Why do US pressings suck?

You very incorrect about most of CD history. This has been discussed by some excellent CD historians on this very forum for at least 15 years by some very knowledgeable people and enthusiasts (most are in the Long and Winding Threads/Early CD pressings) who have either collected CDs from the very beginning or bought almost all out there or were in the industry.

My point is not to give you a hard time at all. After all, we are all enthusiasts. More it is about not putting out incorrect information that has been more than validated, but is fact.

CD manufacturing for the beginning was tied to consumer electronics manufacturers at the time who had either big bets in selling hardware and/or had software business units to help promote the format and content.

Examples are:
1982
Philips (inventor of the CD format - thank you!) who owned at the time with Siemens, PolyGram Records (Polydor, Deutsche Gramophon, Decca UK/London, Mercury/Veritgo/Philips labels). First CD factory in Hannover, Germany.
Sony - then affiliated with US CBS/Columbia/Epic records in Japan (CBS/Sony) and later joint venture to make CDs (DADC) and then bought out CBS Records. Second CD factory in Japan.
Nippon Columbia/Denon - Originally the Japan arm of Columbia Records, developed into its own hardware and software label. The third CD factory in 1982. No relation to post 1960s Columbia Records.

1983
Matsushita Electric/National/Panasonic/Technics (now Panasonic) who owned at the time Victor/JVC and its record label (Victor Entertainment) and half of the Japanese arm of PolyGram/Philips - Nippon Phonogram. JVC opened its own CD plant in 1983, along with Matsushita's own.
Toshiba- had a joint venture with EMI in Japan - Toshiba-EMI to make and distribute music in Japan. Became a CD presser in 1983.
Sanyo also started in 1983, supplied many record labels and had loose affiliations with Matsushita/Panasonic.

After that others started investment in CD factories after supply and demand went back and forth on a hockey stick trajectory in 1984:
Central Tape Agency (CTA Co. Ltd.), a small Japanese record label, started a CD factory and supplied smaller labels and WEA/Warner & Fantasy.
Nimbus, a UK record label, started its own CD plant in the UK, their first. It supplied many majors in the UK.
Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation/DADC - CBS/Sony Records Japan set a joint venture between US CBS/Columbia and Sony in Terre Haute, Indiana, US near the Columbia record factory and Columbia House record club facility to make CDs primarily for CBS' US labels (Columbia, Epic, Masterworks, etc.) and Columbia House club. Sony grew the plant quickly to also supply competing labels in the (MCA, WEA/Warner, A&M, BMG/RCA).
Sonopress - Started by publishing company Bertelsmann, who created Bertelsmann Music Group/Ariola to acquire RCA Records from its then owner- US General Electric to press LPs and then CDs in 1985.

After these plants opened, most of the CD plants afterward were either regional independents or local plants for supporting local arms of multinational record labels or existing CD pressers to support CD growth demand.

ICM , replicator began CD pressing in 1985 in Switzerland.
Praxis started CD pressing in Canada in 1985, later to be acquired by tape replicator, Cinram.

Memory-Tech (Mitsubishi Chemical/Verbatim,Tokyo Denca, Avex Records,) and Diao Kosan (Japanese chemical company) opened new plants to supply in 1986 and 1985 respectively.
EMI opened plants in 1986 in UK (EMI Swindon), the USA (Capitol JAX using others' master stampers), in Australia (DATA with WEA using UK/USA/Japan stampers)
WEA opened in its first CD plants in the USA and Germany (WEA Mfg and Warner Music Mfg. by acquiring Teldec's plant in Germany) in the same time frame.
Philips merged its CD operations from PolyGram into a joint venture with DuPont to create Philips-DuPont Optical (PDO) which opened plants or affiliates in USA, France, UK, Italy, and South Korea.
Sony DADC opened another plant in Austria in 1987.
Memory-Tech, Sanyo, Nimbus, Denon, MPO. JVC, all opened local plants in either US or Canada in 1986-1988.
Independents such as Disctronics, Disctec, Laservideo, Koch, Shape Optimedia, opened plants in Australia, Europe, or USA.

