Making my record player sound better
 

"Laurence Payne" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 Jan 2010 06:45:54 +1100, "Trevor Wilson"
wrote:

**IGNORE THIS ADVICE! This is extremely bad advice. Any faults with the
existing equipment will permanently damage any (expensive) test recording
(IOW: Subsequent playback will likely reveal faults that do not exist, due
to prior damage). The equipment MUST be fully and completely checked,
BEFORE
using any form of test recording. Other than this, quite seriously bad
piece
of advice, Mr Krueger is correct. A test recording is a good idea. AFTER
performing the requisite mechanical checks and adjustments, of course.


If it may only be played on a perfectly set up system, what is a test
record meant to test?

**You need to read up and understand how a turntable operates, before you
engage in such a discussion. After you do, the answer will be obvious.
Fundamentally, however, a TT is a purely mechanical system. As a
consequence, the system must be mechanically 'perfect' BEFORE dynamic tests
are conducted. Essentially, that means all static measurements and tests
must be performed before dynamic tests (playing a record) can be done. Mr
Krueger's idea of using a test record first, runs the very real (and very
probable) risk of causing irreparable damage to that test disk. As a
consequence, that damage will lead to spurious results if used a second
time.


--
Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au

Making my record player sound better
 

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Iain Churches
wrote:



Understood. It seems, according to posters on the Oz group, that EMI
Australia had a poor reputation for pressings. Presumably the plant is
now closed?

In the UK also, EMI had a rather poor reputation, which has been
discussed here on UKRA many times. Jim L has had particularly
disappointing experiences with their product and level of service.

Judging by comments from other people I knew at the time, and from
magazine
articles, etc, I doubt my experience was anywhere close to being unique in
that respect.

Indeed.

Interestingly, the old EMI plant at Hayes, UK, now owned by an
independent manufacturer is turning out excellent work.

TBH I doubt the problem was with the machinery per se.

No, or course not.

It was almost
certainly with them being driven by bean-counters to make as many LPs as
they could, as quickly and cheaply as they could. So to hell with making
pressings with care, keeping things clean, etc.

Demand was indeed huge - resulting in fast pressing cycles, and probably
corner cutting which did not aways lead to a product as high in quality as
it could/should have been in some instances. It seems strange to me now
tha the pressing rate was inversely proportional to the "percieved quality"
of the LP. So that new issues, and prestige classical productions were
manufactured more slowly. Budget label products were coming off the
line at a very fast rate indeed. I don't know the economics of pressing -
I never had much to do with the bean-counters, but perhaps each press
had to produce a certain value, in monetary terms, of product per shift.

Once again, this is probably due to much slower pressing cycles, the use
of virgin vinyl (no recycled vinyl) as raw material, and imnproved QC.

Happy to agree with that as a reason, although so far as I know, I've not
personally had any of their recent LPs so can't say from direct
experience.

One curio I've noted over the years is the impression than in many
countries they tended to rate highly 'imports' from elsewhere over their
LPs made 'at home'. Does make me wonder if various factories tended to
take
more care with export copies than with those for the 'home audience'.

I am not sure that export pressings were given special attention.
But I know that British Decca and German Teldec and DGG were
considered generally to be better than most.

Usually, metalwork was sent to overseas plants which produced
pressings for the local market. Similarly artwork was also sent,
and sleeves were printed locally. I recall when at RCA, that Abba
was the exception. There was a list of territories to which only
fiinished pressings were sent - probably due to the fact that there
was some doubt that factories in these territories would
do a consistently good job in pressing and printing.

Iain

Making my record player sound better
 

Iain Churches wrote:

Demand was indeed huge - resulting in fast pressing cycles, and probably
corner cutting which did not aways lead to a product as high in quality as
it could/should have been in some instances. It seems strange to me now
tha the pressing rate was inversely proportional to the "percieved quality"
of the LP. So that new issues, and prestige classical productions were
manufactured more slowly. Budget label products were coming off the
line at a very fast rate indeed. I don't know the economics of pressing -
I never had much to do with the bean-counters, but perhaps each press
had to produce a certain value, in monetary terms, of product per shift.


In the early 80's the price per finished unit was around 47p + v.a.t.
from Hayes...


