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Do you need to have two different masters for streaming and vinyl? I give you my thought as a vinyl and streaming mastering engineer.
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Now vinyl masters. There's no necessary reason why you should need a different master for vinyl than you do for CD or for streaming. Yes, there are things you can do. And it depends how far you want to go with your vinyl master, but the basics are if you've mastered it correctly, so there's no excessive top end. The bottom end is in phase and it's not too low. Then it should translate straight across to a cutting lathe. And they shouldn't need to put any filters on it. The reason why they do that, is because lathe doesn't like essy noises. Because the stylist goes left to right when it's in the top end. When it's very fast frequencies. If you've done physics at school, you will have seen that it goes first the waveform, and then it's the waveform slower, when you're in the base frequencies.
So what you want to do is, if it goes really fast, so if it's super bright in the top end, then what happens is it goes really fast the friction on the desk causes the cutter head to heat up and then the cutter head will pop out, but also you can blow the cutter head. So it won't cut the lacquer correctly. So you can't have excessive top end. You have limiters and stuff on the lathe. And in the low end, the phase the left and right, if it goes out of phase it will pop. It will go inwards. And it will then pop the stylus out as well. So you need to have a good left and right, sort of solid base in the base end.
So they're the kind of limitations, there are others. But they're the basic ones. And so if you've mastered correctly with that in mind, and you should do that anyway, because [inaudible 03:19:23] bass never sounds good and too much excessive top end never sounds good either. So if you're mastering for download or CD. Then you're not really going to have those on there, as I say. So that should just be able to cut flat to a lacquer, and that's fine. But the problem is if you get a bad cutting plant, then what they'll do is they'll put a filter across the top and a filter across the bottom. Because what they want to do is just as a safety net for themselves, so they can get it onto the lacquer really easily. They'll do those cuts so that it just goes through and it's quick. Because when you're cutting lacquers, they're expensive the lacquers. So you don't really want to be losing loads of lacquers because it starts eating into your profits.
So the quicker way to get it cut, if it's just someone who doesn't want to lose a lacquer or two. You put a lot of filters on. Loads of high end filter, low end filter and elliptical filter to mono the base and then you sort of slam it onto the lathe. So it's going to start sounding different. Because you're losing top end, you're losing low end, and you're mono the base. So that's why I suggest to people a lot of the times if they are going to get vinyl press, then they should go to a proper mastering engineer and get him to make the lacquers, or her to make the lacquers. Because in that way when you get a test pressing back from the pressing plant, you can then send it to the mastering engineer get them to check that against what they did and against their digital version of it. And it should sound exactly the same. Maybe a touch warmer from the lathe, but really should play pretty much identical.
Then you can say okay, have their different processes they can do to take top end off or have they put filters on it? They shouldn't have done and then you want to go back and do all that. This is why I don't cut vinyl anymore, by the way, because it's just a nightmare.
So all of these things are things that can go wrong. But that doesn't necessarily make any differences for the master that you're giving to the plant. Ideally, take it to a mastering engineer who has a lathe, that's your best bet. But if you don't have the budget for that, then you're going to have to go direct. So now there is another way to present a vinyl master, you could drop the level down. So you might not want it to stay as limited. So yeah, they’re your basics - make sure there's no excessive top end and no lows. If you've gone to a decent mastering engineer, then they'll know that anyway. And you should be able to cut flak from that. There's no necessary reason for you to have a different master for vinyl and for CD or downloads. [kBrLpy2tN1I] |