Vinyl quality vs. country of origin vs. decade

[maxg]

My rather recently acquired vinyl collection (now around 350 albums) contains pressings from many and various countries of origin.

Whilst I cannot claim to have made any kind of detailed study on the topic I have begun to notice that the quality of the recordings appears to vary with both the country of origin and the period.

For example, I am yet to find a decent US recording from the 1970's, or, conversely, a bad German copy from the same period.

Has anyone else noticed this kind of breakdown? Or, better yet, put together some kind of classification of what is good, when and from where?

Bizzarely I have recently found myself listening to more and more mono recordings from the 1950's. Whilst I miss the soundstage breadth of stereo they seem to have greater dynamics and a greater sense of depth than stereo recordings. I have a copy of the Pastorale that is to die for in mono.

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[NOSValves]

Maxg

Mike Lindsay mentioned the very same thing he did a stretch in Germany and acquired a ton of German pressings and say's they are all very good. I have nothing but USA stuff here. Makes me wonder what mI'm missing.

Craig

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[Allan Songer]

My experience is pretty much limited to jazz, but here goes:

The best pressings ever are USA pressings from SOME labels from about 1954 through 1965. In my experience the best pressings ever were from Contemporary Records, a small independant jazz label in Los Angeles. The owner, Les Koenig, was a maniac about quality and actually offered his mastering services to big labels when they wanted something done "right." And his sound engineer, Roy Dunan was the best ever--I rank him above them all, including Rudy Van Gelder. I treasure the 250 or so of Contemporary's offerings that are in my collection and I buy ones I don't have whenever I see them.

The other label that really cared about quality was Blue Note, up until Alfred Lion sold out to Liberty. Early deep-groove Blue Notes are sonic wonders and play beautifully even when the appear thrashed much of the time! I have about 300 original Blue Notes in my collection and I'd buy all of them if I had the money, but most of the ones I don't have a really rare and sell for hundreds of dollars each these days! I kick myself for passing up many of these because I wasn't "into" some of the artists back in the 70's when they were cheap. Oh well . . . .

The other major independant jazz labels of the era were more hit-and-miss. Pacific Jazz did a pretty good job, Prestige was all over the map, and Emarcys were generally terrible much of the time. Norgran/Verve/Clef were also very inconsistant, some are awesome and others terrible. I think the 1970's and 1980's Japanese pressings of all of these lables

tend to be more often that not BETTER than the originals. And they are still very affordable.

[lynnm]

I generally find that European pressings are better than the average run of North American pressings but I don't agree that North American pressings are uniformly poor.

I have frequently found that CD versions are inferior to the LP versions. I have a lot of Neil Diamond LP's that have decent sound but the CD copies are bloody awful,(compressed and strident). Another example is Stevie Ray Vaughn's Tin Pan Alley which I first heard on CD and wrote off as being nothing more than half-*** blues played and sung by a so-so performer. I recently acquired a good used copy of Couldn't Stand The Weather on LP and can't get enough of it.

The problem is obviously in the remastering process as most recent CD's I have sound anywhere from very good to exceptional. I have even heard some remastered stuff on CD that sounds the equal of the original LP's and superior to the original 78's.

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This message has been edited by lynnm on 08-21-2002 at 08:58 AM

[Lone Palm]

I bought several import LP's back in ancient times. I read somewhere that the metal plates were changed more often in Germany than in America. A fresher stamping plate will yield a cleaner copy. The Germans wanted quality,the U.S. wanted quanity cheaply.

[Clipped and Shorn]

maxg,

I have noticed these same general trends but think that an iron clad list might be difficult. I also agree with Alan about the jazz recordings, having collected Contempory and Blue Note from the beginning, although I would now include Mosaic reissues along with the Japanese reissues as being fairly high quality and consistent within the limitations of the original material.

Generally, as regards the early days (50s and some of the 60s) the larger companies did a better job. Generally recordings on RCA, Decca, Capitol, Mercury, Vanguard, Epic, Angel, Westminster, London, Archiv(e) will be better than the smaller companies. In the really early 50s most 10" LPs regardless will have slightly more inherent surface

noise than the later 12" LPs. The vinyl on some "budget" or independent labels (recycled vinyl vs virgin?) was really low quality and sometimes surface noise is very high, this can be an unavoidable conflict when the material is of great interest as might be on Tampa, Argo, Roost, Sue, etc. or even really cheapie Plymouth (Paris, Palace, Remington) etc. etc.

