Similarly, others see the pops and ticks, rapid wear, uneven high
frequency performance, limited dynamic range, increased distortion, wow,
and flutter associated with ancient vinyl technology as "more
authentic".
Pops and ticks are often a sign of an unstable
phono stage with poor overload margins and in that regard, price has
nothing to do with it. People often confuse ticks and pops with the
media. But when an LP is produced, the producer has to sign off on the
test pressing, and one of the things they sign off on is the noise floor
of the LP including ticks and pops. I have plenty of LPs at home that
play the entire side without a problem- and I played some of those at
the recent AXPONA show as a demo of how important phono preamp stability
is. Speed variation is really a thing of the past- no machine made
today or anytime in the last 30 years has audible wow and flutter unless
malfunctioning.
I run a studio and an LP mastering facility;
LPs are usually uncompressed with regard to the digital release files
(this is because the industry expects the latter to be played in cars).
We usually have to request the files in a form untreated by DSP other
than normalization. Our cutter head is indeed ancient, being a Westerex
3D; the 1700 mastering amplifiers are cut off at 42KHz, which is the
practical upper FR of almost any LP- not that there is anything up
there, but most people don't realize that the LP has that sort of
bandwidth (and has since the late 1950s). As far as distortion goes- that
mostly occurs in playback, not record and in that regard is highly
variable according to the ability of the arm to actually track the
cartridge correctly, and how stable the phono section actually is. That
distortion is often much lower than cited by those with a myopic digital viewpoint.
It should be telling that Technics has chosen to jump
back into the LP market with 3 'table entries- all of which were seen at
the recent AXPONA. LP titles are far easier to find now and sales are
still on the rise; the market seems to like them despite their being
somehow 'inferior'. Usually when a succeeding
art replaces the prior art, the latter is usually consigned to the dust
bins of history and the occasional collector. But the LP isn't doing
that- all the pressing houses in the US are busy and often backed up 6
months. 1992, 26 years ago, was the year of least vinyl production.
