Thirty seconds of cooling

When a plant can push more records per hour by cutting cooling time by 30 seconds, it does. And you get warped records. That is not a conspiracy, it is an incentive.

I read this the way my background taught me to read any business. Demand keeps climbing, experienced press operators are retiring, and new staff are being trained on machines that take years of expertise. The incentive structure rewards speed and volume, not really quality, and you do not need a whistle-blower to predict the result.

Here's what that does to an $80 record. The premium anniversary box set goes through the same high-volume pipeline as millions of ordinary units, because that is where the capacity is. Thirty seconds saved at the press is a rounding error in the plant's numbers and a warp on your turntable.

The premium plants exist, and I name them: Quality Record Pressings, RTI, Pallas in Germany, Optimal Media. They produce exceptional vinyl. The problem is that the vast majority of mainstream releases, major labels and premium editions included, never go near them.

A business does what it is paid to do. As long as we keep paying for speed, speed is what we will keep receiving.