The early era of 12"LPs with the thicker vinyl and mono generally does indeed seem to sound and hold up better, and this even includes recordings made in Cuba (pre Castro Panart, Puchito, or Gema, for example).

When I first got my Cornwalls, I compared my old mono recording of Prokofiev 's "Love For Three Oranges (suite)/ Sythian Suite" on Mercury Living Presence with a new mint copy of that same recording in Stereo. The old mono sounded better in the same ways described by maxg above. fini witnessed this demonstration and noticed that the liner notes indicated that the stereo version, although recorded at the same studio performace, was engineered differently. I thought this was interesting. That is to say they had a different set of microphones and recording machines for the stereo than the mono even though both were recorded simultaneously. It is not like the stereo was somehow remasterd from the mono, a process which was used later on and is notoriously inferior.

The difference we hear between mono and stereo seems to be mostly inherent in the way the vinyl is pressed. I still need to do some major cartridge upgrade before rechecking this seeming preference for the old mono.

Generally I collect vinyl for the content regardless of these differences in recording quality. Having grown up tuning-in shortwave stations, I long ago learned to ignore background noise. This really comes in handy when attempting to enjoy some old 78 rpm records and is generally an asset when listening to any vinyl, however mint , which is never completely devoid of some surface induced potential distractions. I would find an obsession for perfect recordings a severe limitation on a comprehensive and global appreciation of music history. Listening to recordings is inherently an involvement with histroy, and in some cases "archaeology".

-C&S

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Cornwalls

currently upgrading

to all tube components

This message has been edited by Clipped and Shorn on 08-21-2002 at 11:50 AM

[CaptnBob]

I always liked the old Archiv recordings from the 1950s. Each came with an individually signed card saying that particular pressing had been inspected and approved. It always conjured up images of some guy in the Alps with a Thorens playing recordings by the Ulsamer Collegium over and over again and flinging the ones that didn't pass muster out the castle window. Those albums were heavy, too. When you set a slab of Archiv vinyl on your turntable, you knew you dealing with something carefully crafted.

When oil prices went up in the early 70's it seemed quality went way down. I got the impression from several recordings from that period that they had been made out of recyled truck tires - you could spot little chunks of gravel in the grooves.

Another problem was the belief by many record company executives was that people didn't really care about the sound quality as most listening was done in the car or on cheap table radios. Records were played on marginal systems at best, which actually sounded better if the music was horribly compressed, with the high and low frequencies cut out.

An old study, I think by Bell Labs, indicated that most people actually preferred a narrow bandwidth to a wide bandwidth in music reproduction, and this was often cited by the executives mentioned above. What was left out was the fact that equipment of the time couldn't decently reproduce extended high or low frequencies, and people preferred a narrow bandwith which was clean to a wide bandwidth with lots of distortion at each end.

Time to go back to work. Hope this didn't get too boring.

Capt'n Bob

[Allan Songer]

The "budget" jazz labels can be VERY frustrating indeed. One particlar family of labels that drives me crazy is the Jazz West/Intro/Score group. You'll find some really seminal West Coast jazz here--Art Pepper's "The Return of Art Pepper" and "Modern Art," the Red Norvo/Art Pepper/Joe Morello "Collections," a couple of GREAT Jack Sheldon LPs, the Lester Young's "Aladin" recordings, and what might be the "best" of the group, Paul Chambers' "Jazz Delegation from the East" with Coltrane, etc. I think all of these were pressed in quantaties of less than 1000 LPs judging by the prices they command (HUNDREDS of dollars these days).

I have all of these LPs and all are in VG+ or better condition and all of them are VERY noisy. I also have Japanese reissues of most of them and they are QUIET and sound GREAT.

You also mentioned the "Tampa" label--for me these are of MUCH better quality. I have several of these--Marty Paich, Art Pepper, Jimmy Rowles (w/ Harold Land--a reall killer with the insane title "Jazz for People who Hate Jazz" -- there's a guy with a dunce cap and a half naked girl on the cover) and all of them sound really good to me.

[jazman]

I'm speaking from the Jazz side of vinyl and agree with Allen on the quality of Blue Note and Contemporary labels. I have a lot of Blue Note vinyl, not just for the quality of the recordings, but the quality of the music and the artist's who created and performed the music. There were several other labels producing good Jazz vinyl during that period of the 60's and 70's. Riverside, Fantasy, Atlantic, and Impulse Jazz catologs contain many very good recordings and pressings that are well worth looking for. Roy Dunan is considered probably the best ever as a recording engineer, but Van Gelder is not far behind him in reputation today. The recording he did with the the group Sphere, the album "Four In One",(1982) is wonderful, not to mention his older work with Blue Note.

