How to store vinyl records

Records shouldn’t be stored horizontally, or flat. Storing vinyl records flat can place too much pressure on the records lower in the stack causing damage over time.

Keep Them Cool and Dry

Store your records in a place where they’ll be kept away from the heat and direct light. In fact, a comfortable room temperature of 65 to 70 degrees would be ideal. Humidity also can harm your vinyl, so try to keep the humidity level below 50 percent.

Storing Records Horizontally

However, horizontal storage is not the best option for vinyl longevity. Over time, the vinyl can warp and become misshapen. Any warping will change the way a record sound and can make it unplayable.

Vinyl records should always be stored in a dry, cool environment. Avoid storing them in direct sunlight, as the light and heat can fade the jacket artwork and warp the record. In addition, avoid storing in areas where the record will be exposed to a lot of dust or airborne particles.

The short answer to this question is no. Storing vinyl records in your garage will lead to unnecessary damage and could cost you an entire record collection.

Never stack records on top of each other whether in their jackets or not. This is one sure fire way to cause warping, possible breaking of the vinyl record because of the weight, and will inevitably produce scuff marks and ring wear on the album cover marring the artwork.

A very common question that comes up frequently is this one: “Can I skip tracks on vinyl?” The plain and simple answer to that is: Yes. You can skip tracks on vinyl records. Anyone can do it.

Only hold the vinyl record at its outer edges, thereby avoiding the possibility of your body oils transferring onto the vinyl’s surface. If you touch the record’s surface, you increase the risk of getting dirt on the record and damaging it unnecessarily.

No, it shouldn’t damage (i.e., warp) your record. It might expose the record to more dust, etc., though. If the table gets any direct sunlight throughout the day that could be a problem.

The short answer is, yes they can. Some cheaper turntables feature a low-quality stylus that might last only 40 playing hours and can start damaging your records.

Cheap Victrola record players that are used properly should not damage your records beyond just shortening their lifespan a bit. Eventually this will cause the record to wear out and could also cause the grooves to become extremely damaged if the record skips a lot.

Sound Quality

From a technical standpoint, digital CD audio quality is clearly superior to vinyl. CDs have a better signal-to-noise ratio (i.e. there is less interference from hissing, turntable rumble, etc.), better stereo channel separation, and have no variation in playback speed.

This year, 2020, marks the first year in more than a generation since record sales — that is to say physical vinyl records — have surpassed CD sales. The reasons for this are twofold: CD sales have dropped dramatically in recent years, while sales of vinyl records are actually up this year.

Crackle, pops, clicks and other groove noise can be caused by a variety of things: pressing flaws, irreversible damage to the surface of the groove, scratches and embedded organic materials. Our PVF Archival process is the most thorough way to remove all organic and inorganic materials bound to the record surface.

To be sure, the sound of vinyl carries additional warmth when recorded through analog rather than digital technology. Richness refers to the diversity of auditory aspects heard in vinyl records. Because of record grooves, the sound of vinyl is more open, allowing a greater quantity of features to be heard.

If you want to listen to music on vinyl and you like the experience, that sums it up – you’ll buy it and it is not a waste of money because you are spending money on something you want to do.

Vinyl is far more high–quality. No audio data is lost when pressing a record. It sounds just as great as the producer or band intended. Since vinyl is an analog format, it can suffer from the same problems.

There is a huge difference in sound volume and quality. There are fairly good new ones also but not as good as the old ones. Some new releases and re-presses have crackles, IGD etc. right out of the box which I don’t have with 30-40 year old LPs played gazillion times.

Vinyl records are very expensive to produce as the production has multiple steps that are all expensive, both in labor and materials. They need to use expensive materials like master lacquer, nickel solution, etc which adds up.

A disc is rotating on a cutting lathe while the master recording tapes or files are being played at the same speed. The recording stylus cuts into the vinyl master disc to reproduce the recorded and mixed audio as analog grooves. In theory, this produces higher fidelity vinyl masters and eventually vinyl records.

Label Variations

One album, 6 labels. One is worth $10; one is worth $10,000! A significant factor in determining a vinyl record’s value is the label on the record itself. A given album or single might have been released with several different labels on the disc itself, even among releases by the same record company.