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Some Notes on Vinyl in the 70s

Posted by Mike Porper (A) on January 8, 2015 at 16:04:39

In Reply to: RE: Reality of 1979 [I Was Alive & Very, Very Well in Jan 1979] posted by E-Stat on January 8, 2015 at 09:49:43:

Your gear sounds really great. What're you doing here in vintage world, where guys extol the virtues of radio/TV consoles and Webcor phonographs?

You're right about HP's vinyl collection. But, I think you're missing a subtle point. HP, and everyone in the highend, hated the state of vinyl [until digital came along]. Without getting into a long discussion here, let's just say that the perspective on vinyl shifted almost over night in the early 80s.

I've got most of TAS from #4 on. The whole idea of HP's super disk list was a reaction to the crummy sound, recording philosophies [multi-mike, multi-trac], and bad surface quality, that were common during those days. HP came out with his super disk idea as combat against the common practices of big record companies. The whole idea of the list was to tell you which records, in a vast sea of mediocrity, were actually really great. Otherwise, if records were all commonly great, or even mostly great, the list would be unnessesary.

In TAS, EMI were constantly praised [and their Angel record counterparts panned]. I was so inculcated with that, that to this day, when I see a British EMI record, I reflexively feel I've just spotted something wonderous.

At about the same time, but not with the same emphasis at first, HP also extolled the virtues of Mercury. By issue #22, Mercury Living Presence and RCA Living Stereo began to take center stage. The digital era, at first starting with digital vinyl in the early 80s [not CD's], hastened the desire for old, out of print Shaded Dogs and Mercury FR plums. At the same time, the proliferation of used record stores fascilitated the audiophile old record collector habit.

But, generally, we all decried the general state of vinyl. That's why the appearence of super disks, which had started early in the 70s with direct to disk recording on the label Sheffield, and ended with major companies such as Columbia and RCA releasing half-speed remasters of their catalog, were so embraced by a quality hungry market. The average record was perceived to be crap. Super disks were perceived to be [mostly, but always] super. Direct to disk records, though with sometimes questionable musical content, were the best sound we'd ever heard, short of live musicians.

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