The machines at Independent Record Pressing whirred and hissed as they stamped out a test record. The business’s owners waited anxiously for Dave Miller, the plant manager, to inspect the still-warm slab of vinyl.

“独立唱片压制公司”(Independent Record Pressing)里，机器轰鸣作响，压出一张测试碟。车间主管戴夫·米勒(Dave Miller)检查这张余温犹存的黑胶唱片，老板们在旁边焦急地等待着。

“That’s flat, baby!” Mr. Miller said as he held the record, to roars of approval and relief. “That’s the way they should come off, just like that.”

“是平的，宝贝！”米勒拿着唱片松了口气，用赞许的口吻大声说，“唱片出来就该是这样的，就是这样。”

Independent Record Pressing is an attempt to solve one of the riddles of today’s music industry: how to capitalize on the popularity of vinyl records when the machines that make them are decades old, and often require delicate and expensive maintenance. The six presses at this new 20,000-square-foot plant, for example, date to the 1970s.

“独立唱片压制公司”的成立是为了解决当今音乐产业内的一个难解之谜：如今，黑胶唱片重又流行起来，然而压制黑胶的机器却已经走过了几十个年头，经常需要细致昂贵的维护保养，怎样从黑胶的流行中获利就成了问题。这家占地二万平方英尺的厂房里有6台黑胶压制机，都是20世纪70年代出产的。

Vinyl, which faded with the arrival of compact discs in the 1980s, is having an unexpected renaissance. Last year more than 13 million LPs were sold in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, the highest count in 25 years, making it one of the record business’s few growth areas.

20世纪80年代，随着CD技术的出现，黑胶一度销声匿迹，如今却出人意料地出现了复兴。根据美国唱片工业协会统计，去年全美售出了1300万多张LP唱片，达到25年来的最高点，成了唱片工业内为数不多的增长领域之一。

But the few dozen plants around the world that press the records have strained to keep up with the exploding demand, resulting in long delays and other production problems, executives and industry observers say. It is now common for plants to take up to six months to turn around a vinyl order — an eternity in an age when listeners are used to getting music online instantly.

但是，唱片业的高管和行业观察者们指出，面对突然爆发的需求，全世界少数几个能够压制黑胶唱片的工厂已经疲于奔命，由此导致了漫长的延期和各种生产问题。现在，工厂花费六个月时间完成一份黑胶订单是非常普遍的，对于当今这个听众习惯马上在网络上听到音乐的时代来说，真是一段过于漫长的时间。

“The good news is that everyone wants vinyl,” Dave Hansen, one of Independent’s owners and the general manager of the alternative label Epitaph, said on a recent hot afternoon as the plant geared up for production.

“好消息是，现在所有人都想要黑胶，”前不久，一个炎热的下午，“独立”的老板之一戴夫·汉森(Dave Hansen)在工厂准备生产的间隙接受了采访，他还是另类唱片厂牌“墓志铭”(Epitaph)的经理。

“The bad news is everything you see here today,” he added, noting that the machines had to be shut down that afternoon because of the rising temperature of water used as a coolant. To replace an obsolete screw in one machine, Independent spent $5,000 to manufacture and install a new one.

“坏消息就是今天你在这儿看到的一切，”他指的是当天下午机器被迫关闭的事，因为用作冷却的水温度升高了。为了替换机器里一个坏掉的螺丝，公司花了5000美元制作安装了一台新机器。

The vinyl boom has come as streaming has taken off as a listening format and both CDs and downloads have declined. The reasons cited are usually a fuller, warmer sound from vinyl’s analog grooves and the tactile power of a well-made record at a time when music has become ephemeral.

黑胶回潮发生在流媒体播放成为主要聆听方式，CD和下载都出现下降趋势之际。人们青睐黑胶的理由通常是，在这个音乐已经变得短暂易逝的时代，黑胶的模拟方式更加丰满、温暖；精美唱片的手感也带来一种力量。

Most surprising is the youth of the market: According to MusicWatch, a consumer research group, some 54 percent of vinyl customers are 35 or younger. Mr. Hansen and Darius Van Arman, a founder of Secretly Group, a consortium of small record companies that is a partner in Independent, said they believed their customers were often discovering new music through streaming and then collecting it on LPs.

最让人惊讶的是，这个市场非常年轻：根据消费者调查集团MisicWatch统计，54%的黑胶唱片消费者是35岁至35岁以下的人群。小唱片公司联合团体“秘密集团”(Secretly Group)的创始人德里乌斯·范·阿尔曼(Darius Van Arman)也是“独立”的合伙人之一，他和汉森都说，客户往往是通过流媒体发现新的音乐，然后收藏它们的黑胶唱片。

“None of this was supposed to happen, and yet it’s happened,” said Michael Fremer, a senior contributing editor at Stereophile magazine and a longtime champion of vinyl as a superior medium for sound.

