The Four Steps of Making a Vinyl Record

Today, Scott outlines his 4 major steps of making a record and talks through each step in detail. KJ of The Oddysy asks the questions, and Scott has the answers. He touches on everything you need to know about making a record, from mastering and cutting to pressing and the final product.


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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:12

Hi everyone and welcome to Making Vinyl at MasterDisc. I'm Scott Holt, Chief Engineer and Owner of MasterDisc in New York, and I've been cutting records for over 30 years. I'm here again with my friend and colleague KJ of the Odyssey, and he's going to help us understand more about what's going on when you're making a record.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Well, actually, you're going to help us understand, and I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions because I have no idea how to make a record.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Oh, I got that wrong. I thought you were the one that knew what you were doing.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah, no, as it turns out you're the pro. You're the pro. I play bass. I play bass, you make records.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

I love your quote on your Facebook page, by the way.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Yeah. I I play the bass. The instrument, not the fish. That would be weird. Just so everybody knows where I'm at. So yeah. So you sent me a write-up of uh things that you usually tell people. So I'm sort of going off of that. It's um, you know, I mean, my head swims when I read it a little bit, so maybe you can demystify. Um you you kind of boiled it down into four major steps. Um, so I think let me just ask you, starting with the first one, mastering. I mean, for a novice and uh especially somebody who's making vinyl for the first time, what's the mastering process like? What what should we expect?

SPEAKER_02 1:36

I wish I could make this simple. Um everyone that's hearing this probably has an idea of what mastering is. Mastering for vinyl is a different discipline. Um, it can be done by the same people if they have the skill sets um uh to make it happen. But um to to be honest, this is one of the biggest problems that we have is that people are sending audio for cutting that hasn't been properly prepared for vinyl. And um uh w one of the best ways to prepare your music for vinyl is to have the person who's going to cut it for you prepare the cutting master. Um see the the issues are a little complex and and we probably shouldn't get really deep into it right now. But it's uh I just want to make it clear that something that says mastered for vinyl may or may not be competently mastered for vinyl. It may be something that the digital mastering engineer thought might be necessary for vinyl, or it may be have been done by a very competent disc cutting engineer who knows exactly what it needs to be done to make it work on vinyl.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

So what what do you what do you do there? I mean, what's the difference? What do you do that a regular digital masterer won't do?

SPEAKER_02 2:48

You don't know how it's gonna cut until you cut it. So you really can't pre-eq it, pre-process it until you've heard how it's gonna cut. Now, uh somebody who cuts every day has a pretty good instinct about how it's supposed to sound. A person that uh records uh vocals every day for a pop record has a pretty good idea what they're aiming for, you know, with their final product. So if you're you know if you're cutting records every day, you you know what is gonna work and what isn't gonna work. At least you have a pretty good idea. But it's not until you actually put it on the lathe and try to cut it that you find out whether your estimate is actually gonna work or not. And even after 30 years of doing this, sometimes I'm surprised. I had a trumpet recording, a classical recording with solo trumpet, and um I wanted it to be profound. It was a modern work. And my first instinct was to roll off the top end and compress it and do all the kinds of stuff necessary to make it fit onto vinyl. But it turns out the vinyl loved the way it was recorded. It was just glorious. I didn't really have to do anything. So I I caution everybody, mastering engineers and and producers alike, to make sure they get you know good advice and and do and and don't overprocess before uh going to vinyl.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

