____twoism

dajahew1 wrote:

fujee wrote:Still haven't received my Trans Canada EP?

I still haven't received my copy of IABPOITC. It was marked as dispatched on the 15th...

I got a feeling they might be holding back copies for the new ones to arrive, so they don't have to send out replacements?

fujee wrote:

dajahew1 wrote:

fujee wrote:Still haven't received my Trans Canada EP?

I still haven't received my copy of IABPOITC. It was marked as dispatched on the 15th...

I got a feeling they might be holding back copies for the new ones to arrive, so they don't have to send out replacements?

if they do they should at least inform the buyers...I think it would make them more positive looking (sorry my bad english) if they rach out to them ...maybe some think they fucked up "again" so they bash on them...and it turns out it was for no reason

fujee wrote:

dajahew1 wrote:

fujee wrote:Still haven't received my Trans Canada EP?

I still haven't received my copy of IABPOITC. It was marked as dispatched on the 15th...

I got a feeling they might be holding back copies for the new ones to arrive, so they don't have to send out replacements?

I sent Bleep a support ticket:

TE, Nov 29 18:22 (GMT):

Hi there

We are sorry that your order has not yet arrived. We will of course be able to replace this for you as at this point we can assume it has been lost in the post.

We will be in touch on Monday with details on your replacement record.

Bleep Support

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dajahew1, Nov 29 13:50 (GMT):

It is now the 29th and the two records have still not arrived.

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TE, Nov 25 16:40 (GMT):

Hi dajahew1

We are sorry your order has not yet arrived.

We can confirm that this was dispatched on the 15th of November. However, we hope you understand that these things are not always an exact science. There can be delays in the post that are beyond our control. We apologise sincerely for any inconvenience this may cause.

We ask that you allow up to 14 days from the date of dispatch before we assume an item has been lost in the post. If your order has not arrived by then please do let us know. Please note that this is our maximum delivery time before we assume an item is lost. It is likely that your order will arrive sooner than this this. We will also be sure to notify you if your order is returned to us for any reason.

We are sorry for the wait. Hopefully your order will be with you soon.

Bleep support

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dajahew1, Nov 23 15:03 (GMT):

Hi,
I recently ordered two copies of the Boards of Canada EP "In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country", order numbers ----------------------- and -----------------------. Both of these were marked as dispatched on 15/11/2013, but neither of these have arrived. I believe it may have got lost in the post as other people have received their BoC EPs well before the release date, and now it's 2 days after the release date and I still have not received mine.
Should I wait a bit longer, or do you think it may be lost in the postal service?

Regards,

dajahew1

So here's hoping they will actually get back to me on Monday. I'm half expecting them to not respond. Also, since you bought Trans Canada Highway which did have issues with scratches on the record stampers, it's likely that they are pressing a new run, hence why it may be delayed. IABPOITC didn't appear to have any of these issues so I should have received it ages ago.

Cheers for the info! In two minds whether to email or not.

fujee wrote:Cheers for the info! In two minds whether to email or not.

Yeah, I would. You have a right to ask, since you paid for it. And they respond pretty quickly anyways.

Went at the record store friday and bought all of them, and all of that before I knew there were any issues (of course, wouldn't be funny otherwise).

I intended on keeping them sealed (this was supposed to be my christmas present) but seeing all the issues I went out and checked all of them at least partially to see if I had any of the recurring problems mentioned. Here I'll reprint what I've said in my mail to bleep :

Safe for some surface noise, my copies of Music Has the Right, Twoism
and In a Beautiful place are ok. I still think it's astounding that
brand new records fresh out of the package have any surface noise at
all, especially considering that I regularly buy second hand records
from the 70s and 80s which sound basically pristine but anyway...

However, I have noticed several problems on the others :
— The Campfire Headphase has some pretty serious surface noise
throughout, that's especially present on the quieter tracks (Sherbet
Head, Constants are Changing, Tears from the Compound Eye and Farewell
Fire suffer from this problem in particular) and can be heard pretty
much anywhere where there's an ambient passage. It doesn't seem to be
as bad as some other people have mentioned but it still is pretty
heavily peppered with it and I'm afraid it's not going to get any
better with repeated listens.
— Trans Canada Highway has pretty much the same problem, a-side is
somewhat fine but the b-side is marred by an unhealthy amount of
surface noise throughout.
— Geogaddi has the same problem mentioned by a lot of people, which is
that Corsair (on side E) is crippled by some high-end distortion that
occurs all over the track. The rest of the pressing is fine aside from
some surface noise, but all the vinyls display slight warping that
almost make my stylus jump (and I've checked, it's not a weight or
anti-skip problem).

