Test Pressings - What they are and how to use them

Scott Hull of Masterdisk explains in very intricate detail - all about Test Pressings.  Joined by the massively talented bass player  KJ of the band The Oddysy who has the questions.  
Prepare to be schooled on all things Test pressings. Scott has the answers.

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Music heard :
Artist - Clarence Bucaro
Song -  Maybe You Should Go.
listen to: Clarence Bucaro on Spotify 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:08

The grass ain't greener, it just looks that way.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Hello everyone, and welcome to Making Vinyl at MasterDisc. I'm Scott Hull, Chief Engineer at MasterDisc, and we're gonna talk again today with KJ from the Odyssey. Hello, hello. Hey man, today I want to talk about the topic of test pressings.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Yes, indeed. So when would a test pressing come into play?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

So test pressings are almost the last step in the process. Um if you've listened to previous podcasts, you've heard us talk about the mastering, talk about the cutting and reference discs. Um then I mean we make the masters, those get sent to the pressing plant, and then the pressing plant makes test pressings. And like it sounds, it's an actual record pressed in actual plastic. Um it's got dummy labels on it, it won't have your official pretty labels on it, but it it has a um uh it's labeled A side and B side so that you can keep it straight. But these are like proofs that you'd get from a printer and they should be checked out for uh for basic problems like making sure it's your record that's actually on the test pressing and not someone else's. I've actually seen that happen. It's kind of fun when a uh easy listening side gets paired with a you know death metal side on the back side.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I'd pay to hear that.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Well, you have two unhappy clients when that happens. Uh it's rare. I'll actually I can actually mention that there's there's these little numbers that we scribe onto the disc. It's called the master number or the matrix number, and that's how we keep all of these projects separated and keep the parts you know up for each project together. Uh without those little numbers scribed into the to the dead wax, all these all these records look identical. There's no way to tell the difference.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

So uh my question is are there things about the test pressing that you automatically discount in your head? This uh this is happening on the test pressing, but it's not gonna show up on the actual pressing?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Well, in general, the test pressings are by design a little noisier than the final product. So if I sit and I'm just listening to a test pressing without having anything else to compare it to, if it's uh got a little bit higher surface noise and it's a little ticky poppy, that's probably attributable to the fact that it was done on a very, very short run and the press didn't really get up to temperature. I can explain this just slightly. This ball of wax, this hockey puck size piece of wax goes into the press and the press has to get right up to temperature and press down on this hockey puck and squeeze it out into form and make a record. And if the the metal part of the chamber, the heating chamber of the press, if it's not completely up to temperature, there'll be little hot spots on the little cold spots. Once the record is molded, then cold water is flushed in to cool the surface of the press and where the where the actual stamper is, and that causes the vinyl to contract in size slightly, and that causes it to separate from the plate. Now, if that process, that heating and cooling process, doesn't work quite right, a little bits of the record stay stuck to the stamper. So it's it's kind of like a waffle iron, and that that first waffle that you make in a waffle iron before it's gotten warm enough, and parts of it stick to it, but then you make another one and maybe a third, and it's all good, and you can make waffles all day. Similar problem.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