So if I if I'm understanding correctly, if you could adequately describe what it takes to cut vinyl versus cutting digital, then any digital masterer could do it. But it sounds to me like it's uh you know, it's sort of a it's sort of a trial and error process, it's a dark art, it's a matter of experience, it's you know, it you you you know what to do when it's in your hands.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Uh that's really the case, really described it perfectly. Um I could go line item by line item through the issues, and a lot of other people on websites have have done this, and like, well, what you should do to prepare your record for vinyl. But the problem is um if you apply those rules without the knowledge, without the experience, you're probably going to overprocess. You're probably going to do something bad to your record that you don't need to do to your record. Right. It's my belief and experience that if it sounds good, it will cut well. You know, if if it sounds like a record, then it usually works pretty well on a record. Um I know these are seems it seems too easy, but we're because we've got instantaneous information and everybody's an expert on the on the internet, uh it's really easy to make a list of things and have everybody feel like they're, you know, they're working with good information. But it's more often the case that I found somebody who has done what they think they needed to do in preparing for vinyl and they've done too much. Um they've actually made the vinyl inferior by um summing the base when it's not necessary and doing extra high frequency reduction or uh DSing when it's not necessary. We also have have the tools to do it really, really well and do it really um without interfering with the um the final program. So um but my but my advice goes uh is worldwide, if you're talking to somebody who's actually cutting your record, it's a pretty good chance that they're gonna be the one best suited to um make those final adjustments. And everybody's lathe cuts differently, and everybody who cuts records uses their own set of criteria and their own um their own measuring stick to to decide what's good and what's good enough. Uh back in the day when I was working with the chief engineer and other engineers at MasterDisc, and day by day we were in competition with the other mastering studios in Manhattan, all had the same product and were all trying to make you know competitive records. The bar was set very, very high back then, and to make a good sounding record that stood up to the Master Disc standard, um, it had to be really, really damn good. Um because you know, if it if it wasn't perfect, the client just simply walked a few blocks across town and tried it again with somebody else that had a lathe, and because every everybody was disc cutting. Now the bar is lowered quite a bit, and uh what one plant will consider to be an adequate record, I won't even put my name on. So that's that's um uh food for thought.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Fair enough. Fair enough. Um all right, so step two then. Um cutting refs. First of all, what is a ref?

SPEAKER_02 7:00

A ref is simply a way to convey to the client what the record is going to sound like when it's finished. Um it's made in exactly the same way as your final master lacquer is made, but it's made on a disc that's smaller, uh, 12 inches in diameter, that it will allow it to be played back on your turntable. So the goal here is for me to go through the full pre-mastering process and go through the cutting process and have the client listen to their record played back on their turntable and decide, you know, as a final approval if everything was done satisfactorily. So the things we're listening for on a reference are the songs in the right order, are the all the things that you would listen to for a regular mastering reference. Is the e cube right, is it loud enough? Is the left channel coming out of the left channels of the speaker and things, simple things like that. So we're asking the client to confirm all of these details, anything that might have changed since they last heard their mix. The reason for a reference disc is to approve the cutting part of the process. It's often confused with a test pressing, which we'll describe later. Test pressing is made to approve the pressing and the plating part of the process. It's a lot of peas. Okay. It's a lot of peas.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

It's a lot of peas and a lot of vinyl. So uh so you're you're basically what you're doing is you're you're cueing up the uh the music as you would if you were going to cut the final thing. Um, but you're you're making uh a c a copy that you can what then ship to the artist?

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Yep. We we play it back in entirety here before we send it to confirm that that it's it meets my standards. And then we hold on to that digital file in case the thing gets damaged in transit. It's it's not unheard of for well let me back up these seconds. The disc that we cut the reference out of is relatively soft. It's lacquer-based material. It's kind of the simplest way to think of it is kind of like dried paint or semi-dried paint. We're cutting the grooves into that and they remain um in this soft material. But right after it's cut and for the few days, a few months afterward, it's pretty vulnerable to being damaged. So if this disc is not shipped carefully, or if it's not handled carefully, or if the the needle is allowed to scratch across the disc, you know, um right before you play it, you've actually put a really significant scratch on that reference, and every time you play it after that point, there'll be a huge pop where that scratch was. Gotcha. We make a copy of it in-house, play back on a on my top of the line turntable, and then um send off the reference for the client to listen to. If they hear noises that I don't think were in there, then I'll s I'll play them my copy of the file and we can compare notes. Each time the reference is played back, there's slightly changes the sound quality. Um it is that soft that literally the needle dragging through the grooves will rub a little bit of high frequencies off. It's it's considered to be sound for the first ten playings or so. But if you've got a really poorly aligned uh turntable, you might be doing um noticeable damage to it on the first playback. So not everybody is equipped, quite frankly, to um to approve a uh a reference disc.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

So what if there's an artist who who isn't equipped, who doesn't have a perfectly aligned turntable, or who doesn't own a turntable at all? What what's another option?

