Inside One Of the Last Vinyl Record Manufacturers 382
jonerik writes "The Nashville Tennessean has this look at Nashville's United Record Pressing, one of the last vinyl record manufacturers left in the U.S. Although LPs and 12" and 7" singles make up a tiny portion of the American music market at this point, the article reports that United's business is booming, thanks to consolidation within Nashville's record pressing business community, steady orders for the jukebox market, techno, dance, reggae, and rap orders, and this year's 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. 'Elvis has been good to us. I can't complain,' says Cris Ashworth, the company's owner."
Obviously doesn't reflect the UK market... (Score:5, Interesting)
From here [independent.co.uk]
All my friends are DJ's. I see a lot of vinyl...
I remember vinyl (Score:5, Interesting)
Nowadays you just stick a CD into a $50 player sitting on the table and get just as good a sound, and you don't have to worry about dust nearly as much.
I don't miss LPs.
I do miss the cover art, though. Cover art is why I still have about 50 of them.
Vinyl writers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DJs (Score:3, Interesting)
Decent DJ quality direct drive turntables typically go for more like $250 each. The cost difference between turntables and CD decks really isn't that great.
Re:Last??? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is something I think I know a little bit about. For years the family business has been a DJ/Karaokee business, and quite a profitable one, too. The fact that I also keep in close contact with other DJs and KJs in the area also helps me keep an eye on what other people are doing. MP3s, MCGs, and CDs played back through professional decks occupy almost all of the DJ scene. I don't DJ personally, but I do help maintain the equipment which can be a job all it's own.
With high end CD decks, it's possible to do anything that can be done with a record, and in fact it can be done better. Can it be done cheaper, easier, and without figuring out a bunch of controls with vinyl? Sure it can. But with a CD you won't be damaging your source material when you use it and you can also do some pre-production mixing that is beat-perfect without the risk of live-show error (which is both bad for your reputation and embarassing.)
If you want the best in professional CD decks, there's no shortage of sources, but if you want some high quality MP3 and MCG players, I recommend taking a look at these guys [cavs-usa.com]. They can supply you with both the hardware and legal copies of karaokee songs for use in your shows. As for music, it's possible to simply rip the music you paid for the proper way, assuming you're doing it legal. (Of course you ARE, aren't you?)
If you want to keep up to speed with what's going on in the DJ Business, also try the DJ magazines...
Re:Burp QWZX (Score:3, Interesting)
Digital distortion, on the other hand, often results in odd-order distortion, and is ugly.
Your attitude is about as reasonable as theirs.
Pearl Jam and Vinyl (Score:3, Interesting)
The fan club singles they release every year are also only put out on vinyl. An interesting note: it was a trip to the Library of Congress that sealed this decision: vinyl, unlike tape and CD is impervious to time and will not break down if it is protected from damage, unlike magnetic and optical formats (tapes and CDs)
I have no idea who presses the Pearl Jam vinyls. I do know that PJ's album "Vitalogy" was the the last vinyl album to enter the billboard top 100 list.
Viable Backup Media? (Score:3, Interesting)
They holdup well with reasonable care. Many jukeboxs are still playing records from the 50's. They are not effected by magnetic field. They also take stratched better the cd's and dvd's.
I would love to backup a gig to a 45.
If you think and 45 is a gun, your too young to understand this post.
Re:Last??? (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole point of live performance is that something is being created on the fly that will never happen just that way again. This applies to a musician OR a DJ. I'd much rather go see a DJ mixing and matching as s/he goes. Darn, some things won't be perfect. But some things will be done so amazingly well that I'll remember the mad mix skillz of that DJ for the rest of my life.
DJs create music. Anything else is just a jukebox.
DJs? What about independent music in general? (Score:2, Interesting)
Everyone's mentioning DJs as the primary consumers of modern-day vinyl. What about the independent music industry in general?
I have a friend in a band whose fourth record, a LP, was just released last week (Mara'Akate [maraakate.com]). It will also be released as a CD, but their three previous records were vinyl-only (and have all sold out).
In addition, take a look at any indie record store. For instance, look at Insound [insound.com]. They sell a TON of vinyl. These are new releases too.
Collecting of new vinyl is strong as well. That is, in addition to collecting old stuff like Led Zeppelin. Take a look at some of the vinyl auctions at Skylab [skylabcommerce.com]. People pay $20 for a seven inch pressed two years ago.
For some information about pressing vinyl (including a list of companies who do it) in the independent music world, check out Indie Centre [indiecentre.com].
I know DJs search thrift stores and garage sales for their vinyl, and hip hop artists routinely release new record, but I think that the indie rock (including all of the sub-genres you can imagine) is what's REALLY keeping vinyl alive (and quite well).
Finally... someone mentioned those Evatone [evatone.com] sound sheets (the flimsy, paper-thin records formerly included in magazines and happy meals...)... they were still being pressed as recently as five years ago.
Not the last.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out The Scratch Free Press [scratchfree.ca] for just one of many great examples of people still pushing the vinyl thang.. It is very far from being dead.. Here's a google on Vinyl Mastering [google.ca] and Vinyl Pressing [google.ca]
Re:I remember vinyl QWZX (Score:2, Interesting)
However, the death of the record should be near as DVD players start to come out with DVD-Audio and SACD compatibility. I just got a DVD-Audio player, which supports 24-bit samples, sampling rates up to 192 KHz, and up to six surround sound channels (CD's and records are just two stereo channels).
