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Can someone explain why I should care about the weight of vinyl?

I see a lot of stuff that is 180gm or 180gm audiophile and even 350gm.

Is less than 180gm crap? or is it all emperors new clothes?

It really depends on how it's used. In theory, heavier vinyl means the grooves can be cut deeper, hence improving the low end. BUT that comes down to the cutting engineer. It's also true that heavy vinyl lies flatter, and reduces the risk of warping.

In reality though, 180g is mostly used as a marketing term. It's something major labels use to justify higher price tags (that far exceed the extra costs involved in manufacturing heavy vinyl). They seem to do this a lot with reissues (and call it 'audiophile' vinyl, whatever that means).

As with everything to do with vinyl, there are really only two important factors - good (vinyl specific) mastering and a good cutting engineer. The rest is really just decoration.

Having said that, I personally like heavy vinyl. I like the way it lies on my turntable and how feels in my hands. Hope that answers your question

350g? Surely that's the sleeve - I've never seen a record that insanely heavy. During the oil crisis in the 70s albums got down to a pretty bendy 90g in some cases.

I like 140g plus as it just feels better!

You could take someone's head off with a 350g record. It'd be like a discus!

Thanks good reply Re-animated Cat. I wonder if i saw 350msg and confused myself..... wouldn't be the first time.

Point still stands though. Reason I thought about it was I bought an album yesterday, not a soundtrack, actually Nitin Sawhney - Beyond skin, and the vinyl was so thin its almost floppy, well not quite but you get the point. Thing is, it didn't effect the sound quality at all. Sounded great.

I get that 180gm is heavier and feels nice, but does make me wonder about audiophile grade etc etc.

It honestly is marketing talk that we are all guilty of buying into (labels , fans, collectors) ...
I did a panel at Liverpool Sound City a few weeks ago with Andy Votel and a few others and we discussed this.
140 is fine as long as you have a killer cut (as others have said) It's about the mastering and the cutting. I'd be happy doing 140 (In fact our early releases were 140 and they were fine) but people seem to have a bee in their bonnet that things MUST be 180g.
This is coming mostly from new folks who are 'collectors' so I think it's being driven by this and the claim that if it's 180 it is audiophile .. Not putting anyone down at all I understand how folks want things that are percieved as 'better' but I do have albums I can practically bend round my wrist from the late 80s and 90s and they play just fine.

On the subject of marketing talk Spencer, has it ever been a temptation to make a term up and see if it catches on?

I remember reading an article a few years back about how the major labels in the 80s/90s started pressing on really lightweight thin vinyl to make it sound worse and for CDs to sound better which helped to drive vinyl out.

I was about 14 when CD players came out so never really had much exposure to vinyl, but I've a few mainstream albums from the 80s that sound pretty good.

Si said: "On the subject of marketing talk Spencer, has it ever been a temptation to make a term up and see if it catches on?"

Whoah, this is a great idea Spence. You should come up with some secret sauce that only Death Waltz vinyl has. Perhaps something supernatural ("limited copies licked by ghosts") or maybe something totally mundane 'made from 100% pure X' where is X is just the compound used in vinyl records or whatever.

On a related note, it does seem that 180g's sister: 'virgin' vinyl seems to have dropped by the wayside - or maybe I just don't spend enough time at audiophile distros anymore? Spencer, do you know if your records are made from recycled vinyl or the virgin stuff?

Haha
that would be too funny
!

Ha, this would be a funny experiment. How about this for the black editions: "transparent vinyl with ultra pure carbon black"

^^ This absolutely!

There must be a wealth of things that already come as standard with a record that have yet to have an exclusively catchy name attached to it - the "Interactive Menu!!" proclamations on old DVDs being a great case in point, as a non-interactive one wouldn't be very handy...

A funny thing in the 90s when United Record Pressing pressed 7" on black they used to be tranparent in the light, so i think people started marketing it as smoke grey instead of the crappy black it was.

Special edition limited to 5000 copies in opaque black.

Amazingly I was flicking through record collector magazine in WHSmiths earlier and they have a 2 page that goes into some detail about it.