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Well, we offer the service um to help them with that, and and honestly, I'm in a perfect position to do that analysis for them. If they pay for the time that it takes me to cut a full reference disc, then for a nominal additional fee, I'll listen to that ref top to bottom, transfer it to digital, send it to them for a cursory approval, but I will actually make sure that that record plays back perfectly into my standards. The the reason I phrase it the way I do is that we're dealing with a music business that sometimes has very limited funds. And everybody wants to be able to be in the game and play the game, but maybe doesn't have enough you know resources to make make the perfect version of what they want to do. It's it's a step that is is kind of dangerous to skip, though. But what we can do uh is do the analysis, um, the groove analysis here in the studio, and then compare, like I said, compare notes with what the clients hears. Um there's no room, there's no additional excuses available after cutting the references. That's what your record is gonna sound like.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Gotcha. All right. So somebody in the no has to say yes to this, whether it's you on behalf of the artist, whether it's the artist or their producer, but somebody's gotta say yeah. So next step, they say yeah, and off you go. Now now you're cutting the master lacquerers, is that right? Yep. All right, so tell you know, what's what's that process? I mean, this is this is where the rubber meets the road, right? This is what what you're creating on your lathe here is uh, you know, that's this is what gets sent to the plant.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Exactly. And there's several factors to consider. One is we we take very careful notes of the process while I'm making reference discs so that I can recreate that precisely when I do the masters. Um everything in the room has um defined switch detented positions, so I can recall it perfectly. That's ultimately kind of how you differentiate yourself from being an audio engineer and being a mastering engineer. A mastering engineer has to be able to replicate those results perfectly, or time and time again. The master is cut on a disc that's oversized and won't play on a standard turntable. Simple reason for that is they have to make a mold or a stamper that's actually bigger than the record so that it can fit into the press, fit into the mold, and be held in place by the mold when the records are stamped. So the it has to be cut on a 14-inch disc. This is just a standard. But what that means is um other than a specially set up turntable, which we have one of uh actually two of here in the studio, except for having a turntable with an except uh exceptionally long tone arm, uh, there's no way to play that record back. And in fact, when you do play it back, as I mentioned before, on a lacquer, you're taking the chance of degrading the sound quality. So it's our general method of operations is that we do not play back masters, and anybody that's making quality, really high quality records will not play back the master because even just uh allowing the needle to drop into a groove uh puts a gouge in the side of the groove that will turn into a and sound like a really nasty pop um once it's pressed. So we have to we have to trust our equipment, we have to know the quality of our lacquerers, we have to know the quality of the stylist that we're cutting with, and we have to be able to then visually inspect the record and decide whether it meets all of our criteria before we send it out the door.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

It's it's a bit of a high wire act, no? It's it's uh you know a little a little bit of alchemy and a little bit of faith, and you know, you just have to, you know, you have to know what you're doing. I mean, you're you're gonna send this thing out to the plant without hearing it because you don't want to degrade the sound quality. It's it's uh it's an amazing thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

