The Press Release Resource

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KINGSPORT, TN – When the CD was introduced, most people thought that the LP was dead. 27 years later, vinyl is making a big comeback.

After suffering a steep sales decline in the 1990’s, in 2007 vinyl record sales in the UK topped 1.5 million units and in the United States, over 800,000. And these are not used record sales figures, but sales of new releases on vinyl. Contrary to what you might think, sound quality is the main reason behind vinyl’s comeback, not nostalgia.

1 Up Multimedia located in Kingsport is one of few companies nationwide that specializes in producing custom records and masters for records to be pressed in vinyl. Eric Morritt, owner and audio engineer has worked with record technology for over 30 years. “It started when I was in high school as a hobby, but has now become a serious part of my business.” Even though the process is really just high-precision machine tool technology, record cutting remains a ‘black art’ of sorts. “There aren’t too many people with the patience to study how a master recording, the electronics, and the mechanics all work together to produce a quality record. It requires a thorough understanding of many different technical processes which can get complicated and frustrating.”

The device that actually cuts the record is a massive machine called a recording lathe, with a heavy turntable and specialized mechanics that guide a tiny cutting stylus across the surface of a blank disk. In spite of being somewhat of a dinosaur in appearance, the machine has the ability to capture sound quality that outperforms the CD. “Records can reproduce well over 30,000 vibrations per second. These overtones are what give records their “life”, something that CD’s have never had.” CD’s reproduce frequencies above 8,000 Hz poorly because of the sample rate established years ago. Computers have now become powerful enough for higher sample rates, but mathematically as the frequency of sounds increase, the total number of samples per second decreases sharply which causes quality to suffer. Lower frequencies are boosted on many digital recordings in order to make them sound louder, which is perceived as better sound quality, but in reality it’s a very harsh sound compared to a well mastered vinyl record.

Most of Morritt’s customers are Professional DJ’s, but collectors, audiophiles, and professional musicians are ordering custom cut discs and masters for vinyl production. Another reason for the continued interest in vinyl is the durability of the medium.

“The digital process is great for editing and distribution, but it’s really quite fragile. When a CD gets damaged you might as well throw it away.” Morritt explains that records differ in the fact that they’re a physical item – not just codes of zeros and ones pitted on a piece of plastic that without the equipment and software to decipher them is otherwise useless.

Even a damaged record can be carefully repaired and the sound recovered. “Once damaged, digital information is much more difficult, if not impossible to recover. I collect old recordings on discs and cylinders, some of which are well over 100 years old and many play almost as well as the day they were made. I have CD’s made only 15 years ago that skip or simply eject from the player with an error message, and there’s nothing can be done to fix them.” Morritt adds that archivists tend to believe that since the advent of digital media, it is likely that a lot of material produced in recent years will in time be lost, due to equipment obsolescence and data loss. “Their (archivists) point is that 100 years from now, even if all turntables and related equipment were gone, you could simply roll a piece of paper into a cone, stick a straight pin through the small end, spin the disc and hear what’s recorded on it; do that with a CD or an mp3 file. If the point of producing a commercial recording is to in some way preserve our culture and history, shouldn’t it be stored on something that’s simple to reproduce and will withstand the test of time and technology? Records have done that, but within just 20 years, it’s already difficult to locate working equipment to reproduce things like PCM-F1 tapes and other recent digital formats. Those recordings stand to be lost forever.”

1 Up Multimedia is located in Kingsport, TN. For more information call (423) 765 – 1147 or visit on the web at www.1upmultimedia.com.