Preparing a Mix for Vinyl Record Cutting

Often asked - often misunderstood.  How Do i prepare my mixes for Vinyl mastering?
There are many layers to this topic and Scott and KJ explore all angles on mastering for vinyl.  Dont make those common mistakes that hurt the sound quality of your music. This episode is for record producers, recording engineers and those that enjoy listening to records. 
Scott Hull - Chief cutting Engineer at Masterdisk give common-sense tips and solutions as he guides his client's music onto vinyl records with KJ of the Oddysy.


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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello everyone and welcome to Making Vinyl at MasterDisc, a podcast where we try to answer all your questions about vinyl. Today I'm in the studio with KJ of the Odyssey. Hello, hello. And today I want to try to answer a question that I'm asked over and over again. And that comes to me from mixers and producers all around the world asking me how do I prepare my mixes to master for vinyl?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Yeah, so I mean, I think that the first thing is what kind of mixers are you talking to? And what do you do to evaluate their skill levels so that you know what to tell them?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Well, it's a really uh that's a really great question. I whenever possible, I ask them to send me examples of what they're what we're working on because um if someone has other technical problems with their mixes, we we really have to fix those before we even start talking about the the subtleties um uh and the difficulties of getting it on vinyl. But you know, I I I I start with the presumption that everyone has the you know engineering skills, and then we we kind of find out where they're at um after I've made some made some comments. So it's it's a communication. It's it's not just a give me a uh give me a list of things that I have to do to make my mix sound good on vinyl. And and I think that's a mistake that a lot of other resources on the web are making these days. It's it's really easy to find answers, and even the very popular answers are often, I mean, I think they're misleading. I I think they're overly simplify simplified. If it's uh if it's a simple question, a simple answer makes sense. And so it seems like it's a simple question. How do I take my masters and make them compatible with vinyl? But there are many factors that have to be um looked at in conjunction. So you might hear someone say that, well, you can't put stereo bass on a record because stereo base causes the groove to get too thin or too fat, and that's a problem. There's some partial truth to that. But if you're talking about a disco 12-inch that doesn't have a lot of length, you might not have to worry about it. And in fact, the cutting engineer, uh master engineer who's actually doing the disc cutting will probably be well um equipped to to handle that problem. Um another uh thing that brought up is well, you can't fit more than 20 minutes on a side of a record. And that's that's actually almost entirely not true. But it is it is true if you qualify it by saying you can't fit more than 20 minutes of a full um heavy metal or a hip-hop record on the side of an album. I mean, that kind of stuff is true. But if your music has a wider dynamic range, if you mus if you have a um a softer song or a ballad, um uh uh duration, you know, the it needs to be considered along with the actual audio, along with the production that's involved. So let's delve in a little deeper um into these topics. But um I I I just wanted to say up front that the simple answers that are propagating the web here have some basis in truth, but they're oversimplifying it and they're causing people to change the way they produce. And in many cases, in cases that I've witnessed personally, it's caused them to actually damage their um music um and thinking that they had to to make it work on vinyl.

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Okay. So um let's just say that you there's a uh a mixer that you trust, um, you know, somebody who uh you know who has nothing you know has no real experience with vinyl, but whose mixes you've heard before and you know they're they're a certain level of quality that you don't doesn't require any hand holding. And they ask you, you know, what uh I'm I want to send you I want to send you a great mix for vinyl. Um what's the first thing that you tell them?

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Well, I I often, if they've been mixing for a number of years, they probably have some knowledge of the way we made music in the 70s and eighties, or early 80s, uh before digital. Um I honestly, I if someone has an experience with that, I can just tell them that literally make it sound good, uh like you remember hearing in the 80s, uh, an analog mix on analog tape. It doesn't have to be on analog tape, but that sound of that is uh creates a very good master for vinyl. Uh I I think it's not it's not a coincidence that the format that we developed for making vinyl records you know came out of the techniques and tools that we had available um back then.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Right, right, right. It's a it's it l it's really just a throwback to you know the the um older days of making music.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

