I want to love vinyl, but...

Actually I often change inner even if it is higher quality, as dust, dirt and other residue can still be inside. Keeping an old inner from dirty record IMHO is akin of taking a shower and then putting your dirty clothes back on... ))) Quality 3-ply antistatic inners are 20 cents or less in bulk..
Of course keep record-specific inners, just don't use them.

 

You know, I understand this is a common observation, that colored vinyl sounds noisier, but I have some colored vinyl records that sound great, and no noisier than the average black vinyl record.

I think one thing that may happen with a lot of colored vinyl releases is lack of care in pressing them. They’re often not really marketed toward audiophiles, but rather to people who like the novelty of having a record on colored vinyl. But I’ve bought new releases that were issued only on colored vinyl, and those sound just fine, I assume because those were the standard release and not novelty reissues.

So, colored vinyl is not inherently noisier, IME. Keep in mind, black vinyl is also colored to be black...

 

Yes, that was the point I tried to make (but apparently failed lol ).
Often it's not noise inherent to the colored vinyl PVC material or pressing itself, but often noise related to the cleanliness of those records.
As long as you clean it just as good as a black one, it sounds just as good - most of the time.

 

I think why I tend to find that colored vinyl is more noisy is that I have a harder time cleaning it - it's much easier to make sure the liquid cleaning solution gets spread right to cover the entire LP on a record that is black vinyl.

 

Sorry, I should have given some indication that I was meaning to agree with your point and add my own experience to it.

 

I’m sure. I just also think there may be pressing defects in a run that is not being held to the same QC standards as something that is being marketed to people who know what good vinyl is supposed to sound like.

 

Totally 100% agree.

 

I've yet to find much of anything that interests me in Record Store Day releases. I love the music I grew up listening to (60's and 70's), and quite a bit of jazz. Most brand new music releases I buy as digital downloads, as they are routinely mastered digitally. That's not to say that an LP of such can't sound good -- they sure can. But I guess I don't see the point, thematically.

I do buy some new releases of all-analog process old jazz, such as the Acoustic Sounds series of all-analog Sterling masters being released now.

 

What sounds for all the world like surface noise can be caused by a poorly designed phono preamp. If it has poor high frequency overload margins it can make ticks and pops due to the activation (excitation) of the peak (which is either ultrasonic or radio frequency in nature) caused by the inductance of the cartridge and the capacitance of the tonearm interconnect cable. Get a preamp that does not have this problem and you may find the vinyl to be much quieter than you thought!

 

I don’t see how inductance or capacitance itself would create noise.
Passive components aren’t a voltage nor a current source.
The only noise it can produce that I know of is thermal noise, since that’s inherent to all matter.

 

Interesting. I do not remember phono preamp which "amplifies" clicks and surface noise, I thought it is related to low quality turntable and cartridge (poorly installed). But what you said I think it is very possible.

 

Off course there are vinyl releases that have better mastering than the CD/streaming. And a lot that have worse.
But I think one big reason playing LPs is not mainly about soundquality, but the handling and feeling playing.
Tonight I listen to a couple of Trentemoller LPs. Do they sound better than the CD? Probably not, I have not compared them. But I like the feeling to handle and play them. Like the feeling of an old car which technically can not beat new cars but give a much bigger feeling to drive them.

 

I use the built in phono in my Brio; doubtful it's the culprit based on what I've read its pretty decent

 

Love the car analogies....i have a bmw x3m40i(outrageous power...fastest car I've ever had)my audi tt 225 6 speed manual is more fun to drive,but my Porsche 944 5 speed manual...although much lower on horsepower,is probably the most fun car I've ever owned....you have to work for it, but it will do it!

 

Tubes, tubes, tubes.

Not sure if it's been said yet but give tubes a go - that's something that will be able to show you how vinyl and CD's can do different things sometimes < this is a neutral comment please be calm y'all.

I had the same feelings until I heard 60's, 70's and some 80's original pressings through peoples tube setups, that's when the penny dropped - like, ah, there's something special to this.