Non US labels that produced good Jazz vinyl are Dennon/Japan and EMI/France.

Ultimately it's still about the music first, the vinyl pressing second. What good is a great recording and vinyl pressing of mediocre music?

Klipsch out.

[DANOCASTER]

My experience has been that LARGELY the Japanese pressings are very good but NOT always. Often ,the country the artist is from is often the best ( as in the 1st release) An example would be Pink Floyd "animals"..I have a Holland pressing, one from Germany,one from Japan, and 2 US copies and BY FAR the best is the original UK release. Same holds true for the original John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers w/ Clapton. The Original UK release sounds better than the MFSL copy (Mobile Fidelity) !!...my 2 cents

[Clipped and Shorn]

Anyone else ever notice that those Archiv discs were also like large capacitors? Tin foil faced labels on either side of the vinyl as dielectric plus an envionment conducive to static electric charge. I would always get a kick out the sparks that would fly when handling those LPs.....zap!

OK, as a conceptual artist, you might want to consider making an amplfier for Baroque music that would use old Archiv LPs in the circuit for the capacitors, think how strangely bizarre that would be visually......especially when you stack a couple of hundred of those things up and run some wires out of them.....right, I know, you have to have a tissue between each LP in the stack......then there would be arguments as to the "air" when using a stack of Research Period music from the Central Middle Ages versus the "blackness" when using a stack of Bach choral works etc.

-C&S

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Cornwalls

currently upgrading

to all tube components

This message has been edited by Clipped and Shorn on 08-22-2002 at 12:39 AM

[maxg]

Clipped

I too am of the opinion that an iron clad list would be difficult to put together and highly unlikely to hold true.

Even in my own limited collection I have noticed that some Greek pressings are actually very good.

Of all my records probably the best to date is a Blues direct to disk recording of Wild Child Butler. This has not only the lowest noise floor of all my records it also has a lower noise floor than all my CD's! The background is so low I keep thinking the record has finished playing between tracks. In addition the dynamics are just breathtaking.

I should add however that this was my most expensive record purchase to date. I picked it up at an audiophile place for around $50 but it was worth every penny.

[kenratboy]

Well, I will be the village idiot by saying:

I don't worry! I just buy CD's!!!

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[AndyKubicki]

Max, I don't listen to vinyl anymore. My B&O is missing a cable and a new cartridge I had in the car was in the ash tray. I forgot about this and when it went through the car wash....DOOOH! I do remember that while I was in Poland in the late 60s, I bought some records and did notice quite a bit of surface noise. This was a time that the country was under socialist rule, and technology was not that advanced. They had the knowledge, but not the means. FM stereo broadcasts were just experimental then, and stereo records were few. Upon returning to the States, I found that many of the artists I liked, such as Yes (on Atlantic), recorded on poor quality vinyl as well. Although I too listened to SW BC (I didn't think there were many others who did in the States), it was to hear either news or music, but to REALLY ENJOY music, I had to have the recording. I was not good at tuning out the background noise. I must agree with kenratboy (once again). No matter how well I cleaned my vinyl, I always heard dust! Matter of fact, when I first bought my Khorns in 78 or 79, I bought a Direct to Disk recording of Stravinsky's Firebird on Telarc. What a way to hear the magnificent ability of the Khorns to handle music!! From sweet, quiet passages, to bass drum thumping, rafter shaking gorgeous sound. But in the quiet passages, I was hearing...that culprit..dust! I really missed that recording (I still have it but can't play it) and was overjoyed to find, much to my surprize, that it was digitally recorded at the same time! I bought the CD (Telarc CD-80039), played it, and low and behold, some of what I thought was dust, was actually the musicians' chairs creeking! How can I enjoy vinyl when I hear not only the dust present, but imagined dust as well! I don't know how I would compare the quality if I did an A/B now (CD/Vinyl), but the CD's quality is amazing. Lynn has made a good point that much depends on mastering, and proper mastering for the particular medium.

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Andy

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[maxg]

It is interesting to see the issue of vinyl surface noise being brought up. This was, for me, one of the main reasons for not getting into vinyl in the first place.

I bought my first CD player back in 1984 and steadily built up a reasonable collection of Cd's over the years since.

Last year I bought an SACD player and some 70 disks later came to the conclusion that this was the way to go.