It's the thing that has changed is our production techniques have now all shifted into the digital realm where we record in the box and we often mix in the box and we deliver a very high output level, heavily compressed and limited master for mass consumption. Um that's changed, but and that's the part that has to be partially rethought at the very least to get us back to a state where a good mix wasn't necessarily excruciatingly loud mix. So one of the the first things and probably the thing I've spend the most time focusing on is not using peak limiting. There is a common technique in mixing these days where you will put a peak limiting on the mix bus as you're developing your mix. Some say it's a terrible idea, some you know have made very successful records with it, so who's to say it's bad or not uh bad? But what it leads you to is a final mix that's not going to be very compatible with vinyl. And the there's one really big reason, and it's it's pretty esoteric, but it's probably worth explaining when you put a limiter on the music and use that to raise the overall level, you're raising the level of everything in the mix that was soft, and you're compressing the dynamics. Okay, duh, that's what everybody understands. Right. But what they don't understand is that uh every groove uh in the record moves back and forth proportionally to the audio that's m that's creating it. And so if the audio is soft, then the squiggle will be small. If the squiggle is small, then you can put more s of those squiggles together to make up the record, and you can make a longer record out of it. Right. But if the audio is louder, then the squiggles will be bigger, they use up more space, and hence you cannot put as much time on the record. And so what happens with the peak limiter is it raises all of the softs up and it it limits the peaks at the top, obviously, so that it can do that within the digital realm. That sounds good, and that's what everybody wants their records to sound like. But when you send in a limited master for disc cutting, I have to use the average level, I have to reference the average level of that music and determine what's going to fit on the side of the record. And so I what I usually tell people, it's my my observation, is that for every DB that you gain with a peak limiter, I have to reduce the level at least a DB, sometimes as much as a DB and a half, to cut that record to make it fit, assuming that it's like an average length record, like a twenty eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-two-minute uh album side. So the the limiter actually works directly against our goals for cutting an analog record. Uh the goals being that we want to cut the record as hot as we can that so that it fits and so that and but not so hot that it distorts or that it skips. And um finding that point, that exact point where the record's gonna sound great but be technically sound, you know, is is a little bit of a just a trial and error process. We we literally have to the only way we know where that point is is we literally have to break it. We have to push it so far that it distorts and then go like, okay, well that's back off a little bit. Yeah. And uh yeah, on this particular record, this uh hi-hat is gonna be the thing that's gonna create give us problems. On another record, it's a vocal. On another record, um, it might be a tom-tom that's panned to the side. But uh we literally have to find the breaking point for the record and then come back so that we know what the loudest that we can do.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

So to me, it sounds like that that could lead to a couple blown sides here and there, you know, a little bit. Is it I mean, are you actually scribing into vinyl to find these limits and then you have to do it, you know, you blow a side and you have to do it over, or can you do what you just said digitally?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

It's all done uh physically because we have to play back the groove to see if it's going to be successful. Um my process includes a a considerable amount of time in in test cuts, making test cuts and playing back test cuts. And literally anybody that's making quality vinyl has to include that time uh in excess of the regular um performance of the of the disc. So to re refresh everybody's memory, a a record is cut in real time. It's not just a a wave file stuffed into a computer. It we literally play the music back through the console, cutting console, and into the amplifiers and into the lathe, and we can listen to it as it's happening, but that's not the crucial point of the process. The crucial point is when it's played back up with a cartridge, with a phono cartridge. And so I have hooked up to our my lathe, as all cutters do, a playback cartridge that allows me to actually play back the groove just a a few milliseconds after it's been cut. So I'm literally hearing the playback as it's happening, as I'm cutting it. It's like a tape machine that has a repro head that you you're listening, you know, you're listening to the playback after it's as it's being cut. Right, right, right. So with that playback, I can determine whether we've reached the limits of the material on this particular uh selection or not. And um I will push that until I start to hear distortion or until I start to hear some or see some metering or some other problems. But your question is it it has to all be done in real time. And that's really the primary reason why custom record cutting done at a really high quality level costs more. It just sits.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

A little bit more, right? It's it's just a ton of time. I mean, it's well it's uh it it occurs to me. I mean, if I'm reading you, if I'm reading you right, it occurs to me that it's partially the whatever, 30 years or so that of of intuition that you've built up. And then after you mix this thing, you're cut for 20 a 20-minute side, let's say listen to a 20-minute side, recut the 20-minute side. I mean, you're doing a box set, is this thing could take days.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Well, it really can. Fortunately, with with a well-produced and well-mastered project, we can make some assumptions, but we literally have to check the critical moments uh on each side, um, at the very least. And on a really high-profile project where it has to be perfect, um, we cut reference disks and we play back and listen to every minute of it, and then we send the reference discs to the client and they play back every minute of it. And this is all before cutting the master lacquers. These are all steps that are uh eliminated when you send your reference or send your WAV files off to a plant and have the factory cut or just make a default cut. None of this setup and test cut stuff is done because there just isn't time or money to compensate them for it.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

