Vinyl refuses to die. The plastic disc that first appeared in 1931 is still spinning 95 years later, and its sales are booming. But is the format as good as it’s ever going to get, or is there room to make records sound better? What Hi-Fi? put that question to some of the industry’s sharpest turntable engineers — and their answers reveal a surprising consensus.
Several pointed to speed as the obvious lever. Sony’s Eric Kingdon noted that faster formats like 45rpm 12-inch discs, half-speed mastering and direct cutting already exist. Michell’s Jonathan Nye would go further and make 45rpm the default for albums, arguing that higher speed improves high-frequency performance, cuts distortion toward the inner grooves, and makes life easier for the stylus. The catch, as ever, is playing time.
Nye also floated the idea of a slightly wider groove — easier to clean, less sensitive to debris, potentially reducing wear by spreading tracking force. But wider grooves mean fewer per side, which is precisely why the microgroove LP won out in the first place. Clearaudio’s Robert Suchy took the opposite tack, suggesting a slightly larger disc diameter to squeeze out around 30 minutes per side, which would in turn justify longer tonearms and heavier platters.
Yet the loudest theme wasn’t format tinkering — it was quality. Origin Live’s David Baker warned that while vinyl is thriving, the number of quality cutting rooms is a long way from the 20th-century peak, and he’d welcome regulation to guarantee a mastering standard. Pro-Ject CEO Heinz Lichtenegger was blunter still, condemning the “opportunists” flooding the market with poorly designed turntables and badly pressed records: “Never before in our industry has a format come back from the dead quite like vinyl. We need to protect that.”
Vertere’s Touraj Moghaddam backed that up with hard testing. In blind listening, a test pressing four steps removed from the lacquer beat an acetate cut on the original lathe — because the lacquer had been cut on a heavily upgraded machine. His verdict: the cutting lathe is the weakest link, not the RIAA curve or the format itself, and improving lathes, pressing gear and vinyl compounds costs little compared with wholesale format changes.
Others would leave the sound alone entirely. Linn’s Roy Marston is more concerned with the environmental footprint of PVC discs, calling for greater circularity and non-fossil-fuel bioplastics. Rega’s Roy Gandy reckons 33⅓rpm is an ideal compromise and that the real fix is price — Rega can record and sell an LP with a fair margin for around £20.00. Dual’s Alfred Langer summed up the mood neatly: record technology has always been a compromise, but an extremely good one.
The engineers disagree on almost every fix — but they agree the format is worth fighting for.
