Did they ever attempt to improve the VINYL format?

The people who market it will tell you less likely to warp, better groove fidelity when pressed.

The reality is that, to a good extent, the primary value is often just marketing--it's a tactile difference that makes a record feel/look impressive to the buyer.

 

Not sure, some say it doesn't sound as good but the new Nirvana In Utero was done with this process and I think it sounds great.

 

If done in conjunction with using a better quality virgin vinyl it will sound better than the lightweight stuff but it isn't a huge difference.

 

If I sit back and think about vinyl music reproduction - it's amazing that it sounds as good as it does. I mean a stick is holding a little phono cartridge that is sitting inside a groove. The record spins, EQ is applied, and music is reproduced. Simply amazing considering all the processes that go into making it. And it really shows some cleverness on the part of Edison, Berliner, and others.

Anyway, the best vinyl - and by that, I mean spooky quiet - are some of my Japanese records. JVC vinyl?

 

One theoretical improvement (although probably difficult to implement in practice) would be to go from constant angular velocity (e.g. fixed RPM) to constant linear velocity (like CDs). So basically at the edge the record might be spinning at 20rpm. On the inner grooves it could doing more than double that, the idea being that an equal amount of groove is present for each second of music.

On a standard 12" LP, at the outer edge you have roughly 21 inches of groove per second, but down on the innermost groove it's down to only 8" or so.

 

It makes the record more expensive and therefore better.

 

I believe the 3 main European pressing plants (GZ, Optimal and Record Industry), and some smaller ones as well I'm sure, all use DMM lathes for their in-house cutting, even if there's no explicit mention of it on their products. I do still see it advertised on some of the public domain jazz reissues from DOXY, WaxTime, etc. (which I believe are made at Optimal). DMM releases were pretty standard by the late 80's/early 90's as you say, and these lathes are the most likely ones to have survived the CD era and being taken back in production now.

 

DMM is a minority method of cutting in the USA, EuroDisk Plating and mastering had DMM and MasterDisk were the main mastering houses who owned DMM lathes. When EuroDisk closed, their DMM lathes were purchased by the Church Of Scientology at their equipment auction. Which means that the majority of the US DMM mastering capacity was taken out of use by that purchase.

 

I'm pretty sure the Nirvana was done somewhere in England. I think that is one of the main reasons why they remastered the album at Abbey Road