So you know that this is a problem that is common to test pressings, but of course, um you're a pro and you're working with an artist or a producer who may be listening to these test pressings. So do you have to sort of have a, you know, this is what a test pressing is and this is what to expect, and there may be a little bit more noise, but ignore it kind of chat?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Well, here is where it gets really tricky because some noises we really can't ignore at all. So I have a process to to manage this, and uh it's laborious, you know, you can do it yourself, um, but it actually is fairly difficult. I take the entire test pressing, um, I clean it on a on a vacuum disc cleaning system, and I uh because the test pressings sometimes uh are a little bit dirty, um uh dirtier than the final run for some of the same reasons as before. So I I take the first test pressing, I failed to mention, I need two copies. I really must have two copies because what I'm gonna do is take one copy of a side A and a side B and transfer that entire thing into my workstation. And while I'm doing that, I'm listening to it carefully to see where the the bad noises are or anything that's kind of loud and obnoxious. And I'm also listening to the surface noise to see if there's any kind of once-around sounds. So shh sh kind of repeated groove noises. Those things shouldn't be there. But they might be there, but they have to, you know, they might be there, but i if they get to become too noticeable, then that's something I need to note. Um and so then I I um take my second test pressing, I clean it, and I transfer it entirely into the workstation, and then I line them up precisely. And now this is when it's really a good idea, really helpful to have a really good quality turntable that runs really precisely on the same speed. So if the listener tries to do this at home, you might be really surprised at how how off-speed, you know, one transfer is from another, so that they won't stay locked in time um without you doing some manipulations. But with the right equipment, I can line these up and I can go through and look at every one of the noises that I heard on test pressing one and look to see if that same noise happens on test pressing two. And a funny thing that happens is if either one of the two test pressings has a noise, but the other one doesn't have that exact same noise, I can actually ignore that noise. That noise is just caused by the fact that we're listening to a test pressing and not to a final pressing.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Right. There was an aberration on that particular copy, but if it's not on all the copies, then it's not an issue.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Yes, because what we're trying to do is we're trying to prove and at the same time, you know, QC the stamper to make sure that it doesn't have noises on it. And by sort of by physics definition uh uh of all of this, since it's a mold, if the defect was on in the mold, then it would be identical in every copy. Um and if anything is different about it, then it's not a mold issue, it's a test pressing issue. And so I go through the whole thing and I eliminate all of the test pressing issues, and it leaves me with just issues that sound identical from one test pressing to the next test pressing. And then I compare those notes with anybody else on the project to see if they heard similar noises at those same spots. But usually at this point, they realize that I'm critiquing this with a much finer detail than they are. Uh they realize that there's some noises on it, but that they're not that bothersome. And I point out the three or four spots where, well, these are these are real issues. We need to talk to the pressing plant about them. And I go straight, usually straight to the pressing plant and describe what I'm hearing in detail with time code numbers of exactly where that noise is. And the best plants, the the ones that we like to refer uh people to, the best plants out there will jump right on to the process, go pick up the um the uh the original parts that they made, and they'll check those metal parts to see if that noise is on those metal parts. Well, I skipped a step. They'll probably listen to their own test pressings because they keep a copy of the test pressing in the factory as well. And if that noise is on their test pressing, then they go back and look at the mother, which is the metal part that's made before the stamper. And if the noise is on the mother, we'd probably have to recut the lacquer at that point if the client wants to go to the trouble and has the time in their schedule and in their deadlines to um allow us to cut a new part, send it out for plating, and have a new set of test pressings made.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

And what what give me an example of a time where um the mother was at fault and they were able to fix it without recutting the whole thing.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Really fun, fun, fun, fun work. Um I really only knew of a couple people doing this. Um, but they can visually they they get a stereoscope. This is like a microscope, but it's for looking at things that are in three dimensions. Um you put both eyes into it, and it's a stereo microscope. And looking through a stereoscope, you can find that physical defect on the mother or on the stamper. I think it's easier to fix actually on the stamper. Um the stamper um has ridges, not grooves, and so the defect will be protruding from the disc as opposed to being nestled inside the groove.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Oh, okay. And they just they chip away at it, literally.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

They can they literally sculpt it away with small tools and then burnish the spot to try to make it so the that it it doesn't make a worse noise. It's um it's sort of impossible to make the noise go away, but they have the opportunity to make it a much less noisier noise.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Okay, and then after that it's um it's a matter of redoing the test pressings with the new mother and making sure that it's improved somewhat.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Um I'm just gonna fix your your terminology there. If they've repaired the stamper, then they just run a new test pressing from that stamper.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Ah, gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

But if they've gone back to the mother and found that the mother was clean, then they'll make a new stamper, discard the first one, and they'll make new test pressings from the the replacement stamper.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Okay. Um so going back to the the test pressing, there's noises that you discount um because uh uh out of from experience and you know. Um um I guess my next question is is everything else um should that sound as you expect it to in terms of the mix, the master, the the cut that you originally made, all that stuff is going to be represented exactly as you expect it to be?

