Vinyl Jargon Explained

📸 Cover / jacket - the card/paper envelope that has the front, back, and spine artwork & information.

📸 Gatefold - an 'outer-sleeve' that opens up like a large birthday card. Often used for double-disc releases, or single discs with extra artwork/booklets on the other side.

📸 Inner sleeve - the 'envelope' that a vinyl record is stored in, then slid inside the cover. Cheap ones are paper, but record labels and artists that care about their vinyl will provide thin plastic or rice paper ones, which don't release paper fibers all over your disc, and even scratch them. One of the best investments you can make to care for your records is a box of 50-100 inner sleeves, replace any paper ones immediately.

📸 Outer Sleeve - the thicker clear plastic protection that some records have. Mostly to protect the cover/jacket from scuffs and scratches - even from repeatedly pulling it out and putting it back on the shelves. One of the downsides is that they take up more room when you have them on 100s of albums.

📸 Plate Hole - the small gap in the center of a record that the spindle goes through, holding it in place while it's played. It's rare, but I have a few records where the hold is not centered, and they sound terrible!

📸 Dead Wax / 'Runout' - the area between the 'end' of the audio and the label. The groove is usually more severe, to bring the needle into the center faster. Although rare, some albums have a 'locked groove' where the final 'ring' is a continuous sound or repeating piece of music. The dead wax area can also contain...

Matrix Numbers - tracks the origin / plant where the record was pressed

Etchings - other non-audio information, can be used to identify a specific pressing 

Signatures/Initials of mastering engineers. Name of the pressing plant, etc.

📸 Locked groove - keeps the tone-arm from going on to the label area.

📸 Mono - a record with one single audio channel - centered - playing the exact same sound on both your left and right speakers. The groove on a mono record is symmetrical.

📸 Stereo - a record with two audio channels - split between Left and Right - playing separate tracks on each speaker. These grooves are not symmetrical, and the left & right side of your needle reads a different signal.

📸 A, B, C, D, E, F... - the 'sides' and which order to play them. Usually shown on the label, or at minimum, on one of the sides. Sides are always paired A-B, C-D, E-F....

📸 Label - Circular paper label. May contain track listings, pressing info, which side is side A and B. Catalogue Number.

📸 Lead-in - the outer edge of a record has a non-audio groove to catch the needle so it's in the groove and ready for the first track.

📸 180g / 200g - belief is that these heavier records sound better, although I have some rubbish 180g pressings and some great sounding lighter/thinner records, take this claim with a pinch of salt.

📸 Album - an album is called an 'album' because the black iconic plastic LP record was the first time that +10 tracks could fit on a single disc. Before LPs shellac records were mostly one song per disc, and they were stored and sold in booklets, binders, or albums - picture a photo album or CD holder. Early vinyl marketing boasted that a single record could hold an Album's worth of music!

Noise Floor  -  the baseline level of unwanted noise before or between tracks. Unwanted noise can come from any part of your HiFi system (buzz, hiss, static), but records in particular can have their own version - a loud scraping/rumbling sound that sits 'underneath' the rest of the sound