180 Gram Vinyl Reissues

i only have one of these i think - some old gories album on 180 gms, just cos i couldnt find it on any other format. but i find it hard to believe all the stuff they say (eg - the second part of this press release - http://vinylfanatics.com/content/view/184/2/) because digital seems so unavoidable in most music-production/manufacture chains these days. its bound to be there at some point. id prefer an original 1st pressing to paying over £15 or thereabouts for a 180gm repressing. i should probably buy some 180 gm records one day just to compare with original pressings and see if i can tell any difference.

Coincidentally, Wired News has this today.. 'Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin' http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2007/10/listeningpost_1029

And many of today's music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.

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Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.

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Not sure if that last point applies to reissues or not but I'd be interested to know. I think I've always been skeptical of this suggestion that "finally," we'll hear the music as it was "meant to be heard." More often than not, I suspect that means making it conform present-day notions of what a good recording sounds like.

I have some of the Blood and Fire ones cos I got them cheap.

It's a bit shouty, I think, as a format. Not in terms of the sound but a bit "look at me!" in a way that buying mere albums or sevens isn't. Possibly because mine come in thick clear plastic wallets with gold stickers sealing them.


They are nice tho and I prefer them to CDs.

i think heavier vinyl is better than really thin vinyl but i don't buy many reissues, i do love records and i'm not keen on cds, i'm really enjoying the really luxury jesu/pelican/riot season vinyl only album things that are going on, really gorgeous vinyl, all the music seems to be avant-metal incidentally.
also woebot you can analogue master still very well of course, some classical fans swore by ddd on cds but im not sure, it's all very not very much of anything really though i think although you can def tell the difference between mp3 and cd djing and vinyl djing in a club. however i just think records are marvelous beautiful things.

john eden said:

I have some of the Blood and Fire ones cos I got them cheap.

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Got 'Heart of the Congos' reissue on vinyl to replace the absolutely shockingly bad CD copy I had. It sounds great, but it pissed me off that they totally changed the original sleeve design. And the expense! (I only bought it cos it was going half-price in HMV of all places, even then it was 15 quid!).

Basically its always better to have the vinyl, reissued or not, but most of these reissues aren't gonn a sound any better than the remastered CD, yet they're much more expensive. I buy most of my CDs when they go in the sale for a fiver...

gumdrops said:

i only have one of these i think - some old gories album on 180 gms,

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gories records should be pressed on flexidiscs...

most of the time, 180gm vinyl is a marketing ploy... standard vinyl is like 140gm, there isn't much difference...

Up until the 80s professional engineers recorded, mixed and mastered albums for vinyl, as it was the predominent medium. They knew what they were doing, and I am inclined to think that any CD remastering process, no matter how carefully carried out, will always be 2nd best to the original master done at the time. Bottom line is that you can't re-record the album, and even at the tracking stage engineers would have been making decisions with the technical properties of vinyl in mind. On top of that, people remixing/mastering now are swayed by commercial factors, fashion and thier own prejudices, which invariably colours the results.

CD does have a far greater dynamic range than vinyl, but very little pop music is dynamic enough for this to make any difference (classical is a very different matter, and most classical buffs prefer CD).

I'm not too clear on the technical advantages of 180g vinyl compared to lighter weights, but I would intuitively think that the difference is going to be pretty slight compared to other factors such as your cartridge type and condition. And the ecologically minded should be aware that vinyl is a polymer, which makes 180g vinyl the Chevrolet SUV of music mediums.

Regarding the general cultural implications of the reissuing boom, I agree with Woebot, it's boring. I miss the thrill of tracking down records. When I started collecting in the mid 90s there were records by certain people, like Nico and Sun Ra, that you just never saw. If you came across one and you were skint, you needed to jump on it there and then, even if it meant eating out of a tin for the rest of the week. With reissues, you know it's going to be constantly on tap, so why put yourself out to buy it in the here and now? It's just another consumer product, available on demand.

Regarding the general cultural implications of the reissuing boom, I agree with Woebot, it's boring.

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Thirded. I had a coworker who droned on and on endlessly about the "awesome vinyl" he had copped that week... It was always overpriced Stones and Kinks and Love 180-gram reissues, available crisp and new at any decent shop, and he acted like it was some holy find. Meanwhile as my fingers dry out scouring through dozens of Air Supply records in the dollar bin...