So you're taking the life of your project in your hands if you if you skip these steps. I mean, it is a way to cut costs and cut corners and cut costs, but but honestly, you could come out with garbage at the end, right, if you don't have these.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

I've way more often than you would uh than I could even describe uh getting calls from people that are disappointed with the way the records turned out on the first go-around because they were primarily focused with making it an inexpensive record and then are f faced with the reality after receiving it that it just doesn't stand up to their expectations. I think you really well there's a there's a a f a few ways to ensure that, but one of the best ways uh that I know uh of how to do this is to know who's cutting your record, to know the person, to actually speak to the person and have a communication with the person that's cutting your record. That way there's at the very least some sense of responsibility and fiduciary responsibility to back to the the client. Uh that the intent here is to make a a record that plays with with quality, but also one that's exciting and doesn't have the life you know taken out of it. This all goes back to the the the first question, how do I prepare for masters? Well, if you want if you're sending your your masters off to a factory cutter and you're not going to have that kind of communication, you probably should uh pre-prepare your master for the worst case scenario. In other words, you probably should take some of the bottom end off and you probably should mono the bottom, and you probably should you know make sure that the vocals are are not uh are completely DS'd and there's no high frequency problems or stuff because you're sending it to somebody who's probably not gonna spend a whole lot of time thinking about those things, and if they find a problem, they're just gonna provide a um a very aggressive solution. I happen to love the the phrase if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a veil.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

I know, you know, the other analogy that always comes to my head when we have this conversation is that of a family doctor. Um, you know, somebody using a mastering engineer who who understands the process as well as you do, um, is like having a family doctor who sort of knows your your medical history and your family's medical history and isn't just sort of painting by the numbers. They're they're actually using empirical data, you know, built up over perhaps a lifetime of experience and a relationship to find the best solution for you.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

It really is an intuition a lot more often than it's uh applying some standard um protocol. I've sort of constantly evolving and teaching new uh younger uh mastery engineers how to cut. And um they all start out wanting to know well, what's what's my maximum level and what's the high frequency, how should I set the high frequency, and how should I set the low frequency? And and I admittedly I frustrate them with my answer because the answer's my answer is is accurate. You never know. You really have to listen, you have to experience, you have to cut the side, and you have to play it back, and you have to evaluate it. And you then you also have to sort of imagine who the listener is, who the person is gonna buy this record and how they're gonna react to it. Like a smoky, groovy jazz record that's made to sort of emulate uh an old um Blue Note or or um or Grammar Vision title. Uh a listener's gonna expect something um different than um a more modern rock track that's um that wasn't done in analog, that was done digital, and is part of a current release, not a reissue. There are kind of three things that have to be in place. You have to understand the medium and and understand your tools, and you also have to understand what the producer wants to get out of it, what that artist is actually trying to say and wants to get out of it. And sometimes we can figure that out on our own. Usually the music's fairly self-evident. But then the third thing is I really need to think about what the consumer is going to expect. And those three sort of pieces of information then with practice, you know.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

They sort of inform your your way forward from there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. Um, so we were we were talking about mixers and and sort of you dealing with uh with you know a good mixer that you that you know and tr whose sound you know and trust. So let's look at the other end of the spectrum. I I mean surely you get um subpar you know mixers who you know who don't know the the a compressor from a fader. Um I I'm I'm do you have to deal with that from time to time and and and how do you work with that in order to sort of pull the pull the vinyl project out of the jaws of defeat?

SPEAKER_00 16:50

It it really depends on the determination of the uh the client or the producer to pr produce a a really great result. If they're really determined to solve the problems and uh and get to the to the to the root of them, I'm happy to get involved with them and and uh evaluate the mixes for them, give them advice, have them you know make changes, send me a new set of mixes, and you know, and we go over uh we go over those details. Um a few projects I've worked on, we've done that um uh numerous times, three, four, five iterations where we're kind of progressively getting the issues solved by fixing the mixes.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

