Colored Vinyl Sound Quality

[moe29]

Was just wondering, is the sound quality of colored vinyl considered
to be inferior to black vinyl? I'm not asking about picture discs,
just red, pink, etc.

thanks!

m.

(listening to his new pink copy of Tori Amos's Under the Pink)

((on his new VPI Scout / Grado Sonata / diy Pearl / PD-Brian GT Gain Clone / B&W 805 Matrix))

(((music is cool)))

[Mad_K]

I my experience the colored discs give me a lot of surface noise

BTW sounds like a nice system you've put together moe. How do you feel the GC manages to drive the 805's ?

[moe29]

The GC seems to run the 805's just fine at my listening levels.
It runs out of steam a little at high levels, but my living room isn't
a disco I was surprised at how good it sounds. Probably has a
lot to do with Peter and Brian's design and the lovely chasis.

My main speakers are a pair of Bottlehead Straight 8's,
that i usually pair with an Aleph 3 or my Zen, X-SOZ, or other
lower powered amps. The 805's came over from the home theatre
side of things just for fun.

This is the first vinyl i've had in my stystem since '85 or so!
Building the Pearl made me get a turntable. I'm listening to a lot
of music, so the combo must be doing someting right!

Good to hear from you Mads!

[jeff spall]

Hi, I think it's generally recognised that coloured vinyl was used for sales rather than sound.

The carbon that makes a record black is in there, I think, for a a number of reasons and maybe more than these ones I have heard of:
1 as a carbon atom is a few hundred times smaller than a vinyl molecule, adding it results in smoother groove walls which will allow a theoretically higher dynamic range and lower niose.
2 It helps stiffen the groove walls which has to be good for accurate reproduction
3 A stylus generates a *lot* of local heat when tracking and adding carbon helps dissipate it. Without carbon, there can be local melting of the groove wall, which is maybe why coloured LPs don't last long or sound noisy very quickly.

Not sure about this, but maybe also the mechanical impedence of the record changes, too (??)

regards, Jeff