--
David Kennedy

http://www.anindianinexile.com

Making my record player sound better
 

"David Kennedy" wrote in message
o.uk...
Iain Churches wrote:

Demand was indeed huge - resulting in fast pressing cycles, and probably
corner cutting which did not aways lead to a product as high in quality
as
it could/should have been in some instances. It seems strange to me now
tha the pressing rate was inversely proportional to the "percieved
quality"
of the LP. So that new issues, and prestige classical productions were
manufactured more slowly. Budget label products were coming off the
line at a very fast rate indeed. I don't know the economics of
pressing -
I never had much to do with the bean-counters, but perhaps each press
had to produce a certain value, in monetary terms, of product per shift.


In the early 80's the price per finished unit was around 47p + v.a.t. from
Hayes...

Is this the price which they charged third party
customers, or the in-house price?

Iain

Making my record player sound better
 

"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"D.M. Procida"
wrote in

I'm quite happy taking things apart and making
mechanical adjustments, but I haven't done much messing
about with record players.

Obtain a good test record (technical tests of tracking
and the like) and see which tracks are actually giving
you problems. The titles of the tracks will give you a
clue as to a more specific definition of the problem. It
will then at least be fairly easy to determine when the
problem is addressed.

**IGNORE THIS ADVICE! This is extremely bad advice.

Trevor's out making trouble again. Tit-for-tat and all that.

Any
faults with the existing equipment will permanently
damage any (expensive) test recording (IOW: Subsequent
playback will likely reveal faults that do not exist, due
to prior damage).

Only if the problems are really severe, and usually only after a number of
playings.

Let's face it, the most expensive test records cost only a fraction of the
cost of a decent LP playback system, and are in some sense expendible. I've
usually bought them in pairs, and hold one in reserve.

OTOH, if you find a problem, fix that problem and continue to have
unexpected problems playing a test record, there is a possibility that a
damaged test record is the source of the problem.

The equipment MUST be fully and
completely checked, BEFORE using any form of test
recording.

Begging the question, why use a test record at all if the equipment has
already been thoroughly checked?

Other than this, quite seriously bad piece of
advice, Mr Krueger is correct.

Ah, I am dispensed a little mercy.

A test recording is a good idea. AFTER performing the requisite mechanical
checks
and adjustments, of course.

I'm going to take a flyer here and hope that you wouldn't use a test record
until some basic checks have been made.

Making my record player sound better
 

Iain Churches wrote:

Is this the price which they charged third party
customers, or the in-house price?

Iain

That was the price charged to us as an independent. Hayes was handy
being close to us in central London and, to be honest, no one really
cared about the quality of the product provided that the majority of
them made some kind of noise when you stuck them on a deck. If we had
anything important then Philips were the preferred option but /much/
more expensive at around 60p.

The major cost was not the product but the recording and everything else
was secondary to that.

--
David Kennedy

http://www.anindianinexile.com

Making my record player sound better
 

In article , Iain Churches
wrote:

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Iain Churches
wrote:


It was almost certainly with them being driven by bean-counters to
make as many LPs as they could, as quickly and cheaply as they could.
So to hell with making pressings with care, keeping things clean, etc.

Demand was indeed huge - resulting in fast pressing cycles, and probably
corner cutting which did not aways lead to a product as high in quality
as it could/should have been in some instances. It seems strange to me
now tha the pressing rate was inversely proportional to the "percieved
quality" of the LP. So that new issues, and prestige classical
productions were manufactured more slowly. Budget label products were
coming off the line at a very fast rate indeed. I don't know the
economics of pressing - I never had much to do with the bean-counters,
but perhaps each press had to produce a certain value, in monetary
terms, of product per shift.

In terms of the outcome I formed two impressions. unintended pun!

One was that classical music allowed clicks and other manufacturing defects
to be audible when the same defect would have passed unnoticed with many
pop/rock issues as the level of the music would mask them. Hence producing
classical LPs free of audible defects is actually much harder than
pop/rock. Then factor in that the music is more likely to be of a type that
the listener has heard live, so more likely to notice if the sound is
unrealistic than for studio created pop.

The other was that - against the point you make above - the assumption was
that *recording* classical was a matter of prestige but that there was less
money in *selling* it than pop/rock, so although they may have pressed with
a slower cycle, they didn't take more care in other critical ways. Result
being superb master recordings that didn't come though in the end product.

However I have no direct knowledge of what went on in any of the factories,
etc. I can only judge by output. I am quite sure that many of those
involved did care, and did their best to make good products. Equally, I'm
also sure that some others didn't. The strength of a chain is determined by
the weakest link, alas.

