Muffled records phenomena

Would you like me to come and repaint your car? It still drives the same.

Records are black, the sky is green, cheese is yesterday and dammit I don't like record company gimmicks.

 

Hard to argue when you put it like that.

 

Well vinyl is generally clear. Is it just like a social construction turned to the "right way" for you?

 

I have no idea what that means, but none of it is going to convince me that a raspberry starburst record belongs on my turntable. A shirt, maybe, but not a record.

We've completely derailed here. I'd rather track down a better sounding original/early (and fully analog) pressing than a clear (digitally mastered) one.

 

Im saying that the color of the vinyl doesnt matter and that if green was the easiest color of choice they used back when records were made you would be sitting here saying that other colors dont belong.
Multicoloring is a little different however.

 

Right. But every record I own is black, and if I have a choice, I'd like to keep it that way. I think different colors are gimmicky and an attempt to part easily impressed fools from their money. If the majority of records were clear, green, orange, checkerboard, whatever, I'd say the same thing. I like consistency. I've spent my whole life under the assumption that "records=black" and anything that falls outside of that looks dumb to me.

 

Well there we go, thats fair enough. The important thing is to recognize that we hold some socially constructed norms and expectations.

 

You can argue your point with our host if you like...

 

Would like to have this agent explained as Ive heard of it before yet never seen any evidence for it. Furthermore I think the key word here is "CAN". Any record, no matter the color can be noisy if its simply pressed from bad vinyl and done with poor QC. Likewise if the vinyl is great and QC is too then the color shouldnt matter very much because it will be dead quiet either way. Also this:

 

The agent is called carbon black. As I said, feel to hit up the host of the site...he’s done a few records in his day.

 

Carbon black is used as the coloring dye. Dont see why the agent or similar cant be in other colors.
And what Id prefer is some actual papers of the matter. But those will probably never turn up Im guessing.

 

As I said, feel free to discuss this with Steve Hoffman.

Colored records are the worst in sound quality, is the easiest way to say it. Records are made of a polyvinyl chloride, which is why we call them vinyl. The manufacturer adds carbon black to the polyvinyl chloride (which is originally an ugly translucent grey material) to give it a black color. The extra benefit it that it makes the record slipperier, and as a result the noise of the record is considerably lower and the life of the record is higher because there is less fiction. There are some white materials which are similar; It’d be nice to make a record out of Teflon but that is not going to happen anytime too soon. When you take the black out of the vinyl is just becomes the vinyl on the surface. When you add a color dye (as opposed to the black carbon), it’s not as good as a surface vinyl and is nosier and has less of a life. The other thing you can do is put a picture on the record, pictures are basically terrible, they look great and are collector items, but if you play it more than ten times, it’s probably ruined. The record groove cannot be cut deep enough and the material used to place the picture seen, does not have any resiliency or life time. Basically, black records will last a lot longer and play quieter.


The Audio Guru: How does color affect a record's quality?

 

You got any sources for this @Steve Hoffman ? Id love to read it.
Not talking about colored vs non colored vinyl but specifically the agent only residing in carbon black vs other colors.

 

The one that was pressed on clear for the first run? I’ve been thinking of the getting that. I never had much complaints about the DSD remastered CD from the early 00s, which I played to death.

On the topic of this thread digital sources for compilations actually make a lot of sense to avoid analog generation loss.

 

Never thought about that, makes sense. Or you just go ham like Chad at Analog Productions and get every master tape of the Steppenwolf albums to make a best of compilation with just a few tracks from each tape.
Wont count on that happening again anytime soon.

 

Yeah, that’s serious dedication. Of course not all 60s and 70s cosmos sound as bad as Hot Rocks. I have quite a few that sound good, probably based on what tapes the comp itself was being cut from.

 

The clear vinyl pressing. SQ is very good. You won’t find a a London pressing that will better the clear vinyl reissue.

 

I only said that sometimes it might be a gimmick but that doesn’t mean it always is.

 

Well I too don’t really go out of my way to get a colored vinyl but when I do get one I would lie if I said I don’t like how it looks.

 

How the hell did one irrelevant comment derail the thread like this so thoroughly? I don't like records that are a different color than black. I'm not sure why I need to present a thesis to defend this, especially in a thread where this is not relevant at all.