Anyone has had problem with warping on Geogaddi ? All the vinyls themselves sound fine (the music pressed on them I mean) but none are pristine, i.e. they don't really sound like brand new out of the sleeve vinyl are supposed to sound. Even the ones that are basically good (MHTRTC) still have surface noise even though they're right out of the package.

But the problem is (and I must be slightly stupid since I thought of this only after sending the mail to bleep) I haven't actually bought the vinyls from bleep themselves. So what am I supposed to do, just bring them back to the record store ? What happens if they don't want to take them back, or worse yet, if I get other copies and the different copies sound worse than the ones I have ?

This seems to be a more and more common problem these days, sadly. I'm also a big Dead Can Dance fan, and the vinyl pressing of their latest album (Anastasis) is completely crippled by heavy distortion and surface noise. How is it that vinyl pressings actually got worse today than the flimsy mid-80s era DMM pressings which, as of now, were the lowest standard of vinyl pressing I could think of (just fire a copy of Peter Gabriel's Security from that era and you'll hear what I mean) ? It's especially ironic that it seems to be more prevalent in the supposedly "high-end" 140 and 180-gram pressings : for example I heard reports saying that the label called "Vinyl 180" is one of the worst offenders when it comes to this kind of issues, with a lot of their pressings marred by glaring manufacturing problems.

I'm sorry that one of my first posts on this cool forum is used to bitch and moan but I found surprising how little these issues are discussed especially since they seem more and more common recently. To balance that out, I have to say I have had no problems with either the Tomorrow's Harvest or Exai vinyl pressings, which are both wonderful, and not even mentioning the quality of the music itself.

Zwei Kreise wrote:But the problem is (and I must be slightly stupid since I thought of this only after sending the mail to bleep) I haven't actually bought the vinyls from bleep themselves. So what am I supposed to do, just bring them back to the record store ? What happens if they don't want to take them back, or worse yet, if I get other copies and the different copies sound worse than the ones I have ?

Are you in the UK? If so, you're covered under the Sale of Goods Act. Means you're entitled to a full refund or exchange from the place of purchase (not the manufacturer or supplier). ie. you need to report the problems promptly to the store you bought them from. If you'd rather buy from Bleep, then go for a refund.

Find out more here.

Yeah actually, no, I live in france. (and am french, incidentally... should've clarified that on my profile)

I'll relisten to both TCHs tomorrow, in more detail, and see if it's really worth going to the record store for. If anything I'd rather wait for Warp to sort out the issue, but who knows if they're actually going to repress the more faulty ones ?

I read they're being repressed. For what it's worth, I must say that my TCH 1st press is full of surface noise too... but it's a 2nd hand record.

PS : enfin un compatriote français en ces pages

Yeah but it's an eight-year old record, and it's probably been played at least a few times, it's normal for vinyl to show signs of wear after a while, but it shouldn't happen on brand new vinyls, that's just unacceptable.

It's good to know that they're being repressed, but I'm wondering if it will be possible to get the good represses in exchange for the bad copies we have now ? I certainly hope so, otherwise I'm pretty sure I'll stop bothering with new Warp vinyls in the future.

C'est impossible qu'on soit les seuls français dans le coin non ? Enfin ça me paraîtrait bizarre... Mais bon c'est vrai qu'on est pas particulièrement connus pour notre amour de la (bonne) musique électronique, remarque. En tout cas oui, content de n'être point le seul.

Sorry for all the french, guys, nothing offensive is being said though haha.

Regarding the nowadays vinyl low quality, I only started buying vinyl a few years ago, but from a couple of 70's releases that I own I can totally understand what you're saying in terms of surface noise.

People say it is because of poor vinyl quality from the recycled plastics that are used today and even the manufacturing process that have changed for the worse while plants tried to cut off costs. I can't say anything about the manufacturing process, but from a couple of modern 'virgin vinyl' presses that I own I can surely say that those are way cleaner than the regular ones.

Yeah virgin vinyl is so much better, my Basinski vinyl are so clean compared to a regular non virgin release..

You'd hope that as vinyl sales continue to pick up (and they are) the quality of the product would improve. Time will tell..

I would hope too that quality would improve, but history kind of proves that wrong. Since the 60-70s (the decades when vinyl pressings were the best according to audiophiles), the quality of vinyl has done nothing but dropping.

There were the 80s with the slimmer and cracklier vinyls (DMMs and so forth), and I think if it hadn't been for techno in the 90s vinyl would've completely died out.

