Interesting and worrying article on the challanges facing the vinyl manufacturing industry..

cmalak

cmalak

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...Pressed to the Edge: Why vinyl hype is destroying the record

It's interesting because if the supply tightness is so pronounced in so many steps of the value chain in producing a vinyl record, you would assume that capital would come in and invest in new lacquer cutting machines/heads, electroplating, and vinyl printing/pressing machines. Where there are excess profits to be made, new capacity/supply often comes in but my guess is the capital required to design and manufacture new machinery still does not see a big enough market to justify the investment required. So the vinyl market, while growing and stressed by the current levels of demand, is not big enough to attract new investment, and if participants don't believe that this rebound in demand is sustainable and is more of a fad likely to fizzle out over time, then new capital is unlikely to materialize to invest to supply badly needed new machines in all the phases of production of a vinyl record (lacquer cutting, plating, pressing/printing).
 
Cyril - I think your belief that the execs see this as a fad likely to fizzle out over time as spot on....sadly.
 
Oh, absolutely agree Cyril! I've been thinking this for a long time, ever since I got back into vinyl. It's really sad.
 
Mike said:
Cyril - I think your belief that the execs see this as a fad likely to fizzle out over time as spot on....sadly.
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Myles may have more pertinent information, but I suspect that the percentage of current LP's pressed (and sold) that are from digital masters is high, which would (for better or worse) support the "fad" hypothesis.
 
I would like to hear this story from Chad's perspective. I also thought there was more cutter heads available than what the article stated. Ditto for the electroplating. If the demand for vinyl continues to grow and proves it has staying power (which it certainly appears to), money will have to be invested in developing new presses. Look what Chad had to go through in order to purchase and rebuild the presses he now has. The good news is that Chad has brought innovative improvement to his presses which increases the quality and consistency of his pressings.

What concerns me more than maintaining or increasing the ability to produce vinyl is another issue. How much longer will we see real master tapes being released from the vaults in order to produce the reissues we are buying? I see the day coming sooner rather than later that all LPs will be produced from digital files. We can argue whether that's ok or not ok, but I don't think we can argue that it will happen. The only thing that would stop that is if we saw the major studios return to recording using analog tape. Since no one outside of Otari currently is manufacturing tape decks (and the Otari is not a studio quality machine like a Studer A80 or A820), that is a harder nut to crack than the vinyl pressing issue. Never mind the issue of whether studios would go back to analog after they have lived in the digital world for so many years and have become comfortable with all of the editing tools they have at their disposal to fix sour notes and some singers who can't really sing. I wish the studios would go back to analog though, and two track at that. If you go back and listen to the great recordings made during the 1950s that smoke most all contemporary recordings in terms of sound quality, dynamics, sense of aliveness, they were either mono or 2 track recordings. We lost that magic once the track numbers available for recording continued to expand.
 
Regardless of what one thinks about the relative sound quality of LP's, analog tape and various digital formats it seems pretty clear to me (as Mark also implies) that the future of recording is digital. So all this "talk" about new tapes, LP's, 'tables/arms/cartridges is certainly fun, and probably rewarding "right now", but if the goal is to have better sounding recorded music in the future I think most efforts should be focussed on improving digital recordings. JMO, YMMV, etc.
 
Buy up as much vinyl while you can? That said, I have not had any problem finding vinyl. Quality pressed vinyl, that has been a challenge! That said, I have thousands of vinyl in my library. So, even if it dries up. I have plenty to listen to until my eventual death.
 
Well said. We won't go without a lot of kicking and screaming, but certainly the focus has to be on getting a great recording. I guess what bothered me the most when I toured Recording Studios in Orlando last year, was the over processing of the music. Every millisecond was analyzed.

Why can't we just have recordings like the First Aid Kit and Tracy Chapman songs on Letterman the other night? Hang a few microphones and press record! We'll live with the warts for the overall beauty.
 
Mike said:
Well said. We won't go without a lot of kicking and screaming, but certainly the focus has to be on getting a great recording. I guess what bothered me the most when I toured Recording Studios in Orlando last year, was the over processing of the music. Every millisecond was analyzed.

Why can't we just have recordings like the First Aid Kit and Tracy Chapman songs on Letterman the other night? Hang a few microphones and press record! We'll live with the warts for the overall beauty.
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Right on. We didn't have all this mess up through the mid 70s and we bought vinyl and we liked it as is.

Of course, the masters were in good shape and today I think one of the saddest things is the shape of a lot of masters.

~Eric
 
MusicDirector said:
Right on. We didn't have all this mess up through the mid 70s and we bought vinyl and we liked it as is...
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Not all of us liked it... I didn't particularly like LP's in the '60's and '70's, it was just the only real alternative to good sound. I wish we had progressed more in 40 years :(
 
rbbert said:
Not all of us liked it... I didn't particularly like LP's in the '60's and '70's, it was just the only real alternative to good sound. I wish we had progressed more in 40 years :(
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I feel so young now!
 
rbbert said:
Not all of us liked it... I didn't particularly like LP's in the '60's and '70's, it was just the only real alternative to good sound. I wish we had progressed more in 40 years :(
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Well yes, as always to each their own.
For me, I'm happy with them and think they can sound great, of course we have more advanced gear now to get them there.

Another thing I think about is the quality of the PVC itself now days, before pressing. A lot of it used by the big guys doing vinyl for masses is junk (all kind of different plastics and the kitchen sink in it). I wonder what Chad and other quality houses are using, where are they getting correctly produced PVC? I'd think we could be manufacturing the stuff by now in large quantities. I wonder how expensive or inexpensive it is?
 
CMALAK,
If we agree that the vinyl revival has legs and is gaining momentum, then I wonder what public companies, if any, would stand to benefit. It would be interesting to identify an investment play based on growing vinyl production and retail sales. My initial thought is that for most big media or industrial companies that would participate, the vinyl related business would be a small segment of the companies' total profits. And it is not as if we expect a commensurate revival of record stores in a world where lowest price physical media retail purchases are a mouse click away.
 
BayStBroker said:
CMALAK,
If we agree that the vinyl revival has legs and is gaining momentum, then I wonder what public companies, if any, would stand to benefit. It would be interesting to identify an investment play based on growing vinyl production and retail sales. My initial thought is that for most big media or industrial companies that would participate, the vinyl related business would be a small segment of the companies' total profits. And it is not as if we expect a commensurate revival of record stores in a world where lowest price physical media retail purchases are a mouse click away.
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We have already seen the major labels return to issuing vinyl again, even though they no longer own their own pressing plants. If the numbers get big enough for the major labels, they would certainly stand to benefit if they were able to have a controlling interest in either an existing pressing plant or bringing a new one on line. As for the here and now, they have to get in line with everyone else. I believe that is what drove Chad to start up his own pressing plant.
 
Good topic- it's not a fad. Hey so what's wrong with digital sourced vinyl? I'm guessing the studio's DACs are first rate, no?


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o0OBillO0o said:
Good topic- it's not a fad. Hey so what's wrong with digital sourced vinyl? I'm guessing the studio's DACs are first rate, no?


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The real point here is that analog people don't want their analog converted to digital and then back to analog no matter how great the studio ADC/DAC's are.
 
And can you point us to resource that shows that analog converted to digital and back to analog is a real detriment? And not a phobia..


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