Also, as I think I've said before. My situation was that I tended to prefer
the artists and works from EMI, so that may well unbalance my recollection
against them compared with other companies. I took more EMI LPs back for
replacement because I more often bought an EMI LP for the promised content.

My own experience in manufacture in other areas left me also with the
distinct feeling that small companies have the advantage that everyone can
see if everyone else is doing their job as the results are visible to all
and anyone can talk to anyone. In effect this makes it easier to keep an
ethos where all those who matter pull together and take responsibility. And
people help each other out as they can see it will help *them* as well as
all others concerned.

Bigger companies allow people (and departments) to 'play games' and 'office
politics' as their individual success may depend more (in their eyes) on
this and mere customers are beyond their horizon. They can also mean you
get situations where bean counters insist on buying crap raw materials for
cheapness, or shorten production cycles and impose this on the poor bods
who have to make the product. This makes the bean counters look great at
board meetings as they can show "how much money they have saved" and then
pass the buck of having more products returned as faulty to someone else.
All else fails, blame the customer or the slave running the machine.

You can also make similar distinctions between private companies and
shareholder ones.

However the economies of scale, marketing etc, tend to give advantages to
big companies that have no relationship to product quality. And then
Gresham's Law takes over... :-)

All generalisations, though. But ones that seem to me to have some
solidity.

BTW I still have the copy of HFN with a cover pic showing a set of LPs
being tested - at EMI IIRC. This caused a lot of amusement amongst readers
as so may of the test decks had their big red 'fault' light lit up! I
think the pic was supplied by the company PR dept. Red faces as well as red
lights, I guess... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Making my record player sound better
 

"David Kennedy" wrote in message
...
Iain Churches wrote:

Is this the price which they charged third party
customers, or the in-house price?

Iain

That was the price charged to us as an independent. Hayes was handy being
close to us in central London and, to be honest, no one really cared about
the quality of the product provided that the majority of them made some
kind of noise when you stuck them on a deck.

That's very sad:-(

If we had anything important then Philips were the preferred option but
/much/ more expensive at around 60p.

I don't know if Transco were still in business by that time.
They had a very good reputationas an independent plant,
and might have been a better alternative. But is looks
as though at that time you were more concerned about
cost than quality.

The major cost was not the product but the recording and everything else
was secondary to that.

Did the unit price you quoted include mastering
and metalwork, and for what quantity of pressings?

Iain

Making my record player sound better
 

Iain Churches wrote:
"David wrote in message
...
Iain Churches wrote:

Is this the price which they charged third party
customers, or the in-house price?

Iain

That was the price charged to us as an independent. Hayes was handy being
close to us in central London and, to be honest, no one really cared about
the quality of the product provided that the majority of them made some
kind of noise when you stuck them on a deck.

That's very sad:-(


Have you _ever_ heard the Anti-Nowhere League...

If we had anything important then Philips were the preferred option but
/much/ more expensive at around 60p.

I don't know if Transco were still in business by that time.
They had a very good reputationas an independent plant,
and might have been a better alternative. But is looks
as though at that time you were more concerned about
cost than quality.

The major cost was not the product but the recording and everything else
was secondary to that.

Did the unit price you quoted include mastering
and metalwork, and for what quantity of pressings?

No. We did the mastering, costs were for a run of around 25,000+

--
David Kennedy

http://www.anindianinexile.com

Making my record player sound better
 

On Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:56:57 +0000, Keith G wrote:

D.M. Procida wrote:
Keith G wrote:

My record player sounds pretty good, on the whole (it's a Linn Basik
with Linn arm and cartridge that I got about 17 or 18 years ago).

However, on some records, it can sound a bit glassy.
Valve amplification and/or phono stage usually cures most ills with
vinyl replay kit, but what cartridge are you using?

It's a Linn K5.

I hadn't thought it would be an amplification problem, but more likely
to do with the mechanical set-up.

Daniele


OK. First step is to try a new stylus - an AT-95E will fit and work
fine, if look a little strange. 22 spons from Mantra:

https://shop.mantra-audio.co.uk/acat...ca_stylus.html


But double check the fit first, to be certain...


I don't think you can do that. IIRC the K5 stylus is bonded in. It would
make more sense to change the cartridge for an AT-95E. It's similar in
many ways and has the benefit of a changeable stylus. 34 quid from same
place.

--
Mick (Working in a M$-free zone!)
Web: http://www.nascom.info
Filtering everything posted from googlegroups to kill spam.