That's the original sort of black art that people refer to in this. Um you do everything right, you do absolutely everything right as humanly possible, and there's still a 20% chance that something in the process doesn't go perfectly. And the only way you have to know that is to review the test process after they come back from the plant. But I jumped ahead. Um there's a couple little things we absolutely need to know before we cut the masters. The masters need to be plated the sooner the better. If they can be plated the next day, you'll have a better product. If they could be even if they can play be plated the same day, you'll probably have uh the ultimate product. Why is that? The record disc, the master lacquer disc and the reference disc is made out of a soft, soft uh paint, you know, blacker material. And it uh slightly springs back into shape after it's been cut. More or less it holds its shape, but it slowly over time um springs back and you lose a little bit of definition over time. Um the the way you'd normally notice this is a little ghosting or echo, pre-echo actually, will appear in the recording if it's been sitting around too long. Now, for a typical rock record, it's not an issue at all. You'll never really hear this. But on a jazz record, solo piano record, or solo vocal record, solo instruments and a classical thing, you'll if there's a moment that's really, really soft and then a loud instrument comes in with a significant mid-range energy, like a vocal or guitar, you'll hear that ghosting one or two revolutions in advance, and that's called groove pre-echo. And that is the only reason that we really have to hurry these parts into this into the uh manufacturing process because it's still in a plastic, in a slightly uh slightly giving format, and we have to get it plated relatively quickly. Now that said, we send parts all over the world. So um we find that three days is when we can get parts to the plant and the client doesn't complain about any issues. It changes a little bit in super hot weather because uh if the lacquer is not protected from the heat of sitting in a uh a delivery truck for hours, you know, parked in the sun, that will accelerate the uh the degradation.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Imagine you know, in this day and age of Spotify and and MP3s having to, you know, having to get the the you know the lacquers to the the plant in a certain amount of time so that the sound it really you know you almost wonder why you do it.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

We often say amongst ourselves, um, it's amazing it works. The whole process is so fraught with mechanical and and handcrafted issues that it's amazing it works. And and so when you have a record that really sounds great and is emotionally pleasing, even moving to you, cherish that feeling because uh a number of people worked very hard to make that happen.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

I teach you everything I know. You teach me how to do that. Life is starting for phone. What's so strange about a down home family moment?

SPEAKER_00 17:05

All right, you um you cut the lack master lacquers and you ship them off uh to the plant. Um next step plating, test pressing. How does that all work?

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Um the plating process is rather complex. That's almost another podcast talking about all of the name games of uh the the mother, the father, the stamper, the submothers, and and and all the other things. But for the purpose of making a record, we can consider plating to be one step, one one process. The master lacquer is plated, and then a stamper is made from that plated record. Let me back up for a second and tell people what plating is. Uh the metal part that a record is pressed from is actually starts out as molecules of metal in a tank that are electrically attracted to the substrate, this in this case being the the master lacquer that I've created. So let me draw a little picture for you. My master lacquer gets put into a solution, it's basically a water tank that has metal particles floating around in in suspension, and then a high current electrical charge is placed across that tank. One node of that electrical um uh circuit is attached to the the disc. The other node of that electricity is attached to the a grid that charges this solution. Over the course of uh about 45 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on the process. Over the course of say an hour or so, those metal molecules are attracted to the lacquer and adhere to the lacquer and literally grow this metal part that we call the stamper, molecule from molecule.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

In a million years I never would have guessed that that was the process.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

So every little tiniest little molecular undulation or change of any sort that's on the lacquer gets replicated on the metal part. You know, if you want to think of it really simply, you know, if you put a penny down on the table and you put a glob of play-doh on it, and you know, and then pull the penny off, you know, you'll see that the play-doh is has the impression. Yeah. Well, it that's a very, very, very simple version of of what's happening there. And to note, every time you played a part, you're creating a negative or an invert, inversion, mechanical inversion of what was just there. So I cut a record with grooves, the first part that's created from it has ridges, and then another part is made from it that has grooves again, and then finally a ridged part is made from that part, and that's what we call the stamper. The stamper is what actually molds the records. The reason for the the elaborate process is the stampers wear out, and if you're pressing, if you're only doing a few hundred records, you probably don't have to worry about it these days. But back in the days when we made tens of thousands of records or ship records shipped uh gold or platinum on the first pressing, um, many, many stampers had to be created. Each one of them was a mechanical or a a plated copy of the original.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

They make the the plate, the this master, and then they make duplicates of it?

