Vinyl in 2020 - Responding to the Apollo Masters Fire

[Chris]

As some of you have probably heard, the recent fire at Apollo Masters was a gut punch to the vinyl record industry and in the near term jeopardizes the recent multi year upward trajectory of vinyl record production. The Apollo Masters factory was one of only two such factories in the entire world that supplied the source material (e.g. mastering lacquers) at the start of the chain of producing a record. This article is very detailed and sums up the current situation.

Apollo Masters Fire

In the near term I would expect a real slow down in announced vinyl projects both new and reissues. Longer term there is a very promising new technology that solves the mastering problem using 21st century tools (e.g computers and lasers).

The HD Vinyl project has been rumbling along for several years and appears poised to come to market in 2020. It is just in time to replace the mastering chain issues we now have.

HD Vinyl
HD Vinyl Twitter

A somewhat recent podcast with the lead HD Vinyl person is worth a listen:

WTF is HD Vinyl - The Vinyl Guide Podcast

Michael Fremer has been covering all this at his AnalogPlanet.com as well

2020 will me an interesting year for vinyl.

[sailor]

Thanks Chris for keeping us informed

[Chris]

Here's a new video of the HD Vinyl Laser mastering. Very cool.



BTW, there is an interesting but odd fact about DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) LP mastering. Apparently, there are no commercial DMM mastering facilities in the USA because the Church of Scientology bought up all the equipment years ago? Strange but apparently true. There are DMM LP facilities still in Europe so hopefully they will help with the lacquer bottleneck?

[Chris]

Latest and some good news from Michael Fremer. Also includes the DMM - Scientology story I mentioned previously.

www.analogplanet.com/content/ken-micallef-interviews-analogplanet-editor-michael-fremer-about-lacquer-fire-and-more