SPEAKER_00 10:40

Well, the plating plant likes to refer to their first metal part as being a molecular copy of the lacquer that's gets sent to them. And and in many respects that's accurate. Um molecules of metal are attracted to the lacquer and form themselves, you know, at the molecular level, you know, into every crevice of that groove. Um when the process works perfectly, um it's a com it's an absolute duplicate, and there's there's hardly anything you can say about it. It uh everything that was in that groove is on that record. Um But there are ways that small imperfections can get into the process, and so our job is to try to make sure that they there are not too many defects. Everybody knows that there's you know some record ticks and pops and there's some surface noise, but we've all also listened to records that seem almost silent in comparison. And right what usually what that usually means is that just a lot more care went into making the the record. Um the noise floor issues, the the noises in the grooves actually start all the way back at the cutting process, and this is why we've said on earlier episodes it's so important to get a really high quality cut. The choice of the lacquer blank, the condition of the lacquer, how old it is, whether the humidity in the room is good, whether our stylus has been recently replaced, and whether it's clean. And then even some some mojo magic sometimes just enters into it. Some sometimes a particular cut will be quieter than another cut, and there's almost no way we can be a hundred percent sure why it's better. It's just we we know it is. So um I I I write off the noises that are not in common, but then of the noises that are left, there's a whole variety of different sounds that can be made. Um there's a uh a Todd Röngren tune that kind of says it best, uh Onomatopoeia. He goes through a whole list of um uh squiggle, um plop, uh splat um tick pop, you know, boing, you know, all the different noises that could be made, where the sound of the word sort of imitates the sound that we're hearing. You know, a tick or click or pop or a snap. Um we call them those things because that's the sound of the word is sort of what the sound sounds like.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Is the uh are the uh just out of interest, is the onomatopoeia sort of agreed upon throughout the mastering vinyl cutting industry?

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yeah, more or less. More or less. I think it would be nice if it was universal, but um, you know, we we all kind of can speak the same language, but when someone says they've heard a uh a tick on a record, I I kind of think that that's a smaller noise than a pop. Gotcha. Um and a click in my ear in my mind is a kind of a multiple uh ticks. It's like two or three ticks really close together that kind of come out sounding click. Um that's not necessarily universal. Um I don't think we have to be universal, but within our each of our organizations, we have to kind of be consistent. So, you know, I've trained uh people to work with me to to kind of, you know, of course, uh since it's my shop, to hear things the way I hear them. Right and call and call a pop, a pop, and a click, a click, and a and a scratch. Um there's all sorts of other interesting sounds that can happen, uh, especially on test pressings. Um you might hear a sort of ripping sound, that's sort of a zipper um kind of sound that sounds like distortion being added to the recording, and it really scares people when they hear it, and they immediately blame the you know the mastering cut engineer and the cutting engineer for it. But sometimes, fairly often, that um that's caused by uh uh an effect called no-fill. Um, and and that's fairly common in test pressings. Um it's for all the same reasons I mentioned before, the press isn't quite up to its optimum operating conditions, and not enough vinyl squeezes out um into every single groove. And I'm gonna use my my waffle analogy again. It's like if you don't put quite enough batter on the in the thing and you get a couple waffle holes that don't fill out properly. Right. Uh that's a distortion of the waffle, and it's uh and it's a travesty of a breakfast item. But it's uh Stop, you're making me hungry. But it's um and uh in record making, it actually sounds pretty pretty dang bad. Um and it's a little hard to get a handle on, except that each pressing will be a little different. You might have a similar sound across the across the records um test pressings, but it might not be exactly the same. And and here lies one of the problems. You might have three or four people involved in your production, and the plant might be willing to make you, you know, six test pressings. So you kind of figure, okay, Joe gets one, and I get one, and the producer gets one, and the mastery engineer gets one, and everybody's happy. The problem is without having two test pressings, I can't uh I every noise on there could be a problem. Right. I I can't I can't factor out the uh the uh the the little bits of plastic stuck to the to the stamper. So um, you know, as much as I can educate people uh to that the better. Um I we need to the the fun part about it is uh as soon as I'm done making the transfers, I no longer need to keep those two, so I can forward them on to anybody else in the project that needs them. But um they need to make a quick stop at at uh at MasterDisc first so that we can uh really do a proper quality control check.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

