Dear interwebs interlocutor, to preclude conflation, allow me to add that I didn't wish to suggest that the softness of the lacquer makes the sound warmer than the metal. Rather, somehow, in spite of the high craft, the master lacquer groove's virginal modulation is not fully captured by electroforming the stamper, which, in spite of its stiffness, will sound a little duller than the master lacquer's first playback, so, the vinyl pressings, also, will sound a little duller than the master lacquer's initial playback - and, therefore, won't sound as good as the reference did (at least on its initial playback) - and, therefore, won't sound as good as an 'acetate' will (on its sole playback [see below]). Therefore, bespoke 'acetates' are what should be sold. (They needn't be cut until there's an order from the online store.)diamone wrote:Some of that is because the lacquer master is a living organic substance where the metal mother and stampers are not.
There are people that insist that acetate tape preserves the warmth of the recording better than polyester because of the same reason (organic acetate vs chemical petroleum).
Solution(s)
1. DMM where EVERYTHING is inorganic so there's nothing to miss and
2. cutting at 33 for 45 playback to eliminate a lot of the shrill harshness of DMM while at the same time minimizing the bass contour effect you get as a side effect from half speed mastering.
Indeed, the lacquer master is so soft that it can't be played even once and then be replayed with the same transient detail (and, therefore, audiophile excitement). It might be close, but, you will find that the jaw drops a little less in awe at each subsequent reproduction of the dub. Alas, a single pass by even a 1-gram stereohedron pickup stylus will sand off an audible amount of detail, provided the acoustics and monitoring are very good and one's in a 'critical listening' mood. The sound of a well-grown mother is similar to the sound of a 'previously-enjoyed' lacquer... ...and, incidentally, the sound of a very clean lab's MDC-grown mother (i.e., lacquer with a somewhat dull 'air band' memory) is the sound of another lab's Transco-grown mother (i.e., should have been noticeably clearer...).
In spite of the elastic memory of lacquer and the plastic memory of nickel, the nickel mother will always be slightly duller-sounding than the virgin lacquer... To test, the mother can be played back and simultaneously captured to a .wav file and the 'shot'-and-'pulled' lacquer (that was virginal when it was used to grow the father) can be played back (for the first time - after metal processing) and captured simultaneously to a .wav file in order to see what audible differences exist between the mother's groove and the 'grandmother's' grove - as .wav files.
Our tests show that some labs make a closer electroform of the mandrel than others, but none fully captures the micro-dynamics of the virgin lacquer groove. It's impressive that nickel records fail to match the clarity of the original groove sound, since they're stiffer than lacquer and also their grooves' similarities to the lacquer masters' grooves, as observed under a microscope, show that very, very much of the modulation is identical. But ears are much finer resolvers of minutia than are eyes. For example, the once-around whooshes that are caused by a father's silver grooves having been torn during separation from the master lacquer often leave no visible artifact, even at 150x magnification. But it's quite audible. One might well need a scanning electron microscope in order to see what we can hear played back from a groove.
So, the way to get the best sound from a gramophone record is to abandon pressing vinyls and simply have bespoke acetates cut for each customer.
He's only going to play it once, in most cases, and then admire the artwork of the jacket - let's be honest. If he plays it several times, he may wish to purchase a replacement copy. This bolsters the cutting industry (through repeat business) while improving the sound for the customer. Rather hard cheese on the labs and plants, but they are the ones making the records sound low fi, and a minimum run of shipped pressings costs more than most delivered dubplates. So, what are we gaining by making scads of inferior copies, when so few people even own a record player?
As for DMM, there's limited excursion compared to lacquer mastering, so the bass potentially suffers. Great for most Classical and spoken word, however. D&B, Dub, House, Reggae, Rock, and Blues... ...not so much. If stampers and vinyls are made from the DMM and it isn't sold as an 'acetate,' they'd also be losing what already could have been achieved with a bespoke 'acetate' (which contains no acetate, of course).
Vive Apollo!
- Tim E.