History of Mastering

[soupking]

What amount of mastering existed back in the late 50's early 60's? Like the old Ampex 3-track days where they had the 4-2 mixer to mix down into 2 tracks?

Was there much of any kind? I mean heck, there really wasn't much mixing either was there? I imagine they cut the track and laid down the vinyl.

What was the protocol?

[MASSIVE Master]

Mastering has been mastering ever since recordings were duplicated. Whenever you needed a "master" (hence the name) to make copies from.

It's certainly changed from "Here are the recordings - Make them able to be played on the final medium and even them out a bit." to the more current version of "Here are the recordings - Now kill them."

[bcgood]

Originally Posted by MASSIVE Master

It's certainly changed from "Here are the recordings - Make them able to be played on the final medium and even them out a bit." to the more current version of "Here are the recordings - Now kill them."

lmao

[soupking]

What tools were used back then to master? Just some primitive mixing console and bandwidth EQ?

[Cellotron]

Love this pic of Joe Meek in the IBC cutting room, circa 1955 (mono rules!) -



Anyway - most mastering in the 50's involved getting the mechanics of cutter head height, cutting pitch and depth, and amount of signal sent correct so that the lacquer would be able ultimately create the parts that could make a trackable record.

As time into the 60's progressed some additional processing (such as compression/limiting, eq, acceleration limiting, LPF's and HPF's, elliptical eq) would be sometimes introduced during the mastering in order to try and correct for problems in translating the tape to lacquer - and then later some even started to use processing in order to actually enhance the recordings - including things even done to start and maximize level. The loudness war started a long time ago! - even though then it was generally done more for the noble cause of better signal to noise ratio (although there are examples of some 7" singles that were deliberately cut fairly band limited and loud enough to be distorted in order for them to pop out more than other records in the juke box).

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Stiff]

So in other words, "early mastering" today would mean bounce to MP3s and upload to cdbaby?

[soupking]

Originally Posted by Cellotron

Love this pic of Joe Meek in the IBC cutting room, circa 1955 (mono rules!) -



Anyway - most mastering in the 50's involved getting the mechanics of cutter head height, cutting pitch and depth, and amount of signal sent correct so that the lacquer would be able ultimately create the parts that could make a trackable record.

As time into the 60's progressed some additional processing (such as compression/limiting, eq, acceleration limiting, LPF's and HPF's, elliptical eq) would be sometimes introduced during the mastering in order to try and correct for problems in translating the tape to lacquer - and then later some even started to use processing in order to actually enhance the recordings - including things even done to start and maximize level. The loudness war started a long time ago! - even though then it was generally done more for the noble cause of better signal to noise ratio (although there are examples of some 7" singles that were deliberately cut fairly band limited and loud enough to be distorted in order for them to pop out more than other records in the juke box).

Best regards,
Steve Berson

That picture IS really cool. I can imagine that the LPF and HPF was like the birth of EQ.

Was there much mixing before this stage you think? If all they had were filters, volume, and primitive limiting, I can't imagine the engineers job was much more than getting a good response from the microphone, let alone mixing something. There wasn't anything...Was there?

[jdg]

Originally Posted by soupking

There wasn't anything...Was there?

suits.. wearing suits was key

[Cellotron]

Originally Posted by soupking

What tools were used back then to master? Just some primitive mixing console and bandwidth EQ?

The first lathes had fixed pitch and depth - some of them could be adjusted on the fly but you obviously had to know what you were doing when trying this. When pitch/depth computers were introduced, along with tape decks that had a preview and program path was a big improvement in being able to get more level and more length onto a single side.

"Transfer" consoles even to this day are fairly basic - generally these have remote lathe controls, a set of attenuators for each channel, HPF's & LPF's, maybe a set of eq's and compressors, elliptical eq, maybe a program fader, monitor control section, sometimes a/b path switching (and duplicate processors for this). I don't know when the very first were introduced - but the Neumann SP-66 transfer console is fairly sophisticated - so by the mid 60's it was possible to do some basic eq'ing and compression varied on a per track basis - you had to set up for the next track while the previous one was playing - for both program and preview paths - quite a dance as you also had to make sure that you hit all the spiral markers at the correct time during this as well.

As far as processors - don't know what year exactly all of the following were introduced but some early mastering processors used in the 60's were:
Fairchild 660 (and later for stereo cutting 670)
UA limiters
Neumann PEV eq's
Neumann HT66 HPF's/LPF's
Pultec & Lang program EQ's

Much more stuff was just custom built than "off the shelf" in the earlier days though.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Rappinghood]

Originally Posted by jdg

suits.. wearing suits was key

I know this has been posted before but it's a great video and shows some early footage of mastering in its original meaning - recording direct to master disc.
RCA Victor Parts 1 & 2