Mastering For Vinyl | Cos Once It's Pressed, It's FINAL!

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Mark answers a great question posed by one of our subscribers in the comments section of yesterday's video:
How does mastering for vinyl differ from mastering for digital? Do you do any high/low passing, compression, stereo folding etc, or do you go for a neutral master and leave any vinyl specific requirements to the cutting engineer?

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[secretelitemusic]

I used to get my 10" acetates cut at a notorious cutting room in Holloway Rd. Chatting with the mastering engineer as my masters evolved from B77 half inch to crispy DAT was a very useful education. The last few that we cut there had been wooshed through a Focusrite Red 3 to tame any dangerous transient peaks, and the mastering engineer was relaxed enough with the levels and eq to sit back, hands off the emergency attenuation knobs, with a large bifter. I still have a few of them, because I looked after them, and didn't plough them with heavy Stantons with coins blu-tacked on top.

US 12s in the 80s/early 90s were much higher quality and played at 33rpm. They were thicker, and made with virgin vinyl, rather than the thin recycled material that was used in the UK and most of Europe, wih the notable exception of Holland.

You could plant cabbages in the grooves on those US 12s, and the likes of Def Jam would never have been able to get such vast n bulbous 808 bottom end on UK 12s of the era. Compare Run DMC's early US cuts to the UK licensed 45 pressings and it's chalk and cheese.
Early House imports were invariably 33rpm virgin vinyl, because that's what the big sound systems wanted. A ton of rocksteady low mid and bass, with no loose wub clouding the sound stage.
DJs are notoriously keen to push everything into the red on the mixer, because they confuse gain with volume, so it made sense to filter the extreme high and low end at the mastering end to stop them wrecking the amps and speakers (and clubbers' hearing) with relentless cludgy square waves.

[almightytreegod]

This is probably the most complete information about vinyl manufacturing in the least amount of time I've ever heard and you should see if it's some kind of... record...
I'm sorry, I'll see myself out.
Oh, but I'm also glad you addressed the whole environment/quality thing. It's the reason I decided against vinyl for my release (well, that and my dog needed surgery that wiped out the vinyl budget).

[latheofheaven]

For mastering for vinyl, what you need is an app!

Something that can calculate in real-time the Lines Per Inch (LPI) processing on a cutting lathe. You’d pass your audio through it and on an LPI meter see how much land the signal is using up moment by moment. It would give at the end, a calculation of the overall level you should be able to get on the disc for the entire side.

A useful bonus would be if it also had a simulation of the lathe’s Acceleration Limiter (ACL), so that you could see how much controlling of sibilant frequencies is needed. That way, you can spot dangerous stereo bass and sibilance events and sort them out while you master, and also have a good idea of how loud the final cut is going to be.

Without that, even given your vast experience and skills Mark, you’re basically working in the dark. It’s something that in my years as a cutting engineer, I never envisioned we’d be able to do in software, but I think would be quite possible now, and amazingly, actually required in today’s market!

[derekmidgley]

Super interesting stuff, guys. I've really been enjoying all the technical details lately. Who could ever have predicted we'd all be interested in Vinyl now in 2022!

[kadiummusic]

Fascinating video well explained and what a wonderful nostalgia trip for all us +50 year olds.... just hearing the word vinyl makes me purr!

[Sonmz]

Thanks a lot! Half-speed cutting trick is new for me!
My appreciation from Kiev, UA

[hans-hinrichthedens]

This was DENSE! How do you speak so flawlessly and to the point for such a long time? Extremely well scripted! And I probably knew - and forgot a long time ago - most of the content at some point, but I never knew about the high end roll-off of LPs coming from not overheating the stylus.

[Peru-ep]

Thanks for taking the time to give us all an inside look at what goes on with mastering and also with the process of making records. I look forward to using you as my master engineer, your mastering sounds awesome.

[cinemaipswich]

Back in the day, I bought a $1 Mama's & Papa's LP at a garage sale. I loved the band and did not pay much attention to the disc apart from noting that it had only minor scratches. On getting it home I found they had squeezed 30 tracks on it. It sounded like a very old radio with no depth to it at all. Even the interlude between tracks was 1 second wide. I gave it to my baby brother to use as a frisbee with the dog.

[peterblackmore]

As always - very thorough. Yay for Mark pointing out the shortcomings of vinyl. In the early 70s, my first wife was a professional violonist and I played flute in student orchestras and a blues/rock band. I had a good HiFi rig with hand lapped double pharabolic stylus (Garrett Brother Australia), Class A power amplifier and transmission line speakers. We did not listen to our classical records after three plays (had two cleaning systems and anti-static sleeves), yet enjoyed modern muisc because it did not have the dynamic range of classical and noise floor was not such an issue.
For thems that say vinyl sounds better, I quote Mark and say "it depends".
BTW, I have trouble concentrating when you sit in front of the ATC monitors with that wonderful mid-range driver. Pure lust. Luckily these are too big for you to carry into the ocean.

[TheOnlineBusker]

2:33 "Sonically I haven't done a thing" haha Andrew Scheps describes mastering as a con, he said "mastering? what's that? when my mix is finished that's it, it's finished and ready for release" hilarious that you said the mixes come to you with basically nothing needing doing :))

[Brainbox]

One of the best description of the actual process! as always, smashed it

[ThePlanarchist]

Fascinating and so clearly explained as ever.
Possibly the most interesting yet, mainly because I didn't really know anything about mastering for vinyl let alone all the cutting but find it all incredibly interesting. Great background to a format that played such a big part of my younger years.
Vinyl CAN be recycled though, I remember turning several Bay City Rollers albums into bowls with the help of a storage heater as a student. ;)
Yo, a Cassalbum (as I don't think they were ever called.
Doubleplus points for using amateur in a non-negative way. Cheers!

[thelonetwangster]

Fascinating stuff. Love it - more like this please. Keep up the good work !

[srenkrabbe]

Soooo great - thanks - and your little nod to HDvinyl - I liked that. Not many are aware.

[furiobisotti]

Deadly interesting information. I love the final considerations about vinyl ...

[jacquithurgood]

You have been working hard this week guys, well done

[thewatchmanstudios]

Fascinating stuff. It filled in a lot of holes (much like the holes in my head) regarding mastering to vinyl.
When I played back this video at 4k, the hello kitty cup really pops up..lol

[allen]

A very enjoyable and educational video! As you clearly stated it's all about communication and you certainly and very succinctly made this point! Mark you are in my opinion YouTubes best educator on the subject of mastering and the formats that follow! A great video, even with out the aid of Flop Cat 😻

[StudioOrchestrations]

Thanks for educating us, as always, Mark, in a way that a non-engineering muso can understand! Had a good laugh at the punchline at the end... now you need to do a video on how to master for cassette! 😂