 

I think these cd vs vinyl are good discussions. It’s nice to hear different opinions. I don’t think we should make it an argument. But the discussion is very interesting.

As I wrote earlier, I’m not sure why I prefer vinyl. Yo be it sounds better than other fore mats. But, since I really can’t point out why I think a good bit of the reason is nostalgia. I grew up in the late 60’s, early 70’s. When I put on a R & R Album from that time it’s relaxing. I’m not dreaming If the past, but I like the music from that era. I think many of us prefer the music on which we grew up.

 

Say, I like this analogy!

 

Pops and clicks being over prominent is likely down to lack of headroom in a phono stage design. Decent linear power supplies help here. Can't see how capacitance and inductance can cause surface noise apart from MM being too bright could exaggerate noise in the treble region.

 

You'd be surprised at how many phono preamp designers think this same way.

So here's how it works. Your cartridge is an inductor- it has coils in it. The cable that goes from the tonearm to the preamp has a capacitance. They are in parallel; when these two things are in parallel you get a tuned circuit- a resonance. This is exactly how you tune an FM radio - by a fixed inductance and a variable capacitance. Anyway, even though the cartridge won't make the frequency of this resonant peak, the energy it produces sets the peak into something called excitation. Now if you have a low output moving coil cartridge, the peak I'm referring to can be at 2MHz and can be as much as 30dB - that's 1000x stronger than the cartridge signal itself. Imagine the energy of the cartridge- and the turntable is spinning the record during all this- setting off a peak like that. It can easily overload a phono section if this phenomena hasn't been taken into account when the phono section was designed. You get a 'tick'. I found out about this phenomena serendipitously about 35 years ago- and so its been on my radar ever since, and its why I'm very used to hearing no ticks and pops for the duration of most LPs I own (and also because I don't dance on them...).

I run an LP mastering operation so I can tell you some things that might explain what you hear. The LP has the most bandwidth of any format we play back. More than tape, more than digital. Any phono section, any cartridge made since 1968 or so has bandwidth past 40KHz, and my Westerex 3D cutter head is bandwidth limited to 42KHz, but it can easily cut grooves with signal that high, and I can easily play them back on my old SL1200 I got on Craigslist equipped with a Grado Gold MM cartridge. The distortion of the LP is actually lower than tape (although that can be tricky to measure, since it requires that you play something back, and to do that you have to have some pretty good playback equipment in order to have a better idea of what's going on) and it doesn't help if the digital has aliasing problems; that can be pretty audible as 'crispness'...

 

What's your go-to phono stage these days? And I assume the above is a big part of the reason folks recommend tube-based phono stages (i.e. overload margin)?

 

RIAA Midyear Report: Vinyl Revenues Exceed Those of CDs— First Time Since 1982

"And keep in mind the RIAA misses a great deal of vinyl sales activity including all used record sales, which it doesn't cover at all."

 

I have a few colored albums that were gifts. I agree with what u wrote. It’s harder for me to tell if they are clean. On one I own, I can’t tell the division between tracks. I prefer uncolored(?) black vinyl.

 

I think that has a lot to do with it. Colored vinyl did sell records due to its novelty aspect.

They would not be releasing audiophile grade records on colored vinyl if the audio quality was not there.

In speaking of colored vinyl, besides the color aspect, the record might have been pressed with a lesser grade of vinyl with more impurities.

Who knows for sure?

 

Hi Ralph,

Not to change the subject (to the extent that I even understand the subject!), but what sort of LP mastering are you involved with? I know about Atma-Sphere, of course, but wasn't aware that you also did mastering. Sounds cool!

chris

 

Funny how that works!
I mean, it's obvious that the capacitance and inductance can start to oscillate in theory, but it would never even cross my mind that it would be of any significance!
Most preamps have some decoupling caps at their inputs to reduce rf noise and the cable capacitance itself decouples a tiny bit as well.