Do old records always have better sound or do new records have the same characteristics if they “went back to the tapes?”
Like most things involving vinyl LPs, the answer to Susanna’s inaugural question is… It depends.
For albums with multiple production runs (or “pressings”), there are some fierce debates about which pressings of any given album sound best — which is, of course, a matter of opinion. For many, the heyday of pressings was the 1950s and 1960s; serious jazz and classical collectors treasure their original Blue Notes, Mercurys, and RCAs. I’ve heard many of these, and they sound amazing — but of course it’s not easy to find them cheap or in great condition nowadays. Today’s mass-market releases aren’t too bad, and there are lots of boutique pressing plants and labels turning out insanely quiet and dynamic records on the regular. On the other hand, there are Eastern European and Russian plants producing reissues that are reputed to be pretty sloppy.
Blue Note Tone Poet series
There are eras when most pressings from the US were crappy. In the mid-1960s, RCA pioneered “Dynagroove” and “Dynaflex” pressings, which were thin and thin-sounding, and sometimes distorted by dynamic passages. In the 1980s and 1990s, when LPs were produced cheaply, or were being phased out in favor of CDs, there were some travesties. DMM, or Direct Metal Mastering pressings, are identified by a logo and are often harsh-sounding. Obviously there are exceptions to all of these generalizations, and there’s no single guideline that you can consult like a rule book.
One preference remains pretty constant: Most collectors eschew digital steps in the process, and prefer analog masterings when available. But surprise! There are analog processes that sound bad, and digital processes that sound great — and it’s usually not possible to tell just by looking at a record cover what steps the mastering process comprised.
Fake news?
Every mastering job ideally begins with the original tapes or, at worst, first-generation copies. (Occasionally that’s not the case, but not often enough to concern us.) Once somebody has obtained “the tapes” of the original recordings, mastering is the process of getting music off the tapes, through electronics and a Rube Goldberg–like record production plant, and ultimately to LPs themselves.
Mastering is as much an art form as a science, so everybody’s products will sound a bit different from others — even before you consider esoterica like how many LPs are pressed from each stamper, and whether virgin vinyl is really quieter.
Besides the mastering, though, there’s an obvious advantage to newer pressings: They should not have skips or pops, and in that way alone they may be preferable to older pressings.
Late 1950s
In the big picture, the differences probably don’t matter enough to anybody who isn’t deep into specifics. (RCA and Mercury collectors almost always favor stereo versions, for example, whereas Blue Note aficionados go for monos when they can.) It’s always fun to find an original of anything, and the originals may be valuable because rarity and desirability are two of the three characteristics that determine value of any collectible object. (The third is condition.) But there are cases where reissues sound at least as good as the first pressings. (Check out some of the fantastic Blue Note “Tone Poet” series — currently on sale at Blue Note for 30% off, no less.)
So you can certainly search online, where people offer all kinds of opinions. (There’s far more info for jazz and classical pressings than popular music.) But comparing record pressings is a pretty skinny rabbit hole, and probably not one that most people want to explore for too long. The bottom line: if you see an album you want in good condition at a reasonable price, snag it. You may not find it again, regardless of which pressing somebody thinks is “better.”