Most CDs by 1987 for the USA market were made in the USA;
CBS/Columbia - Sony DADC
MCA - DADC or JVC or Denon USA
PolyGram - PDO USA
A&M - DADC or PDO 0r Denon or JVC USA
WEA - primarily WEA Mfg using other plants
EMI - DADC USA or Capitol JAX

the rest were exceptions

 

Thank you so much for taking time to share this knowledge on my behalf. I was ignorant about all of this. I really appreciate your contribution to my understanding.

 

Echoing my reply to a similar response to my confusion, thank you so much for taking time to help me understand this. I was totally ignorant about how this process unfolds. I now fully understand. Helpful replies and sharing of knowledge such as this is a major reason why I love this forum so much. Thank you!

 

Oh, I've had some ripe old stinkers from RTI, with baked-in surface noise.

 

I am glad I gave you more insight into the differences. I try to educate people on them. W.B. here is especially well versed on USA records and their plants and printing variations, he could write 50 books on those subjects. I know US major label pressings reasonably well, how to tell where it was pressed, and in the era it was. W.B. knows it to deepest levels. Most USA records in general on major labels are often and usually pressed by two or more pressing plants, and in some cases 3 or even 4 plants. This is done to get records to market and less shipping involved. And reduce strain on pressing capacity if a big mega hit record happens, the record buyer wants his record when and where he wants it. Some huge top sellers like Beatles titles, Fleetwood Mac Rumours, Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, Grease soundtrack, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Eagles Greatest Hits, and Hotel California and others have sold 5,000,000 or more copies in the USA alone during their chart runs. And some of these records have sold in the excess of 10,000,000 copies audited by the USA Record Industry Association Of America aka the RIAA. This was pre 1985 sales numbers at that.

 

I guess I need to move to England!

 

I keep mentioning 1988 because that is when the CBS group planned to begin making CD's themselves and not using Sony. And, yes, according to written history, my timeline is correct.
Columbia Records Pressing Plant, Pitman

According to WEA history, they invested in CD manufacturing in 1986 and produced their first CD's in September 1986. Simultaneously, in 1986, a plant in Alsdorf Germany was expanded to begin producing CD's. Most of the early Warner Bros. CD's came from Germany. Without reading where the CD was made on the label, the easiest way to tell was most of the label side of the CD's were colored with the info and logo printed on the color for the German ones and the U.S. ones had the info and logo printed on the clear sealer.
As with other items manufactured or pressed by SRC, pre-WEA ownership and after, I suspect their output was distributed in that region. When in the radio station business, in the case of Atlantic/Atco records, if the records were mailed to us in CA from NY, they were usually SRC pressings. If mailed from their West Coast operations, they were pressed by Monarch(MO) and later Allied(AR). The other labels in WEA, Elektra did somewhat the same, but with the addition of pressings from Columba, Santa Maria. Fortunately, most in CA came from CSM. Warner tended to use CSM or other CBS plants and then Capitol. CSM and other Columbia plants closed around 1981 and were never involved in CD's.
PDO, Phillips DuPont Optical, manufactured CD's in the U.S. from 12/1986 to 6/1992 and after being acquired by Polygram changed to PMDO.

So, yes then, CD's were manufactured in the U.S. during the 80's, but most were still coming to the U.S. from Europe and Japan, atleast on the West Coast.

 

You obviously didn't read all my postings. Yes, I was there from near the beginning when CD sections in records stores amounted to less than 100 selections, if they sold CD's at all. All were imports. Later in the 80's, there were still many major label releases coming from Japan and Europe, as my 3,000+ CD collection confirms. I believe that Phillips, Mercury, etc. was Phonogram and later merged with Polydor to create Polygram, which is now UMe.

 

This x 1,000

Growing up in the 70s, (Bang and Oluson played once to a Nakamichi tape deck) pristine
collecting and going back in big time with an audiophile analog rig in 1998

The 72 oil embargo was huge -
By 73 thinner vinyl

US started using recycled vinyl which has a grungier hoigher surface noise.

UK being smaller country and market didn't do that practice to nearly the extreme.

