mastering of vinyl

[carloff]

Is big difference between mastering of normal cd and vinyl?
Is there any basic frequence difference?
thanks guys....

[shapemod]

Dubplates&Mastering in Berlin did our CD and Vinyl Mastering of our last records. First they did the CD Mastering, get the tracks fit together. Than vinyl, they cut some part of a certain song, listened to it and made some changes, because some frequencies get enhanced and distort. Listened back with a good cartridge, most of the time vinyl sounded better to me!
You have to be careful with out of phase basses, you can't cut that on vinyl! But they have tools to mono the signal just in the bass range.
They use mainly Weiss stuff!

[carloff]

Thanks guy.I know about mono basses..but i heard about vinyl makes some compression itself...Is there some problem about high frequencies and high mid?

[matucha]

etien had some basic hints for vinil&club combo... what I can remember is there was obvious need to have more highs, but what stroke me was note: club adds subbass under 60Hz, so lowshelf there is recomended.

[Thermionic]

Something I learnt from bitter experience is that you want to be careful to make sure your mix isn't too bright in the high-end dept, personally when I mix for vinyl I would rather have a fairly dull top and brighten it at the mastering suite.

If you have too much top-end it will cause the cutting-head to swerve radically, sometimes it'll jump out of groove and ruin the lacquer, not cheap! Neumann made an "acceleration limiter" to prevent this happening, but I've never liked the resulting sound so my recommendation would be to go easy with the high freqs.

The main men to ask for this kind of thing are Paul Gold and Jack the Bear, they usually visit here but if you need more info post a question on Brad Blackwood's forum here:

http://recpit.prosoundweb.com/viewfo...b7bedf4dee302a

Paul and Jack can often be found lurking there.

[Bob Olhsson]

Vinyl does compress a bit.

The best advice I can offer is:

1. Be absolutely anal-retentive about panning the lead vocal, bass, bass drum and snare dead center to within .1 dB. This will clean up a lot of tracking problems and allow hotter levels to be cut.

2. Too much peak limiting can cost you a lot of both actual and perceived volume. Vinyl levels are not linear with frequency so flat-topping buys nothing but reduced peak levels and could cause distortion that forces the average level to be even lower.

3. Don't depend on anything below 50 Hz. to fulfill a musical purpose. A good trick is to check with a 70 Hz. high pass filter in addition to checking mono. You don't have to cut off the low-end but a mix that doesn't cut it when high-passed is likely to cause big problems.

[carloff]

Thank U guys!!Good advances!
My friend cuts off every highs at about 14 kHz and every under 70 Hz...is it useful?Or this is bullshit?

[toolstudio]

Hi,

we run a VMS70 with SAL74b in our vinyl mastering.

You need to be carefull with excessiv high and lows and also with out of phase signals to prevent track kissing.
Excessiv highs and also lows could blow the cutterhead, if you don't use the "cutting current limiter", which afaik we only pretty rarely do, because it changes the sound dramaticly.
I'm not our vinyl guru, but I'm the one who's writing to that board, if you want, I could get you in touch with our two guys who run the vinyl thing.

regards,

wolfgang




toolhouse studios, germany

[carloff]

Thank you very much ! I really would like to be in somebody with experience with mastering vinyl!
We start make small mastering studio..and any experience will be useful!thanks
BC

[carloff]

I really would like to be in TOUCH somebody with experience with mastering vinyl!
Sorry

[jazzius II]

It depends who'll be doing the cutting........if it's somebody who really knows what the hell they're doing, then don't do any xtra "vinyl" mastering.....just master it to sound good as normal.......then let the cutter do his thing in terms of bass phase and hi-frequency content......if it's some el cheapo place, then....erm.....good luck!

[carloff]

So the cutting is more importent than mastering?

[jazzius II]

nope.....f-up at either stage and you're sunk.....

.....there are some places that do both at the same time......The Exchange in London (if you can afford it) springs to mind..............this would get best results IMO

[carloff]

Thanks jazzius!But I would like to use my mastering setup and cut at the other place..is the good idea?

[jazzius II]

Perfecto!.......just make it sound good in your mastering...then, when you attend the cut, pay careful attention to what's happening and ask lot's of questions.......ask them to make a test cut first and A/B this to the original source...it should sound almost the same....if it doesn't ask why not....if it's a cheapo place that does a careless job, then you might want to think about doing some things like mono-ing the bass and limiting the highs before-hand

[carloff]

great jazzius!
Coul you recomand me some good place to cut?Exchenge ..any other?

[carloff]

cant forget)
THANKs a lot

[Thermionic]

Originally posted by carloff
great jazzius!
Coul you recomand me some good place to cut?Exchenge ..any other?

If you're planning on cutting in London I would recommend the Exchange, having used most the well-known plants the Exchange gets the best results for my work. If you go to the Exchange, these are my impressions of the engineers:

Nilz: The loudest (not compressed) cutting engineer, the best for club cuts.

Mike: Has a more "laid-back" smoother sound to Nilz, good for LPs or less club-orientated 12"s.

Graham: Can cut very loud if you wish, a good allrounder for most cuts.

Please note that I'm using the term "loud" in the peak-level context, you won't see the MEs at the Exchange use more than 3/4 dB of compression unless it's really needed / requested.

You'll need to book soon if you use the Exchange, there is usually a waiting-list.

[Bob Olhsson]

About the dumbest thing you can do is to try and second-guess the mastering engineer when it comes to eqing for vinyl. This is because the proper settings are entirely dependent on the particular cutting system, the program material, the disk speed and the length of the final disk. If you make your mix sound great when you crank it up in the monitors, the chances are the mastering engineer can also make it sound great. When it sounds painful to really turn it up, it's probably not going to sound very good on vinyl. I drop my levels 5 or 6 dB for a CD-R that's going to be used for vinyl because it'll often make the converters used in the mastering room sound a lot ballsier.

[carloff]

Thanks a Lot guys!!
Really great advances...

[Wiggy Neve Slut]

This is a lost art... and will possibly die out soon unless it is properly passed on.

And Mike is the man @ the exchange..!

Cheers
Wiggy

[Don Grossinger]

I have done it either way: master each formatindividually or done the CD mastering first and then cut from that master. Cutting from the CD master gives me the closest match between formats.

Mono-ing the bass is very important for vinyl, not an issue for CD. I do not filter above about 20Hz usually, so lows are OK. Ultra high frequency is very tough to cut, so watch out for the ultrasonics. Boy, is it a mess to blow a cutter head!!

Don Grossinger
www.dongrossinger.com
914-548-0950

[7 Hz]

As above - make it sound good before you send it away to the cut, don't rely or expect too much above 15k or below 60Hz, dont overly limit or process the mix, go for short sides if you want quality, best is under 9 mins a side on a 12", I prefer 33 to 45 but that's just me, give the cutting / mastering engineer a fighting chance by being super organised with track listing / track times ect all printed out, check the master CD all the way thru - good luck coz it aint easy or cheap but it's worth it!

[tribeofenki]

Save the Vinyl !!

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by Don Grossinger

I have done it either way: master each formatindividually or done the CD mastering first and then cut from that master. Cutting from the CD master gives me the closest match between formats.

Mono-ing the bass is very important for vinyl, not an issue for CD. I do not filter above about 20Hz usually, so lows are OK. Ultra high frequency is very tough to cut, so watch out for the ultrasonics. Boy, is it a mess to blow a cutter head!!

Don Grossinger
Don Grossinger : Digital Mastering Engineer for CD, Vinyl
914-548-0950

Hi, Don. Good to see you here. How are you doing?

Bob