March 19, 2016 editorial: comments

A Pressing Issue

The tired cliché “Everything old is new again,” popped in to my head this week when I read an article in Digital Music News reporting that a patent has been filed by an Austrian company called Rebeat Digital for a high-definition vinyl record format.

Although the idea of high-definition vinyl, which Rebeat is calling “HD Vinyl,” initially struck me as a bit oxymoronic, the new format will supposedly offer double the fidelity of a standard vinyl album, produce up to 30% more volume, and have a 30% greater capacity. The key point is that this is not digital audio — it’s still analog. As I understand it, HD-Vinyl is basically a more accurate way to manufacture vinyl records. It uses 3D-topographic mapping technology and laser etching to produce the LPs, and I assume the added precision is what makes for the increased fidelity and capacity.

There will be HD Vinyl turntables eventually, but fear not, you’ll still be able to use your current turntable to play HD Vinyl albums. However, according to the Digital Music News article, “enhanced features will be better realized on upcoming, HD-compatible turntables.” Hmm. Well, we’ll see. The hope is that both LPs and turntables using the new format will hit the market in about three years.

HD notwithstanding, the scope of the vinyl resurgence over the last few years seems to have  taken the record industry by surprise. But now that vinyl seems to be a serious format once more, the major labels have jumped on the bandwagon big time. Not only is a vinyl component now de rigueur for new releases, the labels are making vinyl versions of the albums in their catalogs — some of which, I guess, had originally been in vinyl, were later were re-released as CDs, and now are coming back to vinyl. Crazy.

The result is a ton of demand for pressing of vinyl albums and not nearly enough manufacturing capacity. That has led to long waits to get vinyl copies of an album made. Plenty of artists have had to push back the release dates of new albums because of the vinyl backlog. When and if HD Vinyl comes out, it should help ease that backlog, because it doesn’t rely on the old-style vinyl manufacturing plants that are now in such short supply.

I have my fingers crossed that these new-fangled HD LPs will not be prone to the scratching and crackling and warping that plagues conventional vinyl. Those are the problems that made me happy to leave the vinyl format behind when the CD first came out. And I may be in a minority, but I don’t miss vinyl from a fidelity standpoint (although I do miss album covers, with all their room for imagery and information).

Based on the preceding paragraph, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I haven’t had much trouble resisting the vinyl revival. What’s more, I don’t have a working turntable, and I have no albums left —I sold or gave them all away—so I’d have to start from…ahem…“scratch,” with a vinyl collection.

But hey, let’s see what happens (if anything) with HD Vinyl — it does have intriguing possibilities— and even a vinyl skeptic like me might be interested. But I’ll tell you one thing, if they invent an HD cassette, that’s where I draw the line.