generally speaking, 120 to 140 grams is the norm for most releases.

180 to 220+ is most often considered to be of audiophile grade. As you already know, the records are thicker and heavier, thus less likely to warp. regardless of many peoples claims, there really is no audible difference between the different grams of records.

Virgin vinyl is a different story though. As no recycles plastic is in use, the audio can definitely be cleaner and clearer as there is no left over junk that can bump out a groove or make the disc weaker in some places compared to others. the wear is likely to be more even as well.

to my knowledge, the actual weight of the vinyl itself will have no effect on playability, just durability. i have records in my collection that are 120 gram and on virgin vinyl and the quality has a greater impact than the weight…

so far as properties go, i would say pay more attention to the rated hardness of the resin. if it is hard enough, you should be able to create a solid playable duplicate that will be a double the thickness of to the old flexi-discs but would be a whole lot more durable due to the materials used.

they would be pretty cheap to make multiple copies of too !

of course, this is all speculation.. blah blah blah, you know the drill :)

i translated the original article from german, but i also added in information to help clarify where the german article was lacking in details.

the reason i would say that the info you read is bunk is mainly due to the “Shore Durometer” link i listed in the article. the plastic resin that is liked to is rated at 70D, almost at the same hardness as construction worker’s hard hats. it is no lightweight resin. it could take a hell of a beating. to be honest i bet it would wreck a precision needle better than it would be wrecked itself. i dont know what it’s weight would be like, but if you know your vinyl, i would expect it to have very little flexibility when created. i would not be surprised if it ends up similar in physical flexibility to a decent quality 100gram pressing. i bet it could out last any low end pressing on 3rd or 4th generation vinyl (like lots of bad 80’s butt rock, and top 40 pop).

this is obviously speculation. i plan on creating a copy as part of a project in may sometime.. if you want i will update and let you know how it goes… but the reality is i think someone gave out bad info.. hell, it is possible said person was an industry rep.

i feel pretty confident in my research though and do not assume that this would be wasted time if someone were to go through the full process. 2 days seems like a scare tactic or the work of a forum troll.
later!

regular cd audio is always going to be lessening the audio quality though. it can get crisper, but it cant cope with the frequency losses.
it is a shame that dvd audio pretty much died on the vine.