SPEAKER_02 20:43

Yeah, there's it depends on how many records you're going to be making. There's a two-step process, a three-step process, and a modified two-step process that's sort of like a one and a half step. Uh huh. But I think I can tie this together in this way. We need to get to a two of the test pressing so that we can hear how our record sounds. Once we know we've created a good pressing, then we can go back to the previous metal parts and make new copies and we can have pretty good certainty that the new records will sound the same as the ones made from the previous stampers. I know this is getting kind of confusing. Uh in another episode, I'll I'll do the whole um description of what all these parts are and and things. But um we need to move our our project into the test pressing. And we don't have to understand the subintricacies of plating unless there's a problem. If we have a problem and we need to troubleshoot the problem, then we have to go backwards through the plating step until we find a part that doesn't have the problem. I usually use an analogy about candle making because it's something that almost everybody's tried and and or seen done or can imagine being done. Um if you're making a whole bunch of candles from a mold and one of the candles comes out with a defect, you might not know whether the mold is defective or whether there was something wrong with the The wax was formulated inside the mold. But if you make a second one and it has exactly the same defect in exactly the same place, odds are pretty high that there's a problem with the mold and the mold might need to be replaced. So that's exactly why we get test pressings. We're trying to prove that the stamper does not have any defects, major defects on it.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

Okay. And that's why you order two, at least two. That's the same. So that you can compare them.

SPEAKER_02 22:27

I need two, because if I have one, I don't know whether that defect is a is a problem with the mold or is a problem with the material, the vinyl itself, sticking to the mold. Gotcha. If anybody's ever made waffles, the waffle batter sticks to the iron, that's what happens initially when test pressings are made. Some of the lack vinyl, sorry, uh some of the vinyl sticks to the mold, and it's not until the mold gets up to full operational temperature that you really get the kind of record that you would expect to see for sale in a store. Test pressings tend to be pretty noisy, even noisier than the final results that you're going to get for those reasons. But if I have two test pressings and I carefully analyze them side by side, I can prove that the stamper is clean if it's created on any one of those copies that particular moment has clean audio. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

So the so the the the test pressings they go to you and not the artist, is that right?

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Well, that's why they everybody always makes this mistake. This the the pressing plant sends the test pressings to the person who paid the bill, um, which is sometimes the artist, which is sometimes the person that doesn't even own a turntable. Right. And so I try to educate people to make sure they you know that they insist that we said they send us uh test pressings for evaluation, because that's the only way we can be part of the system. But the the person making the record has to organize that process with the pressing plant and tell them, yes, we want test pressings or shipped to us, but you also need to send two test pressings to the cutting engineer who's going to review them and comment.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Right, absolutely. Otherwise, it's like going to the doctor, you get blood drawn, and the lab sends the results of the test to somebody who can't read them. It's really the doctor that needs to read the results.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

Exactly. There's um and it emphasizes the need to really have a working, a close working relationship with your cutting facility and your plating facility, and instead of just sending your audio out to um a factory where all of this process is going to happen for you. It simplifies the process, but I can be s absolutely certain with 100% certainty and tell you that you're you're not going to get the ultimate product back from that process. Right. It's going to be compromised. If for the only reason because you weren't there to qualify it, to make sure it was what you wanted it to be. And and I find that really awfully foolish. Uh I mean to put people down. I mean, they everybody wants to get something for less money, but they don't stop to think what they're really giving up um in the process. You wouldn't have recorded your vocal take without putting input into how it sounded. You wouldn't have arranged the song or chosen the sounds for the you know the backing track without having input on it. It's kind of surprising how many people want to believe that if we just send it off to somebody that we don't know and have this process be completely a black box to us, something that we don't even see inside of, they shouldn't be surprised when it doesn't turn out great. Right. Should be so they should be surprised when it turns out good because that's that doesn't happen very often. Makes sense. I I often get people contacting me after they've already gone through the process and have attempted to um to do a budget process and just been shocked at how bad the product can be, and also been kind of shocked at how little the quote unquote sort of cheaper options how little they care about how good or bad it sounds. Yeah. I've had one client tell me repeatedly that a um a cutting facility, pressing facility simply just told them, Well, this is the best it's gonna be. You either approve this or we scrap the project. Oh, yeah. Because they they weren't gonna try again. They had tried three times and they were the client wasn't satisfied with the results. But the bad news was they were they weren't gonna, you know, refund any of their money. They had already agreed and paid the bill. So I I I think you need somebody to um to help you through the process, but then just to remind you what it is that you you know could be giving up or that you are giving up. Sure, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

