The Decline of Vinyl and Its Timely Death
Not long ago, I read yet another
tiresome report that suggested the vinyl LP was on its way to a comeback. Such stories
usually carry the implication that this would be a good thing because, after all, the
analog LP is actually superior to the digital compact disc.
Such idiocy is common coinage in the high-end audio
magazines, but perhaps that's okay because their audiences already believe it. But it
bemuses me to read it in the mainstream press, especially since I spent the first decade
of my career as an audio journalist -- along with practically all of my colleagues --
complaining about how crummy the records were.
To set the record straight, so to speak, production of
vinyl recordings today is minuscule, mainly confined to small audiophile labels, and aimed
at a tiny market of enthusiasts and club deejays. Having thrown their weight behind the
CD, the big record companies will never let the LP be revived.
By the same token, for all the activity under way to
promote an audio-only standard for DVD, my guess is the record companies will mostly
ignore it, just as the movie companies clung to VHS tape and ignored the vastly superior
Super VHS. If the record companies do back DVD-Audio, on the other hand, that will
ultimately mean the death of the compact disc -- the record companies won't stand for
double inventory for very long.
The decline of the LP can be dated fairly accurately.
Thirty years ago, in 1973, a number of things converged both to degrade the quality of
vinyl recordings and to make the shortcomings more obvious to listeners. The CD was still
almost a decade away, but its development was undoubtedly prompted by the legacy of 1973.
In that year, the oil-producing countries of the Middle
East slapped an embargo on shipments to the United States and several other countries,
causing considerable panic. One British writer at the time wrote: "Breast beating was
really in vogue and none drummed away more energetically than the Americans, led by
President Nixon." Ultimately, much good came out of this -- efficient houses and
cars, for example, and heightened energy awareness -- but in the short term, the music
industry took a direct hit.
At that time, the music industry was entering its most
explosive period. Boomers had good jobs and lots of disposable income, with only a
relatively few places to spend it. Consumer video didn't exist and personal computers were
still pretty much in the future, but there was an extensive array of hi-fi equipment
available, and consumers grabbed it.
That meant they had to buy recordings, and these were
overwhelmingly vinyl. Kids bought 45s and their parents bought LPs; only a small minority
bought tapes. But vinyl is a petroleum product, and the record manufacturers feared that
there might be shortages and massive price increases.
One early response was to recycle the vinyl. The companies
had a policy that dealers could return unsold records for full credit. The labels were
punched out of these and the plastic melted down for re-use. Prior to the oil crunch, this
"regrind" material was considered suitable only for cheap reissues and
kids’ records; not mainstream recordings, as it was felt to contribute too much
surface noise. Now it was used in virtually every sort of recording, except the most
prestigious classical discs.
Another economy was simply to use less vinyl. The resulting
skinny discs had several unpleasant characteristics: they tended to warp easily, in spite
of one company's claim that their ability to flex made them less susceptible to
warps, and they were sensitive to vibration. Because the disc standard specified a certain
thickness at the edge and label -- so the discs would work in the then-popular record
changers -- they could only be thin in the playing area, which hovered in the air above
the turntable surface. Sound from the speakers often reached this virtual microphone and
caused feedback.
Another aspect of this was that, in order to get from the
thick rim to the thinner playing area, the first track was usually recorded on a sloping
surface, which not all cartridges could negotiate without skiing down. Add to that the
energy-conserving expedients of shorter pressing times, flimsier record jackets, and
potentially warp-inducing shrink-wrap packaging, and you ended up with a pretty sorry
product.
What was recorded in the grooves was often not much better.
Multi-track recorders and multiple generations of tape were the norm, with distortion and
noise added at every step. To offset that, various types of electronic processing were
added, mostly to the detriment of the sound.
Early CDs often got a bad reputation because they were
mastered from these doctored tapes. Now all the tweaking, which had been mostly masked by
the deficiencies of the vinyl medium, was all too audible. But some of that was going on
back in 1973 as well. That year saw the introduction of the first phono cartridges that
boasted really flat frequency response and high tracking ability. And speakers took a
quality leap upward about that time too. Just as the records themselves were getting much
worse the ability to hear the flaws was increasing.
When the CD finally arrived, the one fear among many
observers -- the audiophile fringe excepted -- was that the record companies would reject
it, as seemed probable at first. Fortunately, for reasons noble or greedy depending on
who's talking, the record industry went digital, and few of us have any regrets.
And yet, nostalgia has a way of messing with one's critical
faculties (mine, anyway). A while back, I bought a recently remastered CD version of the Saturday
Night Fever soundtrack, and noted that, although the recording is more than
twenty-five years old, the sound quality was excellent.
Too excellent. Digging out my old vinyl version and
giving it a spin, I knew it was vastly inferior, even ignoring the ticks and pops and
other physical noises, but it seemed somehow more appropriate. Go figure.
...Ian G. Masters
ian@mastersonaudio.com
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