It was only on a whim that I finally decided to have a play with vinyl to see what all the fuss was about. I bought a very moderate TT (Pro-ject RPM 4 with project's own phono box) connected it up to my system and played some of the very few vinyl records I owned.

To my utter amazement not only were the dynamics far superior to both CD and SACD but the whole surface noice issue simply did not appear.

Since that time (now about 4 months ago) I have amassed some 350 records, in the main new, and largely for around $6 a disk. I now never listen to CD except to demonstrate to friends how superior vinyl sounds.

Of these 350 records I would say that less than 10 have unacceptable levels of surface noise and many have, to all intents and purposes, none.

In fact the most common comment from uninitiated listeners is on that very thing. All expect to hear hiss, pops, cracks and the like and are amazed when they do not appear, disk after disk.

Frankly I am at a loss to explain why this should be when others so obviously experience unacceptable levels of noise. I do not clean my records other than by brushing them off with a carbon fibre brush. I do clean my cartridge needle with a fluid I got from clear audio (about ever 5 records or so) but that is about as far as my maintenance extends.

Even records I know to have been well played now play almost perfectly. Of my own existing records all were bought during the 70's in the UK and were played to death on a beaten up Radioshack record player on the carpet in my bedroom. Even these play without surface noise.

Maybe it is the player, maybe the cartridge, maybe the optimisation of the cartridge installation (done by the guy I bought it from) I do not know. All I do know is that I have 340+ records that play perfectly.

To date I have had about 20 individuals come over to my house and listen to my system varying from total non audiophiles to people who have spent over $100K on their systems. None, not one, has ever expressed a preference for CD, or expressed any form of disatisfaction with the surface noise.

I should add that I offer them a choice of CD playback units to choose from. I have an old Denon DVD player (the 3000) a Sony NS900 DVD/SACD/CD player and a dedicated Marantz CD6000 CD player. Of these the best playback comes from the Marantz (to my ears) and yet even that pales in comparison with the TT. Interestingly, as an aside, the worst of the bunch for CD playback is the Sony.

Now I am sure there are better CD players out there than the Marantz that might perform closer to the TT in sonics, but I doubt that they would be near the price. All of the units above cost within 20% of each other with the Denon being the most expensive and the Marantz the cheapest.

[whell]

Here's one that has always been a mystery to me:

Why do record companies, in this case, Columbia I think, change the content/version of tunes on CD as compared to their earlier vinyl counterparts. Example: on Santana's Open Invitation album, the version of the song "One Chain" is different on vinyl than it is on CD. Frankly, I think the version on vinyl is WAY better. Why does this happen?

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Mike - Livonia, MI

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[mobile homeless]

Most of the time, though not always, record companies will just ADD an extra track from this session (or another) or bring other takes of the original tracks such as outtakes, different solos, or perhaps some cuts with musician commentary or banter with the engineer before or after the take. This is ONE advantage to the CD release that IS better than the original (usually about the only other advantage besides ease of use). Record companies occasionally will substitute another version if they feel it betters the first but this is FAR more rare, especially with noted recordings. Frankly, you dont see this very often with anything of quality. I usually avoid the reissues that do this, if you can find out ahead of time. The extra tracks option is always a bonus however as it bring new material as well as a glimpse into the musician's other interpretations of the cut.

kh

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This message has been edited by mobile homeless on 08-22-2002 at 10:32 AM

[Clipped and Shorn]

Sometimes the added tracks are a pleasant surprise allowing the collector to check off more tunes from a session known to exist from the printed discography. As a Prez completist I got a kick out of hearing Lester sing some silly tune at the end of the great session with Oscar Peterson/ Barney Kessel on Verve....(The President Plays) you also hear some studio banter like Prez saying "You said 'funky'....there are ladies present...." or something along those lines.

As maxg indicated, there is no reason one cannot have vinyl recordings that mostly sound perfectly noise free, I have hundreds upon hundreds of perfect sounding LPs as well, it is only that I collect used vinyl rather indiscriminately that I also have so many noisy LPs as well (I will hardly ever pass up an LP for under 50 cents that appears to be Near Mint or even VG+ visually. The visual grade does not always extend to the audio play, which, by the way, is always a caution when buying used LPs based only on a visual grading. Combine this with the fact that I also collect highly desirable rare discs just any way I can get them (including early 10" LPs and 78s when necessary). Sometimes a noisy disc is the only choice, the only window into the past.