And this is like a forensic process for you, right? You're you're listening to it and trying to, you're making your your most educated guess about, you know, well, there's there's too much guitar here, and that's why it's it's overdriving, and that's gonna sound like crap on vinyl. So, you know, we need to figure out a way together you in the mixer, that is, to, you know, either compress that a little bit or change the tone slightly. It's it's that kind of a back and forth process.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Well, let me back up with one second, and it's it's it's not just for vinyl. I mean, we've got to get it sounding good um for any format. It's really important to remember that if it sounds good and if if it sounds like good record sound, and I know that's that sounds it might be hard for some people to to get their head wrapped around what that means. But if the mix sounds good, it will cut well almost 95% of the time. There are an occasion when a really great sounding mix is really difficult to cut, but that's when as long as you know your disc cutter, they're gonna put up the red flag and they're gonna say, Hey, this mix is amazing, but there's some instrument up there at like 14, 15, 16k. There's some like supersonic information that's gonna make your this cut suck um if if we don't address it. Do you have an opportunity to go back and tweak the mix or find this? Or is this something that I should more aggressively attend to here? But so what we were just talking about in the mix evaluation process is is really getting people's mixes to sound good. It's it's less in that case, it's less about actually finding the solution for vinyl. Because I I honestly I feel like if it sounds like a record, it's gonna cut really good on a record.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, well, as you said, if it sounds good, it cuts good. So, um, okay, so and and are there have there been situations where it was just so far gone that you know working with uh a particular mixer was just futile?

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Well, there's a big problem I described earlier. If you're gonna if you're mixing through a limiter and the sound that you develop, the whole vibe of your record is based on the sound of this limiter or compressor that's on your mix bus. When we start talking then about making a vinyl version of that record, we um we we might first try taking off that limiter to see what the mixes sound like. And if that limiter was involved in the decision making process while you were mixing, it's pretty likely that the mix is not going to sound good when you take that limiter off. Essentially, what what that limiter is doing is sort of auto mixing for you. When things get too loud, the limiter holds them back. Where if you weren't using that limiter, you might actually have to go into the track that's causing that peak to happen, lower it a little bit manually, or put a compressor or limiter on that individual track to get it under control. So there are projects that I've been involved in that have gotten so far down the road with these heavily limited uh and heavily compressed mixes that we can't sort of undo the process without destroying the mix. And in many of those cases, we're honestly uh at the mercy of the mixer and the mercy of the label and the artist um as to how far they're willing to go to make the vinyl sound great. And w these days we usually end up, you know, using the heavily compressed master to mix, uh a master to cut from. It's a little unfortunate, but it's um because um the listener um might be expecting the more dynamic, you know, uh uh experience when they buy the vinyl. But it at least it sounds like the digital file, but for all vinyl lovers out there that are groaning as you're hearing me say that, I I I'm with you. It it doesn't do vinyl as a format any good, in my opinion, if what we put on it sounds exactly like what we put on digital.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Um what you could just get on Spotify, right? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

I hate this thought. Uh I have this most persistent thought in the back of my head. It's like once a vinyl lover realizes that their MP3s sound about the same as their vinyl does, um, that's really gonna ruin their their mojo on on on why they've got a turntable and why they've got you know expensive playback uh system and why they love vinyl.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Um it would disappoint the hell out of me. I mean, I'm I'm in love with my vinyl collection, but if you know but if it if if it suddenly occurred to me that there was it was really no there's really no point in going through the trouble of Cleaning the record and putting the needle down. Uh it's kind of a shame. It takes sort of it sort of takes some of the fun out of it.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Yeah, there's uh some user groups that are s discussing amongst themselves when a record comes out what they think about the quality. Two groups that that I know of personally actually use a a rating system where they will talk about the you know the sound quality and then the pressing quality and they'll attempt they'll attempt to separate those two. Like if there's uh heavy ticks and pops or surface noise, they'll attribute that to um to the pressing. And if there's uh distortion or if there's um you know low level or if the bass doesn't sound right, they'll attribute that to mastering. It's a good thing, it's a little scary for music producers and for people in my position to be kind of called out for situations that might not be our fault. I mean might just simply be a function of what what kind of quality master we were sent to begin with. But I um I like that my brand, that Master Disc stands for you know the ultimate and high quality. And when we put the MasterDisc stamp on the dead wax uh of the records that I cut, it's it's on purpose. Uh it's to state to anybody that's got this record that um that we we gave a damn. And we to the extent that our clients allowed us to, you know, we produced the best sounding record that we could with the materials that were given to us. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

So one last thing um uh that I want to get your take on, and I'm gonna bring it back around to um to something that you were talking about before, as far as the mix is concerned. It occurred to me, you know, you were saying that you could go back with a mixer and talk about uh adjusting limiters and compressors and effects regardless of whether it's for vinyl um or not. It occurs to me that you know there's people these days who who mix inside the box and people who mix outside the box, and the box being a computer. So it's a lot easier. I uh you know, I I've from I know from my experience to go back and adjust effects like like uh and and uh things like that, uh limiters and compressors, if you can go back and work with the plug-in and then bounce the mix out again. What is your experience with people who mix inside and outside of the box in terms of how much you can work with them to save a mix uh to and turn it into a great master?

