Vinyl pressing in digital world.

[Werner]

Any evidence of that?

Yes. When rumours like this are spread evidence is required. And for the frequence of use of higher-than-44.1kHz masters, too.

I, for one, would not be very optimistic.

 

[Hiten]

Agree with Werner. Anyone from vinyl pressing co. or anyone having first hand experience of visiting such co. or any other precise info would help.
Regds.

 

[Hiten]

Just found this vinyl pressing co. They have listed equipments they use.
Cutting & Mastering - Europe's vinyl pressing plant - Record Industry
But being a noob, don't know if DAC is very high end or not.

 

[kevinkr]

Any evidence of that?

In my somewhat jaded view of the world of work, people don't have time for such niceties. What I expect is that a man with a cough in a slightly grubby blue or brown smock, will place your CD in a bog-standard Denon CD player (bought from the shop down the road in 1993), fed via a decidedly non-audiophile cable (terminated in a DIN plug) to a 1970s era box with a couple of analogue meters on it. It will kill everything above 16 kHz and mix all bass to mono. Another DIN cable (spliced, with PVC tape around the joint) will then go off to the cutting machine. Some of the equipment will still smell of cigarette smoke all these years later.

Either that, or it will just be a PC that takes your 16 bit master and performs compression/de-essing algorithms on it in the digital domain and sends the output to its middling quality 24 bit consumer sound card (costing $100) and onwards.

Not sure where you have looked lately, but this description doesn't really fit the description of the newly opened Quality Record Pressings (Acoustic Sounds' new pressing and mastering plant) nor the roughly decade old Brooklyn Phono..(Or any of the few others I am aware of.) Given the economics of record pressing here in the USA it has mostly been taken over by specialty outfits that take great pride in the quality of their product and usually have pretty good hardware, and very clean production areas as well. Stereophile has featured several record pressing plants in articles over recent years, the most recent just a month or so ago. There are also a number of labels that still support production from analog tape.

 

[Werner]

There are also a number of labels that still support production from analog tape.

And do they use a digital delay line in the signal path?