It's Sunday morning and the streets are full of Saturday night. And the sun's coming up cold again, but today I don't see the light.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Um I'd like to make an observation here um that uh we've talked about in previous episodes, and that is that your part of this uh uh here again, listening to test pressings is a product of I'm sorry, knowing how to listen to a test pressing correctly is a product of your what 30 some odd years of of of cutting records, right? This is one of those kind of black arts, this alchemy that you bring to the table as the mastering engineer, and it's the reason that somebody needs to hire you or somebody like you to do this as opposed to trying to save a couple bucks and doing it themselves, because you know what to listen for, you know how to tell an aberration from a um a global problem with the pressing itself. Um, you have you're able to bring those years of experience to bear on this.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

That's absolutely the case. I mean, I could think of a number of different cases that situations where I could I could support that uh that theory but or that thesis. The the the point is it's a detailed process that not a lot of people have um a lot of experience doing. And the less expensive plants, less expensive ways of getting it done, don't have the quality control steps in place to make sure that your record's gonna turn out great. So it's pretty likely that you're gonna hear noises in your test pressing when you get them back, but what are you gonna do about it? Um if you went to El Chepo place, um, I mean, I d literally know of one major manufacturer that if the client complains too many times, they just they they quit on the project. They just simply say, This is the last time we're going to do a test pressing for you. You either take it or or or leave it. It's their own prerogative um to decide whether or not that you know when the project has stopped being profitable, whether they're going to keep working on it or not. But it's my argument that they, you know, they may have set the bar a little too low, expecting people to not notice or not care about the defects. Um and I've talked to plenty of record collectors uh of late in the last few years that are pretty pissed off at the quality of records that they're getting. Um they're and they're being vocal about it. And I says I think they should. Um only one thing I disagree with is I don't think they should necessarily call out everybody that's involved in the project and blame them for it. I mean, there's there's sometimes these things are beyond uh are beyond our control, but oftentimes the label or the the person the financier of the record really dictates how much quality they really want to afford.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Right. You can tell them which plants to steer clear of and which plants will take more care with it, but it's in the end it's their decision and it's based on other criteria than simply high quality.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Yes, and it gets a little there's always a uh always a another gotcha. It gets even a little more difficult. There are many plants that do very, very good work and occasionally have issues with an occasional pressing. So you might be loving the work out of one plant um and it got a disc that sounds awful when you look at it and go, like, how how can that be? The the opposite's actually true. You might have gotten one test pressing that really sucked, but you found out was pressed at a certain plant, and so you decide, well, I'm gonna steer clear of that plant. They clearly don't know what they're doing. But then your friend tells you about his those favorite uh records that he's got, and two of them were pressed by the same plant. Uh it comes down to quality control and and honestly, it comes down to a determination to reject the the lower quality product, in other words, not let it out the door if it's not right. And that's a complicated process. It shouldn't be. You know, there's there's billboards put up to announce the upcoming release of a record. So if it's one day late, that's could be half a million dollars of money spent on advertising that's going to be completely wasted because of the window, yeah. Not in the store.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Right, right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

So it's uh I I understand that it's sometimes the best intentions end up getting thwarted because of the the process. And that's why we always advise just take the little extra time. Um, I even remember having a conversation with you saying, just you know, do yourself and me a really big favor and do not plan your release party. Do not tell anybody that you're the records are coming until you actually have them in your hands.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Right. Right, absolutely. It's it's sort of painted on my forehead at the moment because I have vinyl coming out and we're planning a release event as we speak. So it's like I guess you will Yeah, what would Hull say? Um all right. So let me bring you back to listening to the test pressing, but I want to look at it from another angle this at this point. I want to um we talked about your listening to the test pressing as a professional mastering engineer and cutter. Um tell us a little bit about the artist experience and what uh what an artist should expect. And what, you know, again, what we sort of have to discount. And and while you're doing that, assume that we have a so-so rig at home. You know, my my turntable's good. It's not it's not your turntable, like you know, quality-wise, but it's okay. My speakers are okay. Tell talk to me as an artist. What should I expect when I get my test pressings from FedEx?