Japan being an audiophile country used virgin vinyl - much cleaner.

Classical (US) plus England (London) + German
US jazz

Rock mostly country of orgin - not always

Master tapes etc

By 1978 there was less of a difference in some genres

Uk first pressings 60s - early 80s are awesome
First and early pressings many times have so much more engaging energy and presence
A whole different experience in many cases

Many times you could only get an import
Eno, Joy Division etc

Thats what 1,000s of Steve Hoffman threads are about and why discogs thrives

I am shocked at the poor quality of a lot of "audiophile modern pressing

Nonfill which you never heard back then (due to 180-200 gram vinyl which screws up your cartridge vta)

 

I did read them - cool to see that you also started from the beginning of CD! You must have a lot of great early pressings.

The answer (for the US market) for when non-US CD pressings started to diminish significantly can also be traced to certain CD plants huge capacity scale ups (either capacity increase of either multiples or magnitudes) and major record labels investing in their own capacity scale up:

1985
1. Sony DADC USA - added huge capacity in 1985-86 to become on the largest CD plants in the world - almost 80M discs/year. They became primary supplier to relation CBS/Columbia/Epic (both in the US and Canada) and Columbia House club along with a major supplier to most of the big 6 record labels for a few years, except PolyGram for the US market.

1986
2. PDO USA added huge capacity also in 1986 after opening. PDO W. Germany (the original PolyGram Hannover plant) also added huge capacity for Europe. So both plants could supply most of both markets for PolyGram labels' discs. PDO USA also supplied WEA/Warner as major supplier for a few years also and a minor supplier to the other big labels. PDO, of course, was a Philips/PolyGram related company with DuPont.

3. Laservideo opened two large capacity plants in 1986 - supplying primarily RCA/BMG's labels and it CD club, along with lots of independents and occasional spot fills for other majors.

1987
4. WEA Mfg. USA and EMI/Capitol JAX USA both opened their own CD plants in 1986, but huge volumes didn't start until 1987, thus both parent labels using many pressers until that point. WEA scaled to supply both of its US and Canadian label groups mostly by 1988. Capitol JAX was similar, but continued to source from other US plants to supplement production for its EMI/Capitol labels in the US. EMI used a variety of Canadian pressers in Canada for that market along with imports from the US and Europe/Japan to a lesser degree.

Remaining crumbs
5. US plants of previously imported pressing companies opened in smaller, but not small, capacities such Denon Digital US, JVC Disc America, Sanyo Laser USA, Nimbus US that replaced supply from Japan and UK respectively. All of these companies found it very hard to survive on music by the end of the 90s, since the CD boom was largely produced by the record labels' massive investment in captive capacity and consolidation of the record industry into 4 big companies, who all had their own affiliated plants. This forced these US based pressing plants to focus mostly on software CD-ROMs and gaming discs.

 

Not sure where you picked up this idea, but it's not an SHF accepted view, apart from the Japanese-is-always-better crew.

 

Around 1983, I was invited to a demonstration of the first CD player at Burdines in the 163rd Mall. The player in question was a Kycera front loader where you can see the disc spinning as it played. The demonstration got more entertaining when the guy who did the demonstration raked a car key across the Polygram demo disc to show everyone that "compact discs will play perfectly scratched up" causing everything to crash and burn. From then on, the player did nothing but dit-dit-dit-dit-dit no matter which track it was programmed to play. Five minutes after that, everyone left the demonstration while the demonstrator is trying to get his disc to play. That player sold for $1200, the 10 discs that were in stock were kept in a glass showcase and sold for $30- $40 each. American pressings were always mediocre since the labels are more interested in profit over quality, you think somebody like Henry Stone is going to press his TK labels at a plant like Specialty that charges (for example) $1 a L.P. no, he's going to use MRT or Caribean who charges .75 since profits are the bottom line. BTW, Stone's Hot Productions was the first label to issue CD-Rs. WEA could have issued Quiex II pressings of their pop offerings for a dollar or 2 extra instead of being offered as promo albums, you could find them at hole in the wall stores and record meets sold by the promo guys who got them for free. Only a few labels cared about quality, but most could give a crap.

