Cutting "hot" vinyl

[audioaddict]

I was looking over at the masterdisk and sterling sites for their writeups on vinyl...

Lately I've had a strong interest in 12" singles over albums for the ability to take advantage of dynamic range, bass, loudness, etc.

A few questions:

a) Masterdisk says cutting loud to vinyl is good....to get over the noise and it's not like mastering a loud CD.

I've heard a number of vinyl cuts that were louder than their CD counterparts, yet still plenty dynamic, open and smooth sounding.

To what extent is loud good for vinyl? Is dynamic range sacrificed?

b) On the issue of 12" singles and 45s....instead of making the vinyl louder, could you just EQ for more midbass punch?

I'm curious about the formula for the perfect 12" 45 (or 33)....what would you do with it?

Playback will be on a very dynamic audiophile system....very efficient, great amplification, big woofers, etc.

c) Last but not least ... is making a vinyl too loud or bass heavy going to make the needle skip on ALL turntables? Curious how that works.

[Richard Black]

You've got to be clear about the two, subtly different, meanings of the word 'loud' in this context:

1. Pushed to the highest achievable level. On CD there's no question about what that is because you have 'peak bit' and beyond that is gross distortion. On LP, however, there's no hard and fast limit to how 'hot' you can cut a disc, just practical limits imposed by specific cutting and replay equipment.

2. Within the limits of 1. above, compressed and/or EQ'd to sound subjectively loud.

I've heard a number of vinyl cuts that were louder than their CD counterparts

That's strictly meaningless as there's no correlation between output level of LP and CD players.

On LP, like any recording medium, it's a good idea to record up to the maximum level possible (once you have figured out what that is - see 1. above) because you're using all the dynamic range efficiently. If you try to do that _and_ compress for maximum subjective loudness you can run into problems like thermal overload of the record head because you're continuously pumping tens of watts into it and it's quite a small mechanical component with finite robustness.

As for high level (in the bass or elsewhere) making replay equipment skip or mistrack horribly, there's a degree of variation between pickup cartridges as to how much level they will handle (and it doesn't correlate well with price - some very expensive audiophile pickups have quite limited tracking ability) but ultimately they will all run out of tracking headroom. You can improve bass tracking by increasing tracking weight (up to a point!) but midrange tracking is a function of cartridge design. Treble tracking is a function of stylus shape and mass so there's even less you can do about that.

So there isn't a simple, neat answer to your questions but basically it's good to cut hot within sensible limits. Only experience (including talking to experienced cutting engineers) can really teach you what those limits are.