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Well, the the first thing is it should sound like the reference discs that were cut, or it should sound like your master. I mean, um things happen, uh, mistakes happen, um patch chords get reversed, and left channel comes out of the right channel, and you know, this just like in a printing situation or in anything, any m mechanical replication, mistakes can happen, and so you should be, you know, casually looking out for all of the different things that could happen. It basically should sound like your record. Um if it doesn't sound like your record, then you need to have a conversation with the um with the mastering or cutting studio and the mastering engineer, the the person who actually cut the record, because they will be able to tell you if and w if they had to change it and why they had to change it. Um changes might be things like, you know, uh dealing with excessive bass or excessive uh uh low frequency phase problems or or uh DSing a slightly brighter too bright vocal. Um none of these things should be done by default, but in some cases it's best for the record to have those um those modifications to well, that's why you go to a cutting engineer, so they can make those decisions for you. Um so it should sound like your record. Um, and uh if you did get a reference disc cut by the mastering engineer, that's what you really should be comparing it to because it should be almost identical from a musical standpoint to that reference disc. It should come out at the same level. Um, stereo left and right should be the same. Um the imaging should be very similar, and the bass and treble balance, you know, should be, you know, the tone should be very, very similar. But the pressing will be a little noisier because it's not cut into a soft lacquer like the reference disc was. It's actually pressed into plastic. It'll be the first time your record hopefully sounds like a record, along with the a little bit of record noise and occasional ticks and pops. I would say be concerned if your test pressing has a pop that really is noticeable and pops out over the audio. So hearing little record ticks and pops between the songs is kind of normal. Some of them are a problem, some of them aren't a problem. But if you hear a loud pop and it's during the music and it's very audible, that may be a problem. That's something that you if you're if you don't have a relationship with a with someone like me who's going to help you, you know, evaluate your test pressing, then you need to make a little list of any of these noises that you find objectionable. And then you're gonna have to have a conversation with your broker or maybe with a pressing plant, and you gotta hope that they're gonna take it seriously and dig into it. I I'm gonna reiterate that having a good working relationship with the pressing plant here makes all the difference in the world. The ones that I've worked with um know that I'm I'm not they know that I go through the process and and weed out all of the little annoying noises. And when I question something uh on the test pressing that I'm hearing, it's for good reason, and it's something that they really need them to look at. They all are trying to make great sounding records too. So they want to know if something doesn't go right. But but let me get back to the question which was how to listen, and and you brought up the gear, and it's kind of important. A poorly set up turntable, and by poorly set up turntable, I I mean um initially any turntable that doesn't have adjustable anti-skate and uh uh stylus force um on it, there are many entry-level turntables that don't have those sorts of settings. And it's it's not because it was factory set, it's just because it's not a high enough quality device. So if you're playing your test pressing back on on one of these really entry-level turntables, you might be hearing a lot of things that you're not going to hear back when you play it back on a good turntable. The most noticeable is usually the effect of anti-skating. Anti-skating is a um is a counter force that's added to your tone arm to prevent it from skating across the disc from the outside to the inside. Just the geometry of the tone arm itself makes it want to move across the disc. And we want to neutralize that force because we want the cartridge to kind of ride in the middle of the groove, not trying to constantly skip out of the groove on the on the inside off the inside wall. So uh, you know, imagine you're uh, you know, riding down the groove and you're kind of centered nicely in the groove, the grooves wiggle back and forth, you're fine. You're oh well, maybe this is a uh a luge rider riding down the uh uh an ice track. Uh you're right down in the middle of it and everything's kind of fine. But now if the anti skating is set wrong, you're going to be riding up really near the lip of the ice track on the on the inside side of the groove. And it's kind of okay whenever the groove moves towards the outside, um you're you know, you're covered. But when the groove turns towards the inside and you have to turn back, you you don't have enough material to hold you in the groove and you um you're you're gonna go flying off into the abyss. Yes, yes, just like your stylist does. Um except no one quite understands why that's happening um when they're playing back a test pressing, so they immediately assume the pressing's defective and the um and the cutting is defective. When in fact we have to try to troubleshoot their home playback device for them and figure out uh if it's really attributable to just their turntable. It happens way more often than it should that a uh you know, a high quality, expensive record producer and record label and doesn't even invest a few hundred dollars in a in a decent turntable to to check their test pressings. Um it's getting better, and certainly any label that's doing more than a few releases a year uh realizes that they need to have a turntable that they can trust and and they use as a standard. But having the anti-skate set properly um is absolutely a necessity uh to check a test pressing. So tracking force should be within the range of the settings necessary for your cartridge. Uh there's a few different ways to set that, but the instructions for most turntables are available online. So let's see, what else do we what else do we hear? Um you're gonna hear some noises and um you're you hopefully be kind of excited about the fact that it, you know, it sounds like a record and that it's actually coming out of your speakers and it's just physical product that you really tangible physical product that you can get to enjoy. But it can be really confusing because you're gonna be hearing noises that actually aren't in gonna be in your final um pressing. When people have hired me to do a test pressing evaluation, I usually tell them, listen to it as if you've never heard the music before, and decide whether or not it's moving and emotional and and if it gets your message across. That's the kind of stuff, you know, just take a hundred-foot view on it and listen to it that way. Um, I'm down on the surface and I'm doing the surface scan and the surface uh check and the quality control part of it. I've got that covered. If you're here on it noise, then I've already got it documented and I've and I'm working the process.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

