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About a month ago a small team and I launched a new website called www.vinylreviews.com with the primary goal of having regular vinyl quality (not music, vinyl quality) reviews by professional writers. We place special emphasis on vinyl reissues and we try to track down the audio source and mastering information for each review. We also have audience ratings for albums, so not just the reviewers rating matters, audience counts as well.
The site also has news, upcoming releases, and videos sections. But the reviews are the backbone.
Please take a look at the site, bookmark it if you like it, we are rolling out more user features and contests as time moves along. The Vinyl Reviews team are collectors and our hearts are in the right place, we want there to be an easy place to go to find out if an album was pressed well, mastered for vinyl, what a reissues audio source is, jacket quality, and how a reissue compares to previous releases.
And please, let me know what you think.
Follow Ups:
I am a long time vinyl addict and have been collecting vinyl for over 50 years. What I find wrong with people who attempt to compare vinyl is that any particular LP cannot be effectively compared unless the playback hardware is optimized for the LP.
I hope I didn't miss anything in my brief scan of your new site but I saw nothing on this subject. Even the best quality hardware, setup with extreme care, is only as good as the state of its hardware and adjustments.
It is simple to get azimuth right as well as the tonearm null points but VTA/SRA is a running target.
Many people attempt to get their tonearms aligned properly by using a static 92 degree SRA alignment. Others use the practice of setting the tonearm parallel to the LP surface. The first way at least attempts to address an adjustment. The second is a very old practice only applicable to conical or some elliptical styli. I won't comment on the parallel practice and will limit this message to the 92 degree practice. On to the problems with the 92 degree setting.
First and most importantly, the 92 degree figure does not represent the best alignment for all LPs. In fact different LPs from different mastering houses, and even from the same mastering house with multiple lathes, do not end up with 92 degrees as the optimum playback setting.
This figure is ideal, and a target for industry wide standardization, but in practice there isn't a unified attempt to achieve exactly 92 degrees. Mastering operations keep their master lathes in as pristine as possible condition but exactly 92 degrees is not practical to obtain.
As such, 92 degrees is a estimate to try and achieve some kind of universal setup. It just doesn't work. Not 100% of the time.
Second the figure of 92 degrees, based on the angle of the stylus to the surface of the LP, is a difficult thing to obtain. Many people go through the pains of imaging the stylus on the LP and drawing imaginary lines through the stylus in conjunction to the surface of the LP.
The problem with this is that the line being drawn through the stylus is all too often a rough estimate. A line drawn through the shank of the stylus does not necessarily and usually doesn't correspond to the tracing edges of the stylus. Getting the tracing edges of the stylus at 92 degrees to the LP surface is the point of going through this type of alignment. The tracing edges of the stylus do not correspond the the stylus shank. There is no physical relationship between the two and using the shank of the stylus for alignment is incorrect.
Last point on the futility of the 92 degree alignment is that the angle of a stylus riding in the groove does not stay static. The suspension of the stylus/cantilever allows for up and down motion and the action of the stylus, when playing, can vary up and down enough to set off the 92 degree setup.
Using the 92 degree setup is not a bad start but one must follow that action by final adjustments using the best alignment tool we all own, our ears. The SRA must be tweaked from the 92 degree alignment to achieve final setting. This is accomplished by listening, but keeping in mind, that all of the above is only valid for the particular LP being played.
I am not saying that using the 92 degree adjustment is total futility but understanding the weaknesses and strengths of this type of alignment is very important to get the best from the playback hardware.
Next is an example of LPs recently purchased that are likely to receive negative reviews. I recently bought the Polydor reissues of Moody Blues LPs. I set my 10.5 inch VPI 3D tonearm for 180 degree pressings and at first listen these sound entirely dull and lifeless. They sound as if the master tape is worn and useless but that is not the case.
Abbey Road Studios mastered the lacquers for this series of reissues and I'm sure most will agree they do excellent work. This set of reissues turned out to be mastered a bit off the expected VTA setting and, on my hardware, I have to set my tonearm up to the equivalent of a 200+ gram pressing in order to match the mastering that was done for these pressings. Those who do not understand what I am saying here should be aware that the difference between a 180 gram setting and 200+ gram setting is very small. We are talking about a very small difference in SRA/VTA. Note: They are 180 gram pressings.