“这一切都是人们不曾预料到的，然而就这样发生了，”《Stereophile》杂志的资深供稿编辑，迈克尔·弗莱默(Michael Fremer)说，长期以来，他一直主张黑胶是一种高级的声音介质。

Independent’s machines tell some of the history of the modern music business. Mr. Miller, 62, helped build them as a young man in the 1970s, and they were used for decades at the Hub-Servall plant in Cranbury, N.J.; Mr. Miller recalled pressing copies of the “Saturday Night Fever” and “Grease” soundtracks there.

“独立”的机器可以反映出现代音乐工业的一些历史。米勒先生现年62岁，70年代时，年轻的他曾经参与制造这些机器。它们在新泽西州克兰伯里市的Hub-Servall工厂服役几十年，米勒回忆这家工厂曾经压制过《周六夜狂热》(Saturday Night Fever)和《油脂》(Grease)的原声专辑。

In 2007, Hub-Servall’s presses were sold to RIP-V, a new plant in Montreal that took on Epitaph as a client. RIP-V shut down last year, and Independent bought six of its 14 machines and brought them back to New Jersey. (The rest went to other plants.) Mr. Hansen said that he and Secretly had invested $1.5 million in the venture.

2007年，Hub-Servall的压制机被蒙特利尔的新厂RIP-V买去，“墓志铭”也是它的客户。RIP-V于去年关门大吉，“独立”买下了它14台机器中的6台，把它们带回新泽西（另外八台机器被其他工厂买去）。汉森说，他和“秘密”为这家工厂投资了150万美元。

For the music business over all, vinyl is still a niche product, if an increasingly substantial one. According to Nielsen, LPs now represent about 9 percent of sales in physical formats. But for indies like Epitaph and Secretly, vinyl has become essential: Both now take in nearly as much revenue from LPs as they do from CDs.

对于整个音乐行业来说，黑胶唱片的势头虽然愈来愈强劲，但仍然属于小众产品。根据尼尔逊公司统计，黑胶LP唱片占据音乐实体销量的9%。但是对于“墓志铭”和“秘密”这样的独立唱片公司来说，黑胶成了必不可少的东西：两家厂牌目前在黑胶唱片和在CD唱片两部分的收益都是差不多一样多。

Mr. Hansen started Independent as a 50-50 partnership with Secretly to serve other independent labels — companies that often find themselves squeezed out of the production line by bigger players.

汉森和“秘密”以50-50的分成合作方式开了“独立”，同时也为其他独立厂牌服务，这些小公司在生产环节经常受到大公司排挤。

“One of the problems that independent labels are facing,” Mr. Van Arman of Secretly said, “is that some of the bigger plants might get an order for an Eagles box set, and everyone else is put on hold.”

“独立厂牌经常面临这样的问题，”“秘密”的范·阿尔曼说，“有些大厂可能因为接了‘老鹰’(Eagles)盒装特辑的单，就把别人的单都推到后面去。”

Independent’s initial order list includes records by Vampire Weekend, Pavement, the XX and Mac DeMarco, all indie acts that are steady sellers on vinyl. Mr. Hansen’s ownership is separate from his employment at Epitaph, and both he and Mr. Van Arman said that releases on their labels would get no special treatment.

“独立”的第一批订单中包括“吸血鬼周末”(Vampire Weekend)、“人行道”(Pavement)、“the XX”和马克·德马科(Mac DeMarco)，所有独立艺人和乐队都是黑胶唱片稳定的卖家。汉森对工厂的所有权是同他在“墓志铭”的职位分开的，他和范·阿尔曼都说，来压制黑胶的艺人如果选择在他俩的厂牌发行唱片，并不会得到特别优惠。

Independent has taken over a spot in a small industrial park in this town about six miles south of Trenton. The company expects to employ seven full-time workers and a small part-time crew to assemble the finished records and sleeves; some of those part-timers will be moonlighting employees of a Netflix DVD fulfillment center next door where similar work is done, Mr. Hansen said.

“独立”坐落在镇上一个小小的工业园区，位于特伦顿以南6英里。汉森说，公司希望雇用7名全职员工，以及一小批兼职人员，帮忙包装唱片和封套；公司打算从隔壁Netflix的DVD压制厂雇用一些工作内容差不多的兼职人员。

When it is operating at full capacity, Independent should produce up to 1.5 million records a year, Mr. Hansen and Mr. Van Arman said. But first the machines must be fully restored and tested, and after several months they are still not quite ready.