So um all right, test pressing's approved. Um uh I'm I'm guessing that once you give the thumbs up, they schedule the time, they put it in the machines, and sooner or later boxes arrive at your front door. Am I missing anything?

SPEAKER_02 26:30

From a client's touch point, that's the next opportunity to to see or to feel the product. The exception being that you do have to go through printing proofs. You have to take a look at what the disc label is going to look like, and you have to take a look at the proofs for the artwork um in the jacket and and any uh printing on the sleeve. Most of the plants have good or at least adequate quality control about that sort of thing. Some do really high quality products much better than others. You kind of get what you pay for in that regard. I leave that into the cli in the client's hands because there are so many different levels. I mean somebody may just be getting a disco 12 inch with a round label on the s center of the disc and with a jacket with a hole cut out in the middle, and that might be the extent of their packaging. Or somebody might be putting together, you know, a an eight disc box set, you know, with elaborate booklet and um multiple pages of of information inside as well as the box. So, you know, I I'm leaving out all of the artwork parts of it because that's not where my expertise is. Sure. Yes, once we collectively sign off on the test pressing, we want to believe that the final product is going to be at least as good as the test pressing, um, and in many cases um should exceed the the the quality that we heard on the test pressing. They tend to be a little flatter than test pressings, uh, they tend to be a little less noisy than test pressing. So there's there's so many moving parts. It's i it can be kind of daunting, but you should still when you get your first box of records, open up one or two of them and play them. It's not typical for my clients to send me uh mass-produced copies without me asking for them. I I I wish it was automatic because I I like displaying them. I I like sharing the uh the the release with them and and uh telling the word uh world about the process uh of making a record for them. It's so different than just preparing a WAV file and putting it on online, having physical product in hand and the pride and the you know the sweat that and details that go into making it. Uh it's profound. That's that's why people like me do what we do.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

It's profound and it's complex. And my takeaway here is uh you know, don't skimp. And you know, uh if you're gonna jump into one of these things, um, you know, get in with somebody you trust, find uh find a mastering engineer that you can that can uh you know take you all the way through the process uh like you do with your clients and uh you know um you know listen.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

I think that's uh the best advice. You know, the four steps of cutting the record, just a simple way of describing the process. And so we're we're talking about, you know, in summary here the mastering, that's where the the creative EQ and and uh sonic changes are made. Cutting the refs, that's when we quality check and qu um confirm that the whole cutting process is working the way it's supposed to, and that nothing that everything plays the way it's supposed to play on our actual turntable. Cutting the master lacquer is where the rubber meets the road, where if it ain't right there, it's never gonna be right because all of the copies are literally grown off of that master lacquer. The plating process, um, which is uh an adventure all on its own, um, and then the next step that we get to actually listen to it is the test pressings. Right on. So that's uh that's how you make a record. Very cool. So thanks for listening, and special thanks to my guest, KJ of the Odyssey, who's got all the questions, and uh it seems like I did have the answers. I think you were right.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Beautiful. Thanks, Scott.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

And tune in next time for more of Making Vinyl at MasterDook.