What if I come to you and say, you know, listen, you you know how to listen to these things and I'm a novice here, you check it out, and I'm just gonna stay out of it. Is that kosher?

SPEAKER_00 30:14

It is. It's fine. I'm comfortable with that. Um, no one knows how that thing is supposed to sound better than than I do if I cut it. I I know exactly and and I'm highly motivated to make sure it turns out great because my my name and my business name and my initials are on the disc. So I I want it to sound good. When my clients are determined to produce a quality record and they're willing to go a few extra steps to get it done, I'm I'm right there with them. I I I couldn't be happier, you know, because we can make a great record that way.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Yeah. Do you ever find a situation where it's actually that the project ends up worse off when there's more cooks in the kitchen listening to the test pressing than if you just did it yourself with your ears?

SPEAKER_00 30:58

That's actually been the case on occasion, uh, all very well-meaning. Um, but the problem is it's very hard to determine exactly where in the disk. Um if it was a digital file, we could put it up on the computer and we could all say that at 14 minutes and 12 seconds there's a pop in the left channel. But on a record, uh you can't stop it. There's no time code. You know, all you can do is transfer it to a computer if you want to measure the time, or use a stopwatch while you're playing it, and wait 14 minutes and 10 seconds till you get to that spot on the disc and see if you hear a pop. Um No thanks. So uh yeah, I've been sent really long lists of noises and things, and and um somebody went through an awful lot of trouble to document every little every little uh click and pop and and thing, but it's um it's very hard to then correlate that against what I'm hearing. And um that's that's what the plant likes about um the plants like about getting a report from me is that it's simply formatted. Um there's you know uh everything's referenced to the beginning of the the side. Um or if it's very near the end of a song, I'll I'll notate that as well. You know, if it's a noise between the third and fourth bands, they don't have to listen to the whole record, they can just listen to that spot. I think I answered things other than your question.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