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Well, it's it's almost universal that the people that are mixing outside of the box have put a lot of thought into their into their mix bus into how they're combining the sounds, um, whether it be a a classic recording console that they're using to mix on, or whether they're using a some passive mix bus uh architecture via hardware. Um those mixers in general, if they put that kind of level of commitment to their mix, are are generally not the same mixers that pour on a whole bunch of limiting and are trying to make it sound super loud before it goes through the mastering process. So those are usually not people I've got to consult with. They're usually sending me great sounded mixes.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Aaron Powell We talk we talked about this another aspect of this, and I want to remind you of it. It's the, you know, you you said the other day in another episode that you felt like the people, the artists who go for a high-quality piece of vinyl, um, they're they may have, I don't want to misquote you, but you know, what I sort of took away from it is that maybe perhaps their level of artistic integrity is a little bit more refined to where they they demand this this higher level of quality. And I'm I'm seeing a sort of uh an analog here, uh no pun intended, to the people who who have you know who take care to use you know high-end outboard gear. And even if even if they are mixing outside of the box and they don't have recourse, those are the people who don't necessarily need it as much. Is that fair to say?

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yeah. Yeah. Well, most of them have already consulted with a trusted mastering engineer and understand that it's uh there's still a good reason to have the two different disciplines, a mixing and mastering discipline. It's really essential in in cutting for vinyl that you have somebody mastering that really understands what the needs are for vinyl. Um I'm often a a little discouraged when someone sends me a a pre-master prepared for vinyl, uh, but the person that did it is is not a a a record cutter and and they basically apply the learning that they've they've heard um or they've read um or watched online, and they've kind of dumbed down their mix uh to make it quote unquote vinyl compatible when in in in fact much of that isn't necessary. And to be frank, we have the very specialized tools to do that and do it in a way that presents the the the least destructive part of the process. Right. One case in point client sent me um two sets of masters, one for digital and one for vinyl, and I couldn't for the life of me understand why they would ever want to use the one that they prepared for vinyl. It was mono and the top end had been rolled off and the bottom had been reduced. And uh I I said to them, you know, that's it's just not necessary. We have to put your music on the lathe first and hear how the lathe is going to react and how the cartridge is gonna react to the playback um before we make any sort of um aggressive moves like that. We can make some assumptions. Uh obviously I can listen to something and decide whether uh you know, with my ears, whether there's too much vocal siblance or whether the bass the stereo bass might become a problem. But uh I'm shown over and over and over again when the the times when um the processing isn't necessary and my clients l love it when I can send them back a a reference disc that actually sounds like their master. And that's the goal. That's ultimately the goal of the of a great cutting engineer is uh not how do we change the the music to make it work for vinyl, but how do we cut all of the music that's on that master and get it to play back um off a record and sound great doing it. It's the that's the integrity and that's the difference between honestly between a a custom cut for vinyl um from a master engineer like like myself at a studio like MasterDisc versus sending off your files to a factory and having somebody you know cut your project as a as uh as a matter of course uh through the day of business, whether you know cutting six or eight or ten sides uh as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Sure, absolutely. Uh well that seems like a a good place to end it. I feel like I've uh I feel like I just um I I you know every every time we make one of these uh uh one of these episodes, I feel like I learn more about uh about the mastering. I feel like at the end of this thing I'm gonna be able to master a record myself.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

It very well could be, and it's a it's a great place to start. Literally, the my learning uh of this craft was in the room listening to people talk about vinyl all the time. Well and uh and that's where that's where it began. The um I've already said it twice, but uh just be a little suspicious of the of the short and easy answers that you see online that kind of pretend to make this a simple process. It doesn't have to be scary as long as you've got a competent, you know, engineer working with you. But it it's pretty easy to screw up a record in the cutting network. And to it's uh it's it's a lot easier to screw it up than it is to make it great.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

All right. So um, listeners out there, if you have uh a million more questions, as I know I do, hit up Scott and the team on uh Facebook and Twitter and Instagram or whatever. Um, or just hit the website masterdisc.com and um you know write a note and ask what you want to know. Scott's uh full of info. Thanks, uh thanks again for the chat, Scott.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

You're welcome. This has been Making Vinyl at MasterDisc. I'm Scott Hall, Chief Engineer, and uh we're glad you're listening. Happy vinyl. Bye-bye. Happy vinyl. I like it.