Basically, no human being can realistically say that the record is better than DVD-Audio (and probably SACD too).
Unfortunately, those in the electronics industry think that DVD-Audio and SACD have to fight some sort of a stupid format war. So most consumers will have to chose one player type over the other. A few smart companies, like Apex and Pioneer, know that they can just make DVD players that play both formats.
Re:Obviously doesn't reflect the UK market... (Score:3, Interesting)
Underground Dance (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides, digital cannot reproduce the rich fullness of broken-in vinyl basslines, especially at high volume. Needle wear, and even the initial recording process produce extra curves in the recorded sounds, whereas digital picks up every single square corner of the wave accurately and completely, which gives it that "clear but cold" sound which so many audiophiles complain of. Vinyl adds some smoothing to the process. Worn midrange-highend also adds a bit of character (not too worn, mind you, there is definately a cutoff point), as the slight distortion not only gives the impression that the sound is louder than it really is but helps clarify it amongst the heavy low-end.
That, and it's just not as much fun to spin a plastic controller wheel to align beats as it is to actually spin the platter with your hand. Vinyl is a truely interactive medium. A CD turntable is just that: a CD player with advanced fast forward/rewind, but a turntable is like dragging a bow across a string, you are actually the generating vibrations, not some DAC in a black box.
It is for these reasons I believe vinyl will never die. However, I don't believe it will ever be anything but a niche market.
Vinyl Video (Score:3, Interesting)
I just went and say the exhibit at the ICA [ica.org.uk] tonight. This stuff is pretty cool. The basic premise is that there was a missing link in home recording and this product really should have existed at some point. The images, music and cover art of the vinyl is super nice.
You are the one who is uninformed (Score:3, Interesting)
FACT: most people can hear up to at least 30 kHz. No, they cannot hear a pure sine wave at that frequency. But they can hear a difference if such frequencies are or are not present in the music. Moreover, almost all music contains such frequencies. No, not as pure sine waves. And it is not even the harmonics that cause the effect. Rather, because to duplicate the waveform transients, you must have the high frequencies. (Think Fourier.)
Yes, such transients are reproduced on vinyl. No, they are not reproduced on CD.
There are various controlled studies demonstrating these things. Since you are such an authority, I shouldn't need to give you references, but since I'm so magnanimous, I'll give a few anyway:
91: 3207 [1991].
Your final star'ed points are just dumb. You don't give any references, because of course you don't have any. Get a good turntable/arm/cartridge. The reverse of most of what you say is true. E.g. your claim of 60dB dynamic range is nuts: the range is over 100 dB. You are confusing the noise floor of a high-hiss record with dynamic range--but you can hear 20 dB into that noise, and a good record need not have high hiss. Vinyl has poor bass??? It's much better than CD. And so on.
Re:analog (Score:3, Interesting)
Is is possible that this interest in complete audio "clarity" (i.e. removing all distortion) is misguided in the first place? (I distinguish "complete clarity" - the apparent end goal of digital audio - from "apparent clarity", which I'd define as the level that we've had with analog tape (studio) and vinyl since the 60's, if not the 50's.)
I am seriously interested in this question; my reasoning is as follows:
In the universe I live in, there's _plenty_ of misc. noise going on around me _all_the_time_ (at the moment I can hear the fan of my computer, the ventilation system, the cars outside, some wind, a little rain on the road, some electrical hum, and the noises I make breathing, shifting, and typing).
In order to avoid as much of this noise as possible, one must more or less lock oneself in a recording studio (shielded ventilation, sound-proofing, headphones, etc.). These environments are great for recording in, but this is because they are in no way like real life environments; in fact, they are very unlike real life environments, and thus (for most people) rather uncomfortable compared to real environments. (Just ask anyone stuck in an inside office with no windows or ventilation.)
What concerns me is that the goal of perfect audio clarity seems to me to have the implicit side-goal of reproducing the audio sterility of the recording studio along with the musical (or other) sounds that we want to hear. This environmental "non-sound" (though "extremely low noise" might be a better way to put it) is increasingly apparent in pop recording, esp. with the popularity of using mixing and misc. effects to create sounds that are simply not performable in the real world, even if they are originally based on (pieced-together) recordings of real instruments/people. The pieced-together nature of this work, esp. when designed to have some resemblance to recordings of live performances, tends to become more apparent the greater the "clarity" of the audio reproduction.
Because of this, I wonder if the distortion/warmth/whatever you want to call it of analog audio may smooth the path between the underlying sterility of studio-created recordings and the noisy environments (disregarding the most isolated and expensive of audiophile set-ups) that is our typical experience of music, whether it be at home, in the car, in a park on a boom box or walkman, inside a store, at a rock show, in a place of worship, or in a grandly appointed concert hall.
Another way to put this is to ask whether engineering the reproduction of perfectly "clear" audio may be incidentally depriving that audio of some natural "timbre" that we expect of sounds produced/performed in real world environments.
And if this is the case, do the imperfections of analog-reproduced audio perhaps act as a some sort of substitue "timbre", therby enabling the sounds that they "distort" to be perceived as more a part of our surroundings, and therefore more familiar and welcome?
(A perhaps interesting side question is to ask whether the advent of "perfectly clear" audio may result in increasing efforts to "dirty up" recordings in order to remove a listener-alienating aural sterility; I've already heard anecdotes to this effect, but I don't follow the audio industry closely enough to distinguish B.S. from actual common practice)