Now that I think of it, there are CD issues of every scrap of rare recorded material known to exist by Charlie Parker. I have one which was apparently mastered from long lost obscure broken "glass" acetates that were glued back together. There is an important version of "Round Midnight" which is like 90% noise! Like I said, Archaeology. Mosaic still sells the Benedetti recordings of Bird, there is an interesting story there as well.

I will usually remember which LPs have imperfections and, if I feel like enjoying a perfect album, I will choose one I know to be sonically great as well as musically great. There are certain favorite titles I collect compulsively, constantly searching for the perfect copy. Sometimes it will take 3 LPs for me to know that I have a collection of perfect tracks for all tunes on an LP. There are a few embarrassing slots on my shelves where there might appear to be a half dozen or more of the same LP. When collector friends stumble onto those spots I usual joke about "cornering the market" or mention that I sometimes sell them on eBay etc.

I remember obsessive stamp collectors who would have several examples of the same stamp showing a variation in ink color saturation, so that is really nutty collector mania. My motivation is the music, although I do know collectors who value the old LP covers as much or more than the discs inside.

For example, if I wanted to master my own CD for a project that Gene Norman stubbornly never had the forsight to produce, I might draw from multiple copies of LPs in order to insure the cleanest examples of the tunes. {eg. The Complete GNP Piano and Rhythm Recordings of Rene Touzet}.

In the early days of Mosaic Records, if you received a new set in which one or more of the discs had a minor glitch or pop, they would gladly send you a replacement disc! Now there is a company with integrity.

-C&S

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Cornwalls

currently upgrading

to all tube components

This message has been edited by Clipped and Shorn on 08-22-2002 at 12:52 PM

[maxg]

Carefull C&S - you are heading down the road of a vinyl collector - as in one who buys rare records for their collectability rather than for their sonics.

There is a guy over here in Greece who owns one of the local audio mags who is reputed to own 80,000 albums. It is obvious that he cannot have listened to all of these (it would take about 7 years to listen - at an average of 45 minutes per album - to them all - even if they were playing 24 hours per day, 7 days per week).

In other words this is a guy who collects for the sake of collecting - still I wouldnt mind browsing his collection for a while and picking up a couple of hundred titles - trouble is he aint selling - he is still buying!!

[Clipped and Shorn]

Fortunately the involvement with upgrading vintage tube amplifiers and building a speaker system has distracted me from the vinyl collecting obsession. Oops, now I want to obsessively collect NOS tubes.....

bw, mdeneen has the long range cure for this up his sleeve, the concept of utilizing circuit engineering to bypass or render the particularities of NOS tubes irrelevant to the design goals, which means that for the price of some inexpensive resistors, one might be able to get optimum results with new tubes available at a fraction of the expense of NOS mania.

This, of course, is way over my head, but I am merely expressing an overview of a concept he is playing with, stay tuned. This makes so much sense, if you think about it, for example, there just is not a great economical future with an amp that uses, say, KT66 output tubes or many others like that, what with star-struck guitar rockers escalating the prices so far beyond what audiophiles might want to invest.....in rare NOS Gold Lions or some such five years from now. I was glad to see that mobile found some good results with those Sovtek 2A3's. It would be such a relief to know that tubes don't always have to cost two or three times what the amp costs or more!

btw, the mdeneen joint Mystery Amp project (radical modification built on my Dynaco st70 chasis and transformers), is nearing completion. It is actually all built and now the bench testing and trouble shooting and tweaking of the experimental circuit, hope to put in the good tubes next week and make those bias adjustments and see what this critter looks like on the scope. I picked up a quad of "El Treintaquatro Duplo Coronas" which we will be smoking for the celebration. Incidentally those Mexican made Mullards are the best NOS bargain going. Because we have balance and bias controls in the circuit, I did not have to worry about matches. We will just light up those stogies with the dashboard lighter we installed on the front panel and tweak them into smoking high-fidelity.

mdeneen partly uses empirical methods in his design approach which gives a whole other meaning to the concept of tube rolling. He has informed me that we might actually be altering the just assembled driver circuit to accomodate other tube possibilities which might get us more gain than the three 12AU7s used in Cathode Follower, maybe rigging them up as Cauliflower Fodder, or something like that, what do I know, I am a gardener not an engineer. I just want to increase the bloom and deal with the grain.

"Madame, this is a restaurant, not a meadow"

OK, Film buffs, what movie is that classic line from?

-C&S

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Cornwalls

currently upgrading

to all tube components