gm) - a dozen or so ticks & pops on track 1 side 2.

Barney Kessel: The Poll Winners (Contemporary Records OJC-156 180gm) - last track misc right channel chirps during the last minute.

Bob Dylan: Shadows In The Night (Columbia Records 180gm) - lots of ticks and pops side 1.

Is QC really that bad these days with even the major labels? If so I might have to cut down on the # of purchases and just migrate to the audiophile labels for the "I must have" recordings and just buy a used CD for the rest or go without.

That's my rant for the night. Thanks for listening.

What's your experience been recently for new sealed vinyl?

_________________
"Im...a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective" - Bill Evans

Most new vinyl sucks when it comes to quality control. I think all the guys who knew how to make records have long since retired, so those in the business are trying to relearn a lost art. Also I think there's a good number of new vinyl buyers who don't realize that records (especially new ones) are supposed to be free of warps, scratches, divots, and noise.

I simply don't buy reissues of albums where older pressings exist.

What turntable are you using?

I have purchased a few new LPs and noticed a sound like distortion whenever the voice or and particular instrument hits a loud spot. First time I heard it, I thought I had a speaker issue. One record was Van Morrison 180g, I forget the manufacturer. But, it got worse as you progressed to the center of the vinyl. BOTH sides. I thought I had wasted $30 and put it away as a 'deal with later'.

A friend was over a few weeks later, I played the LP to show him how bad it was. It wasn't as bad as I recalled. I played the album 3 more times over the next week or so. Sounds fine now. I'm wondering if this is some sort of releasing agent. If so, I also wander what's all over my stylus... I know many people clean their LPs before listening to them - but, I have only been doing that for used ones.

Have you cleaned your LPs prior to the first listen?

Of course you should always clean any new LP exactly for the reason of removing the release compound from the grooves.

I have an original first gen pressing of the Count Basie album in excellent condition and I too always attempt to get an original pressing. However, some of these reissues sound great, Examples, XTC Skylarking and English Settlement box sets sound great. The Stones In Mono, both Bowie Box sets, Beatles Mono (possibly the best sounding Beatles on vinyl ever released), All The Jethro Tull Reissues, Acqualung, Thick As A Brick, Stand Up. The Faces box set is great, The Grateful Dead Warner Brothers (first 5 albums) is very good. Mobile Fidelity's reissue of Duke Ellington's Anatomy Of A Murder is great. Some of the Dire Straits reissues. I've heard many of the new Bluenote jazz series reissued recently sounds very good. The Smiths Hatful OF Hollow was mastered very well for a reissue. Some of them despite being master at the very end of the process at least, from a digital file source, can sound quite analogue like when it's done right.

Sometimes the original mastering of an album was just ok and the reissues gives the labels (Universal, Sony, there's only a handful left) away to get it right and resell it yet again to a buyer that likely already has the record. The Pink Floyd reissues are very good. Elton John's full catalogue up to and including Blue Moves or A Simple Man will be reissued. If Gus Dudgeon (original producer of most of Elton's output up to and including Capt Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy if memory serves. Blue Moves is a great under-rated album. I have a British pressing of that one, sounds superb.

Ariston RD11 Superieur (same as RD90 Superieur but a less sophisticated power supply and 1 pce platter) / Linn Basik LV X arm / Shure M97XE cartridge. All set up and working properly.

-- 19 Mar 2017 03:55 --



Always cleaned before playing first time.

_________________
"Im...a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective" - Bill Evans

I don't the OP is concerned with mastering, that is a separate discussion. The issue is the absolute **** quality of the vinyl pressings themselves. Dropping bucks on a new record only to find it's warped, distorted, off center, scratched, etc is annoying as hell. Some of the big maintream pressings are excellent, for example the Pink Floyd reissues, but overall new records are a risky purchase if you care about the quality of your vinyl.

I don't have any concern about how they sound. As I mentioned they sounded great (esp Kind of Blue). It's the fact that all 3 of them have pressing errors of different types.

I'm hoping that the new automatic Viryl Technologies Warm Tone presses catch on quickly with manufacturers because they're supposed to have a defect rate of less than 2% which is light years ahead of where most pressing plants are at today.

-- 19 Mar 2017 04:11 --



I also have Blue Moves. Found it in a thrift store for a buck. It is very good.

_________________
"Im...a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective" - Bill Evans

I'm a huge fan of the Blue Note / Contemporary / Riverside / Fantasy Jazz labels and think I'll start looking for older mint Japanese or Connoisseur Blue Note reissues and OJC series releases on Discogs rather than buying new and for my favorites splurge for the Analog Production and Music Matters deluxe issues.

It's a shame because I really want to support reissued vinyl but not if they're selling me defective software. Kind of like a laptop with a missing key "works great except every time you want to type an N".

_________________
"Im...a rather simple person with a limited talent and perhaps a limited perspective" - Bill Evans

I bought 2 new Waxtime LPs and found same skip on same side on same last song on both LPs & returned both of them to London Drugs

Sorry, but I don't understand that the 3 lps have pressing errors yet still sound great. Maybe I'm being picky but, even if the recordings are great I would argue the sound quality is unacceptable due to the ticks and pops and I would return the the 3 records because they are defective. I'm sick and tired of buying substandard products. It seems the quality of vinyl is no better than it was in the 1970's and 80's. Frank Zappa wrote a song in 1979 called "Flakes." "All what we got here is American made, it's a little bit cheesy but nicely displayed, well we don't get excited when it rumbles and breaks, we just get on the phone and call up some Flakes, they rush on over and wreck it some more and we are so dumb they're lining up at our door." I think this song is as true today or even more than it was in 1979. It's high time consumers take action by returning items and refusing to buy anything else from these manufacturers until they offer quality products. That's the major reason I went digital around 1986 or 87. 95% of my listening is digital. Actually, it's probably more like 50 to 1.

I don't mean to hijack the thread but I'm thinking of picking up a turntable and venturing into vinyl. I don't plan to listen to anything re-mastered - more contemp. folk but I'm curious if the problems you're describing are limited to re-issues or is it also prevalent on new albums? I'd always assumed sealed LPs were free of defects. This may give me pause in my direction. Thanks...

The last new vinyl album I bought was 3 years ago.
Natalie Merchant Motherland.
Warner Music.Made in the EU.
The vinyl is flat,good sound quality.
There are some ticks that can be heard in between tracks if played loud.
What I like about noisy vinyl with lots of pops and ticks it reminds me of a campfire.
You can warm your hands by the speaker.

Complaining about ticks and pops on an LP? I don't know...

I have a good mix of new and old LPs. Some have ticks and pops, new and old. Some sound worse on some of my tables, while others I can't even hear on my other setup. I'm not too familiar on the Shure stylus profile, but I would imagine that changing that may alleviate "pressing defects" you are talking about, which I would not necessarily attribute to a pressing defect.

Of all my new LP purchases, only one suffered from a truly brutal pressing defect. Radiohead - The Bends capitol vault reissues was pressed severely out of round. So much so that it totally changes the pitch of the recording in a wavering kind of way. Oh well.

Don't get me wrong, though, I hate ticks and pops in my listening just as much as the next guy. But, people often listen to my setup, who are not familiar with vinyl and say "this sounds so good, it almost sounds like a CD". I assume they mean no ticks and pops and a quiet background.

I knew a guy who would return a lot of vinyl. He would say he returned almost 50% of his new purchases for another copy of the same album. Why? Because it was "warped". When I saw a "warp" he mentioned, I thought, good god, it's vinyl. It literally may be only a slight subtle up and down warp. Didn't affect play. Just didn't look perfect.