pressing quality vs. system quality

sombunya said:

Not sure if there's an easy answer here.

At what point does a turntable sytem surpass the quality of the cutting and pressing of the vinyl?

I enjoy seeing all of the amazing equipment out there. I don't know a lot about the cutting and pressing of vinyl but there must be a point when higher and higher quality reproduction becomes moot, at in regards to the information contained in the grooves.

Can pressing plant "A" have a better cutter than plant "B"?

Again, there must be a point when the quality of a turntable system surpasses the limits of the cutter/pressing quality.

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i'm going to re-phrase your question to my understanding of what you are trying to ask;

has the very very best hardware (tt's, cartridges, arms) found all the information in the grooves of the best pressings?

and the answer is absolutely not. i'm involved as an observer of very high performance tonearm development. i keep hearing improvments. mechanical devices are by nature imperfect. as they approach optimization there is less room for improvement, but i think there is still more to go.

and that is a good thing i think. and speaks to the wonderful format that vinyl is.

and the fact that there is so much information on an Lp, it's mastered with lots of moving mechanical parts, and it's read mechanically causes large variations of performance both on the pressing side and playing side.

and then you add in the variation of the source for the pressing with time and differences in approach and even vinyl formulations and thickness, yes pressings do vary.

all that said, there are quite a few consistent things you can somewhat trust when acquiring pressings that will get you to the good stuff. there are dozens of forums and thousands of opinions on that subject.

if you're asking whether you can discern good mastering from bad mastering on an average or mid-fi deck, imo, yes pretty easliy. I think what mike is saying that the current SOTA in 'tables still has a way to go the extract everything pressed in the groves.

sombunya said:

At what point does a turntable sytem surpass the quality of the cutting and pressing of the vinyl?

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The turntable used at home will not surpass the quality of the cutting lathe used to make the master. Mastering engineers always have to be mindful not to cut grooves that can't be tracked by arms/cartridges because they easily can.

sombunya said:

Can pressing plant "A" have a better cutter than plant "B"?

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If this question means to say can pressing plant "A" press better records than pressing plant "B," the answer is yes. Better machines, better quality vinyl, and better trained personnel. Most pressing plants don't have their own lathes and cut their own masters.

sombunya said:

Again, there must be a point when the quality of a turntable system surpasses the limits of the cutter/pressing quality.

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If you have a crappy pressing, a Kenner Close and Play record player will exceed the quality of the pressing (well-almost). We are nowhere near having turntable systems at home that exceed the quality/capability of what the cutting lathe is capable of doing.