I have both an original "Psychedelic Sounds.." and the 180g reissue. Full size reproduction of original artwork is an argument in favour of the vinyl reissue imo, but in this case the cover has undergone a directly equivalent tasteless digital remastering process to the music; what was once legibly unevenly applied paint and paper is rendered as flat colour. So in this case the reissue seems to function as a notional *all round* "enhancement" of the original

The heavier vinyl supposedly means deeper better wearing grooves and hence enhanced sound reproduction but i've got a couple of these that aren't well cut at all, I think 180g thing is to add to the "feel the quality" fetish aspect of the object,,,which i suppose is what these are all about

vinyl reissues sleeves aren't any less resistant to remarketing/ historical revision or crappy redesign it's true, i remember seeing the reissues of tour de france by kraftwerk a while back and noticing that against my original copy, all the members apart from ralphy and flo had been turned into generic teutonic cyclists! gasp!

I've even seen 220 gram vinyl around. Just how heavy can vinyl actually get? It'd probably break my flimsy aiwa record player anyway...

That Wired article is laughable on several fronts.

But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don't really know what they're talking about.

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pot... kettle.

WOEBOT said:

...well it's so FAKE! that it's pretending to be "true" just makes it even more FAKE.

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I don't think it's about authenticity so much as a kind of improvement on or modernising of "reality". Anecdotally i heard of someone getting a job as a "pirate" at disneyland having to shave off his full beard and wear a false one for work. The simulacrum was more desirable than "reality", and these seem part of a similar tendency, they are NEW! LOUDER! HEAVIER! BRIGHTER! eg:
<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u133/exeryad/tfo.jpg" border="0"></a>
<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u133/exeryad/tfr.jpg" border="0"></a>

WOEBOT said:

yeah they seem to take a bad photo of the original sleeve and blow it up. always looks like shit.

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spot on.
and the prices £22.95!!!! for a Bowie LP available at any car boot (no income tax no vat )

Worth mentioning that Greensleeves are reissuing their LPs and 12" as nature intended, priced accordingly. Big up them.

Benny B said:

Got 'Heart of the Congos' reissue on vinyl to replace the absolutely shockingly bad CD copy I had. It sounds great, but it pissed me off that they totally changed the original sleeve design. And the expense! (I only bought it cos it was going half-price in HMV of all places, even then it was 15 quid!).

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Was that a bootleg CD? The Blood & Fire double CD is excellent and sounds much better than the old Go Feet vinyl I have.

fokse vektaire xeven said:

I have both an original "Psychedelic Sounds.." and the 180g reissue. Full size reproduction of original artwork is an argument in favour of the vinyl reissue imo, but in this case the cover has undergone a directly equivalent tasteless digital remastering process to the music; what was once legibly unevenly applied paint and paper is rendered as flat colour. So in this case the reissue seems to function as a notional *all round* "enhancement" of the original

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I've got the Elevators albums and some other International Artist things on the vinyl versions issued in the 80s by Decal, and they are pretty nasty sounding pressings. The 180g thing is overkill really. A decent pressing on average thickness vinyl is fine. Really thin discs or crap pressings do sound rubbish.

With reggae I find that it's a bit weird hearing some of it on, for example, the vinyls of the Soul Jazz 100%s. I'm used to hearing that kind of stuff on Trojan vinyl comps of the 80's, with about ten tracks crammed on per side, and the tinnyness that causes is part of how I expect old reggae tunes to sound. It's a bit strange hearing every detail pinsharp in the foreground.

noel emits said:

Was that a bootleg CD? The Blood & Fire double CD is excellent and sounds much better than the old Go Feet vinyl I have.

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Can't remember what label it was on, but it certainly looked cheap and nasty and sounded totally crap (I gave it away in the end). Listened to that for years before I got the reissue.

From what I can gather there was never a really good version of the album available (Didn't Lee Perry have it deleted or something?) and there was alot of work done on the original tapes, which were badly deteriorated for the Blood and Fire release. In cases like this remastering is really worthwhile I reckon.