This is an example where the product seems to be dull and lifeless but another VTA setting reveals the quality sound contained on the LPs. I am fortunate in having a tonearm with VTA on the fly and I can experiment with alternative settings. A very small change in VTA/SRA makes for an obvious and large perceived sound quality change.
I have no doubt that these new Moody Blues pressings will receive many negative reactions, most likely from those who have hardware that cannot be easily reconfigured. They are 1 of many examples where the pressing can be found to have poor sound quality but the result can be 180 degrees in favor of the LPs if you happen to be configured in their favor.
That is the problem that I started to describe. Reviewing a LP is more than just putting it on your turntable. There are optimizations to consider. The differences that VTA/SRA can exhibit span from little to dramatic sound quality shifts. This is an adjustment that has definite effects on the perceived sound quality of a pressing but is an adjustment that is frequently overlooked.
If you are going to review LPs for a living, or as a service to your readers, it is best to make sure your playback hardware is set to achieve optimum sound quality from the pressing. When the pressing takes a different setup to extract quality sound, that should be noted in the review so the buying public can make their informed buying decisions. Failure to do so invalidates the review and is a waste of your efforts and the readers time.
Over the years VTA/SRA has been the subject of many neigh sayers and supporters. The one inescapable fact is that the adjustment does make a difference. The higher quality the playback gear, the more relevant that the SRA subject becomes. Line contact or any long and tall profile stylus requires that the SRA/VTA setting be taken into consideration.
At the very least, it would be honest to have a disclosure on each review that shows the playback hardware and the steps taken to optimize or the fact that these steps were bypassed. The buying public would be better served by this and your site would set itself apart from others who fail to take these facts into consideration.
Unfortunately this turns out very long winded, sorry all, but I would like to see a site where I can rely on the review for buying decisions. As it stands I have a handful of reviewers I can trust and we all could use more.
Ed
We don't shush around here!
Life is analog...digital is just samples thereof
Hi, Ed,
Your suggestions are good but the VTA/SRA "problem" is probably never going to be resolved. Vinyl record pressings are just too variable to be standardized or calibrated given the number of different cutting heads, presses and vinyl compounds used; the difficulty in matching stylus rake angle to the cutting head compounds the problem. Nonetheless, some consistency in setup would be beneficial.
You used an example of a 180g record where you had to use the equivalent of a 200g record setting for VTA/SRA. Of the 200 LPs I sampled (weight/thickness) it was not unusual to see a 0.25mm difference in thickness within the same advertised LP weight. Certain record weights had an even greater variability. I suppose the OP could provide measurements of each LP being reviewed along with how the tonearm/stylus was adjusted to better match the cutting head angle for each album.
Regards,
Tom
That would be refreshing. Too many vinyl reviews state that this or that LP is better but the optimizations are never addressed. It might be nice.
Ed
We don't shush around here!
Life is analog...digital is just samples thereof
It would be helpful if you offered an alphabetic list by artist, then title, of what has been covered.
"I play Kind of Blue every day-it's my orange juice." Quincy Jones
nt
I love the idea but your site is hard to navigate and doesn't seem to have a lot of reviews yet...or am I missing something? (Said in a nice voice and not meant to be offensive as I'm sure you're working hard to get things going.)
Will you also be discussing pressing quality in detail...not just some background noise but are there dimple or wave defects, cleanliness etc?
You might consider adding a compendium of record pressing defects with sample close up photos so you could reference them in reviews via abbreviations.
The "new" golden age of quality pressing ended about two years ago...more and more sloppy pressings are coming out except for Chad's QRP work and some of the stuff on Svart...and a few others, but basically I've slowed my purchases of new vinyl due to this just like I did in the late 70's
Best of luck!
It has quite a few reviews. Press upper left MENU ( three bars).
Thank You! My error...wasn't coming up that way when I visited before.. I guess a decent number of reviews that will increase in time..and I see cleanliness is in fact discussed now that I can see these so burn me on that too but the other suggestions stand in an effort to be helpful.
Edits: 09/01/18 09/01/18
May want to check the forum rules as it applies to members of the trade, though ... don't think you are allowed to use the site name as your moniker, or link to it in your post, but I'm not the sheriff here :)
https://www.audioasylum.com/cgi/d.mpl?audio/manrules.html
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