一旦满负荷运转起来，“独立”一年可以生产150万张唱片，汉森和范·阿尔曼说。但是，机器首先需要进行全面修复和测试，几个月过去了，他们还没完全准备好。

While tweaking two machines, Mr. Miller, the plant manager, showed how many parts of the physical process must be aligned to make a record properly.

在修理两台机器过程中，工厂主管米勒展示了要制作一张唱片，需要经过多少程序。

Vinyl pellets are poured from a bucket into an extruder, and then formed into a small lump of vinyl that is placed between metal stampers forming the shape of each side of the record. The machine then presses the stampers together with 150 pounds per square inch of pressure. If the temperature, pressure or consistency of the vinyl is off, the result is an imperfect record that is scrapped.

用大桶装着的乙烯基颗粒被注入压出机，形成一小团乙烯基块，之后被注入唱片两面的金属母模之间。之后机器用150磅每平方英寸的压力冲压母模。如果温度、压力和乙烯基浓度出现问题，唱片就报废了。

“This is the dirty, brutal side of the record business,” Mr. Miller said. “Nobody realizes the work it takes to actually make a record.”

“这是唱片行业中最脏、最残忍的一面，”米勒说，“没有人知道制作一张唱片要花多大功夫。”

There is now a global rush to set up more plants and find existing presses, but the few that have been tracked down are often in poor shape. This year Chad Kassem of Quality Record Pressings in Salina, Kan., found 13 disused machines in Chicago — “they looked like scrap metal to anybody but me,” he said — and he hopes to restore five of them within six months.

目前全球都出现了建立新黑胶厂，寻找现存压制机的风潮，但是能被找到的、仅存的机器通常都是保养状况不佳。今年，堪萨斯州萨莱纳市“优质唱片压制公司”(Quality Record Pressing)的查德·卡塞姆(Chad Kassem)在芝加哥找到了13台报废的机器，“除了我，别人都把它们当成废铜烂铁，”他说。他希望能在6个月内修复其中5台机器。

Fat Possum, another indie label, also started a new plant in Memphis this year to meet its own demand, with nine machines. “Now I can go and push my own stuff to the front,” said Matthew Johnson, Fat Possum’s founder, who said that in recent years he had been faced with frustrations like thousands of records held up in customs as they came in from manufacturers in Europe.

独立厂牌“胖负鼠”(Fat Possum)为了满足公司自己的需要，今年在孟菲斯开设了一家新厂，他们拥有9台机器。“现在我可以直接推出自己的东西了”，厂牌创始人马修·约翰逊(Matthew Johnson)说，他说，近年来他遇到过很多困难，比如上千张唱片从欧洲的压盘厂回来，结果却被扣在海关。

Yet talk of a possible bubble hangs over the vinyl business, and some plants seem to be bracing for a decline even as they expand. United Record Pressing in Nashville, one of the biggest plants, has 30 presses running 24 hours a day and has acquired 16 more machines. Yet the plant, overwhelmed by demand, has stopped taking orders from new customers.

说到这个行业内可能存在的泡沫，不少厂子在扩张的同时，似乎也在为衰退做准备。纳什维尔的“联合唱片压制公司”(United Record Pressing)是最大的压盘厂之一，拥有30台机器，一天24小时运转，并且新近订购了16台机器。然而该厂的生产能力供不应求，已经不再接新客户的单。

“It’s difficult to turn people away, especially when it is maybe an independent artist,” said Jessica Baird, a representative of the company. “But we are trying to do the best we can for people who have been loyal to us for years, and that we hope will stick with us when the ebb and flow comes again.”

“要拒绝别人很难，特别是对方可能是独立艺术家，”该公司代表杰西卡·贝尔德(Jessica Baird)说。“但是我们只想为那些多年来的忠实客户做到最好，我们希望他们在行业衰落再次来临之际也能一直跟随我们。”

Mr. Hansen, 52, said he wasn’t sure whether the vinyl gold rush would continue, either, but he has staked a considerable personal investment in it and called the plant part of his retirement planning.

52岁的汉森说，他也不确定“黑胶淘金潮”是否会一直持续下去，但他个人对工厂进行了相当大的投资，把它当做自己养老计划的一部分。

“The dream is to build capacity for our label and provide a service for the indie labels that I love and respect so much,” Mr. Hansen said, “and at the same time, make a few bucks too.”

“我的梦想就是让产量能够满足我们的厂牌，以及我喜爱和尊敬的许多其他独立厂牌，同时还能赚几个钱花，”汉森说。