Back to Black - Coloured Vinyl: Any good or a useless fad?

Regular readers of this blog will know that collecting vinyl records has become a passion of mine over recent years - Music has always played a big part in my life, but I, like many others of my age found myself switching from vinyl to CD sometime in the mid 1980's, and for many many years I didn't even own a record player. It was, most thought, a dead medium.

However, here we are in 2020 and incredibly vinyl has not only made a comeback, but is the bestselling physical medium for music sales. Whilst CD's are slowly fading away, vinyl records are booming and the equipment required to play these records has never been more affordable or technically better. These days you can set up a pretty decent system for less than £500 - I know I did and the sound I get it superb.

Another trend in new vinyl is with the vinyl itself - most new vinyl is now thicker and heavier than the old records we were used to, as a result it sounds better and is far more durable. New vinyl is usually 180g in weight and the pressing techniques used in record plants ensure the best possible sonic reproducion.

But what of coloured vinyl? It's becoming far more popular. Coloured records, transparent records, splatter records that look amazingly cool draw attention and look awesome spinning on the turntable.

But how do they actually sound?

Pretty good to be honest.

The raw material used to produce a record - polyvinyl chloride arrives at the pressing plant in granule form. Usually these granules are black in colour. These granules are then melted down and made into a soft dough like substance. These dough balls are then placed into the mould of an hydraulic press and the record is pressed. To make a transparent record the process is the same but the granules used are not the typical black ones but transparent. The melting and pressing remains the same. However because much more of the black granules are ordered by record companies then the quality control requirements for the black granules are usually much higher than for the transparent. This is why transparent records have historically suffered from static much more often than the standard black records.

Now coloured vinyl is slightly different and requires an additional step in which pigment powders are added to the transparent granules. Now this means that the pigment particles within the record can often be traced by a stylus and produce background noise when playing the record. Splatter record of even multi- coloured records take this a step further and multiple pigmentation powders are added to the granules. This can unfortunately increase background noise in the record even further.

But how bad is this background noise?

Well, the plating process (putting the music onto the disc) for coloured records is exactly the same as for black records, so it is the mastering stage that is the most important step, and no matter what colour the record is good mastering is good mastering. So whilst, coloured vinyl may not be as good as black vinyl most of these imperfections could only be noticed by highly sensitive meters and not the human ear. On the other hand bad mastering can not be hidden no matter what colour the vinyl.

And so in the final analysis the sound quality between a good traditional black record and a good, well mastered coloured record will likely remain inaudible to most listeners.

So add a little colour to your life.