 

I can only speak from my personal experience.
New vinyl I get from the U.S pressing plants (mainly through the amazon and B&N) is generally a "dog food" when compared to E.U. pressings.
Pallas pressings of Zappa's reissues put anything coming from U.S to shame.

Regards

 

Your Queen records through A Night at the Opera would indeed be better as UK editions, but the best Yes US pressings are as good, or nearly so, as their UK counterparts (taking your representative examples literally).

 

From my readings on this site for my cds, it has always I guess been this "japanese-is-always-better crew" you speak of commenting. When I read about preferred cd versions here it is, Japanese, MFSL, DCC, Audio Fidelity, sometimes WG or UK, and then also very occasionally sacd/dvd-a. This has just been my experience with this forum, and that's why I created this thread.

It did seem weird to me that original us cd's were never preferred on my searches. Although I have also done comparisons and found these non-us preferred versions to be better. I can tell now that not all you guys think that, haha. Its good to know that especially in vinyl there can be a lot of great US pressings, I look forward to the day I have enough money to spend on that stuff.

 

I notice the same things. Record companies were cutting corners to reduce costs. When RCA came out with it's "Dynaflex" ultra-thin LP's of 90-100g, it was supposedly for less warpage and the records would lie flatter on the turntables. I think better sound quality was also a referenced advantage. So, why were the 'Quadradisc' and I believe, classical records of this era thicker, 120g?
Working as a music director at a radio station in the early-70's, we received a letter from Capitol Records stating that if we didn't send back our un-used or cast-off records, they would no longer send anymore records. With the 45's noticeably thinner, with the start of the EMI non-slip ring, it was already apparent that they were using recycled vinyl. Lumps, bumps and pieces of label embedded.
Today's vinyl pressings suffer from inconsistent and poor vinyl, inexperience and poor quality control. I feel that Pallas of German and RTI in the U.S. are about the best. Pallas sends it's overage pressing work to Record Industry in the Netherlands and they are good quality also. A U.S. pressing company, QRP, suffers from inexperience and poor QC. As an example, Analog Productions used RTI for their Creedence Clearwater Survival "Absolute Originals" series the first time around. After they started up QRP, they re-issued the CCR LP's, using RTI's metal masters but pressing them themselves this time. The RTI pressings are noticeable superior to the QRP pressings.
I've had lot's of complaints about Optimal of Germany's pressings. They pressed the Beatles "Mono Box" for the world and used a poorer quality of vinyl than Rainbo used for the U.S. version of the Beatles "Stereo Box". The difference showed up in the Optimal pressings having more surface noise than the Rainbo pressings, especially noticeable between the tracks. Plus, I'd say Optimal has poor QC as one of the LP's in the "White Album" actually had food stuck to it.
The only problems I've had with the so-called 'audiophile' pressings are with the 200g LP's. Wrinkled labels and a dead sound. I find the 140-180g LP's to be better, but often not as good as the original pressings from the 60's-70's. There is a reason that RTI won't do 200g LP's anymore.

 

I'll assume pressings means LPs. If you are talking vintage AAA analogue, many to most US pressings are good to superb. Dodgy digitally sourced contemporary LPs? I actively avoid.

80's CDs can be dodgy. Case-by-case basis is the best way to evaluate those.

 

Who say's they suck? I disagree with that assumption.

 

Not trying to argue with you, but in what way are they better?

 

I've never bought Queen or Queen II on vinyl, for this reason. Although I doubt clean UK copies will ever be in my price range.

 

for the same reasons pressings suck in other countries. Lack of care and/or quality control.

 

I paid €15 last year for a VG+ UK Queen II, it’s better than the awful US pressing but still not a great sounding record. The first two albums are thin and bright, kind of like the way early Deep Purple was recorded.

 

What’s a CD?

 

Yeah, I know the recordings sucked to begin with, which is why I never bothered with US pressings. Hopefully I'll stumble on a UK eventually. I do love the music on them, even if the sound sucks.

 

And brown-label Reprise.