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New Vinyl Quality

r042wal

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Aug 20, 2022
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Ontario (Canada)
I have been an audiophile since the mid 70s. I remember the days of Thorens turntables and Shure V15 cartridges. Today I am all digital. I have a great collection on my Aurender and I am very happy with my gear. My wife loves our SiriusXM subscription and I have found some amazing artists from XM even though we also have a Tidal subscription.

A lot of the fun for me is hearing something I like and tracking it down so I can add it to my collection. I thought about jumping back onto the vinyl bandwagon but I was reminded about the poor and aging vinyl lathes and record presses. Both machines are expensive and as the demand dropped in the 80s and 90s, not a lot of money was sunk into new equipment. This was reflected in the poor quality vinyl presses that were coming out back then.

Fast forward to the new resurgence in vinyl today and the disposable income audiophiles have. I do not think new lathes or presses are keeping up with the demand for quality.

For me, given my age, I did not see any point starting all over with vinyl paying absurd prices for albums I already have that likely sound better. It does not surprise me if there are quality issues on new presses. YMMV
 

LouB

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Nov 20, 2022
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Weirdly, though I'm 59 and grew up listening to records, I can't remember worrying at all about record quality - as in opening a record "I hope this one will sound ok." I don't know if that's because record quality was more consistant in the 70's or if, since it was the main medium we just went with "it is what it is." I know I cared about sound quality though.
!00% & not weird records back than played fine, only ones F-uped were well used. I hated scratches & skips & pops & never after buying at least 400 new records I never had a bad one. I stopped buying them around 1980
 
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