And up until now, electronic music had been relatively safe from the problems of vinyl, but now it's starting to show up in electronic music releases as well. That's kind of depressing actually.

Went back and listened to The Campfire Headphase this morning. Okay, actually I must be one of the luckier ones, it's far from the quietest pressing I've heard, but it still plays okay. The sound is a little bit flat but I've heard worse ... until I get to side 4 that is. The last three tracks crackle like hell, and it's especially egregious on Farewell Fire (since it's very quiet), it sounds more like someone's frying eggs over the damn fire.

Will recheck Trans Canada Highway this afternoon but I'm not optimistic.

Too bad there isn't a general website, or something integrated with Discogs, that helps consumers avoid purchasing vinyl with issues (like these BoC re-pressings). It would for example disclose the actual vinyl pressing plant and its customer-based score, along with customer reviews, updates on future re-(re)pressings, etc. Of course we can google it, find random forums, and check amazon reviews for each individual album, but it would be great to have it all in one place...

I'm pleased to report all my EP's seem fine. I also received a second copy of Geogaddi and this one seems better. There is still a tiny amount of distortion on corsair but nothing like the previous version but still not great. I wasn't aware IABPOITC was 45 so at first I was like whooah Amo Bishop Roden is way off pitch. D'oh.

Otherwise Geogaddi sounds sublime. I'm a little less certain of the quality on Twoism. Anyway one thing I've noticed that is annoying is the edges of dead wax are really rough. I've never encountered this in all my time buying vinyl. I had a slight chip in my TCH disc 2 and I've a slight one on Geogaddi Disc 3. I just pulled out some of my Ghostly stuff namely Gold Panda and all the edges were smooth and it sounded clear, deep with great separation.

This has been unfortunately disappointing.

So I really couldn't wait any longer, and ordered the LP bundle. On Bleep.com it said that the estimated shipping was in 34 days, what's the reason behind this? I thought a lot of people have these already? Or are they repressing them again, because of the shit pressings? And we'll have to wait for that now?

Probably a dumb question, but I'm new to this whole Vinyl thing.

portiss wrote:So I really couldn't wait any longer, and ordered the LP bundle. On Bleep.com it said that the estimated shipping was in 34 days, what's the reason behind this? I thought a lot of people have these already? Or are they repressing them again, because of the shit pressings? And we'll have to wait for that now?

Probably a dumb question, but I'm new to this whole Vinyl thing.

It's hard to say and this is only speculation; I would imagine that all those who preordered had the batch that they did to cover those orders. There have been enough issues that I know they are holding back sending me another copy of TCH as they fix the problem which they apparently have tracked down (personally I'm interested in knowing what the issue was) There were some issues with Geogaddi as well and to a far less degree Music Has a Right. In light of that I would hold back from sending out more represses until these issues were fixed. It's not the wax that is costing so much but the sleeves. My geogaddi had problems and they resent an entire new package not just the discs. That gets costly.

In your shoes I'd be more comfortable with the notion of waiting as it ups your chances of your LP's not having problems.

machinea wrote:

portiss wrote:So I really couldn't wait any longer, and ordered the LP bundle. On Bleep.com it said that the estimated shipping was in 34 days, what's the reason behind this? I thought a lot of people have these already? Or are they repressing them again, because of the shit pressings? And we'll have to wait for that now?

Probably a dumb question, but I'm new to this whole Vinyl thing.

It's hard to say and this is only speculation; I would imagine that all those who preordered had the batch that they did to cover those orders. There have been enough issues that I know they are holding back sending me another copy of TCH as they fix the problem which they apparently have tracked down (personally I'm interested in knowing what the issue was) There were some issues with Geogaddi as well and to a far less degree Music Has a Right. In light of that I would hold back from sending out more represses until these issues were fixed. It's not the wax that is costing so much but the sleeves. My geogaddi had problems and they resent an entire new package not just the discs. That gets costly.

In your shoes I'd be more comfortable with the notion of waiting as it ups your chances of your LP's not having problems.

Yeh, I'm actually glad that I have to wait for a long while, seems to be a good thing yeah. I'm kind of impatient though, so it will be a loooooooooong wait.

machinea wrote:Anyway one thing I've noticed that is annoying is the edges of dead wax are really rough.

Hmm, that is annoying. I think one of my Geogaddi 12s is like that, there is a nasty sticking out bit around the outside edge of the vinyl which you could quite easily cut your finger on. I've seen it once before back in the 90s with another piece of vinyl but it's not a common thing, i think.