Important Lessons We Learned from Record Experiments
Part one of this commentary concerns the random nature of record making processes. It can be found here.
A Heavy Vinyl Shootout
A number of years ago (2011?) the opportunity to crack open two brand new sealed copies of a recently remastered Heavy Vinyl pressing came our way.
At the time, we were told that with this pressing every effort was made to produce the highest quality product and to maintain the utmost in quality control throughout the production process. They were adamant that every copy produced, from first to last, would be indestiguishable from any other. Not just in terms of surfaces, but sound quality too.
To accomplish this feat, the producer used the real master tapes (we were told, no reason to doubt him), had a well known mastering engineer do the mastering at a highly-regarded studio, then had a well-known audiophile pressing plant in Germany make the record, using the finest vinyl compounds available, in presses that meet the highest standards in the industry, operated by skilled individual of the utmost professionalism.
Any stamper would be replaced long before it could possibly be showing any wear.
All the metal mothers and stampers would be made in a way designed to eliminate all variation.
One and only one complete run would be made. If another was needed at some later date the whole process would have to be started over from scratch using the same strict quality controls.