Mala email RE skipping

[richm]

FYI.

By the way - did many of you get the picture disks? Georgous.

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Hi Guys, I really appreciate the feedback. This issue concerns me as all parties involved Myself, Transition Mastering, S.T Holdings and Optimal (which is one of the best vinyl pressing plants) have all gone the extra mile to make this record the high quality record I expected.

I had the Test Pressings (TP's) for DMZLP001 since january 2010 and played all tracks out continuously for the past 7 months. The TP's have always played fine. I make 10 TP's of everything and give them to other heads to check and play. I had no bad reports back. I triple check everything throughly and certainly wouldn't let something so major slip by without been fixed. For example MEDi 015 had 4 TP's made before it was perfect! The same happened to my track Level Nine.
I think its safe to say that most people know that Im a freak when it comes to vinyl. I play records pretty much everyday of my life.
When the finished LP was in my hand, its was checked again before being shipped out.
Since then I have listened to maybe 8 copies of both the versions of DMZLP001 at home and in the studio they are exact reproductions of the TP's. There was no issues. I used Technics 1200's with standard Statons, Shure N44-7 and Shure White Labels.
I also played Mountain dread, Eyez and Return II Space at dmz this saturday, play was the same.


Here is an email from Optimal (the Pressing Plant) to S. T Holdings the Distributor regarding the issue for anyone interested.

I've pulled the record from our archive and played it twice:

1st) Technics MK2, regular DJ pickup at 2g tracking force instead of default 3.4g and anti-skating set to zero: no skips
2nd) same turntable, hifi pickup at nominal tracking force of 1.5g and anti-skating = 0: no skips

The music itself has a lot of very low frequencies in it, almost subsonic. I really liked it.

It is important to understand that skipping is in many cases a result of resonance, sort of a resonance catastrophe. The mechanical system made up of pickup, headshell and tone-arm has its own resonance frequency and the movement (in fact the music) coming from the grooves introduces oscillation into this tone-arm system. Depending on the individual setup of each turntable, this can lead to various kinds of interference, including resonance mode. If the oscillation of the tone-arm becomes too strong it will skip.

Therefore it's hard to predict whether a record will skip or not since it depends a lot of the turntable components at the user's side. In order to have an early indication, our QC turntables are all set-up to zero anti-skating and we issue a warning when we suspect skipping.

You were right assuming that all pressing from one laquer family are the same. So the tps of DMZ017 should exhibit the same behavior as the DMZLP001.

Please keep us posted with you feedback as its extremely important to me that if you do have a bad record I'd like to sort it.

Thank you to everyone who has brought my record. Its been another learning curve and something I have enjoying putting together.

Respect

Mala

[Cillit Bang]

Top response.

Just shows there a lot of people out there who don't understand the tone arm or know that you can optimise the weight.

Then again I can't remember the time I touched mine.

[dafox]

mala made a tune so deep that needles cant handle it

[Cillit Bang]

Also, it's very refreshing to see people care sooooo much about the final product and to make sure they're involved in the entire process.

Other artists would be like "yeah just gave this label a tune and got paid".

[d-i-z]

Thank you Mala for being diplomatic and understanding in your reply.

Mine works fine, but certain man with skipping problems have complained the wrong way, and don't deserve such an answer from you, but I know that doesn't affect your thinking in any way.

d-i-z

[formzee]

if its skipping, youre doing it wrong

[__________]

That's nice. Forget the music for a second, the first thing I noticed about the sleeve was a typo

Transition Studio's

[richm]

Think I'll send mine back and try again - it has one pretty horrible jump at the start of Livin Different during the intro, rest of the track and album plays fine so I can't really swallow STs explaination. The jump definitely isn't related to bass frequency.

Interesting Mala references both version of the album - guess the other version is the picture disk set.

[oc1gam]

I thought this was just me, was doing my nut in as brought it to play out this friday in Nottingham. Glad I saw this post, will have to sort out taking it back in to BM and work something out..

[circleofpsy]

picture disks?

What?

any info on this

[Rekah]

mine skipped for a little cant remember which tune it was, id been drinking ha but after a few plays and changing the needle it went away

[mondays child]

Nice to see that at least there are people who care about things like this.


Good stuff.

[darkside]

Played 4 tracks from the vinyl live on getdarkertv last night, for all to see - with absolutely NO problems.

[spydee]

Top response.

Just shows there a lot of people out there who don't understand the tone arm or know that you can optimise the weight.

Then again I can't remember the time I touched mine.

trust. i definately make sure i adjust the weights as soon as i notice anything like that.

it helps in the long run; setting up the balance on your needles reduces the wear and tear of everything.

[fractal]

Played 4 tracks from the vinyl live on getdarkertv last night, for all to see - with absolutely NO problems.

no problems over here either

adjust yo shit

[J-R]

Seen my mate play his copy on 2 different setups, no problems at all

[dirt]

Antone got a photo of the picture discs to share? Jealous much,,,,

[JFK]

Antone got a photo of the picture discs to share? Jealous much,,,,

FFS there are no picture discs.
There is no Loefah tape only hiphop album either.

[brent]

i haven't received my copies yet, as Friday shipping for new releases doesn't mean anything if it takes a week to get here. i hope there's no real issues, though. my promo of LUTETIA003 was delayed and shipped separately for some reason, then when it came it had a super tidal wave thing going that was bouncing my current AND unused Shure Whitelabels. it was just alone in an envelope. i thought about my needles and tonearms, but they are set the way the directions told me to set them. i should have a replacement 12 for that one in a day or 2. i have some warped records, but none of them skipped/bounced like that one did. it also cost $18 for the cheapest shipping to return the Silkie LP. it's no big deal, but it's not just 1 copy this time. I GOT 3!! :p

[noam]

all this picture disc shit is getting annoying. it makes me feel stupid and im not even the one believing there are actually picture discs, some people take hype so serious...