That's okay. So let me move you to the end then. Everybody's happy with the test pressing, or you know, or you are and you've determined that there's no issues at the plant. Um walk us through the final step or steps.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Well, it's actually pretty simple. You're um you're s you you're um able to give the thumbs up and the plant will probably ask you to sign something to to attest to the fact that you've approved the test pressings, but then they um they put those same plates that they made to make your test pressing, they put them on their automated press, and um they probably discard the first ten, twelve, maybe even the first twenty records that come off of that press because they're not up to quality standards. They just get, you know, those get put right back into a recycle bin. Um uh so that your production run, the press is up to speed and uh ever everything checks out. What they usually do is take like a 20th or 30th record off of the press and put it into a an audio room and somebody listens to it with headphones. And the press keeps running and they keep making records, but somebody's listening to it to make sure you know that they got a clean pressing.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

That's interesting to me that uh that they listen to it but they don't stop the press. And I guess I understand why you wouldn't want to stop a press like that um while it's happening, but it you know, it's you're sort of playing the odds there.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Well, if if if if they stop the press and then find out that the press that the run was good and then they have to restart it again, they gotta test it again. Right. Because once the press run gets up to temperature and everything is pretty good, they can churn out a few thousand records. Uh I didn't I don't want to oversimplify it. Um specifically, um the best plants we work with check about every 100 discs. They they literally pull it out of the stack and um spot check it, um, make sure there aren't any physical defects visible on it, and um about every 100 or or so they actually put on a turntable and play it to make sure that the noise floor hasn't changed and that the um that there's nothing physically uh broken. Um these p stampers, the plates that are used to form the record, the mold itself, um do wear out and do have to be replaced after um you know a few thousand copies. That doesn't mean every one of them lasts to twenty five hundred copies. It means that sometimes they wear out at eight hundred and sometimes they wear out at five thousand. Um you want to hope that your plants you know, keeping an eye on that because you know the first hundred uh records that you open might be fine, and you send another batch to Europe or you you know you don't open your other batch for uh your your the the second half of your shipment, you know, for a year until you need them and you find out there's a whole bunch of defective records in there. Uh the only way to the only way to make sure it doesn't happen is to work with a plant that uh is really committed to quality control. And don't be afraid of spending a little bit of extra money as long as you're confident that they're going to um spend that time that that that money represents making sure that your record is really, really good. It takes extra time, it takes more attention to detail. You know, that finally crafted anything takes that extra attention to detail, and it always costs more. More attention to detail, more experience, uh more man hours have to go into it to make it to make it what it is.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

And it's another example uh that we've talked about before in previous episodes that you know spending a little extra time and money now actually, you know, could actually save you a lot of time and money in the future, especially, you know, in the scenario you described where you go to the the later boxes of of vinyl and find out after a while that there's there was a problem because the plant that you used didn't check the um check the materials and later copies are subpar. And then you've just got this horrible thing that you have to deal with and throw more time and money at.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Oftentimes people come to us after they've had you know a a failure, uh trying to do it on the uh in a cheaper fashion. And it's um and it's almost always comes down to in in record making, it's always comes down to someone not having followed through with the quality control steps um all the way through the process. The you know, the the mixes have to be listened to and approved, the mastering has to be listened to and approved, and these are real-time processes. You can't just run them through a computer. Um the cut, you know, we make a reference disc, that needs to be listened to and approved, um, and then the master gets sent to the plant, test vesselings are made, and that has to be carefully scrutinized and approved. Um, you get all that done and you get to that part of the process, it it seems like you've you know scaled a mountain, but you know, you've got a good record. And I often say to people, you know, what's that worth? What's it what's it worth having a record that you can be really proud of and that you know people aren't going to find uh defective and that you know is gonna stand up to to you know audiophile scrutiny. Um and I will say on the other hand, there are records and projects that that clearly need to be done inexpensively and that where that ultimate level of quality isn't their highest priority. Um and when as a consumer, when you bump into a record that's like that, that r really does sound kind of subpar, it's uh it's it's worth taking note um who the producer was or who the uh who the label was that that did that because um uh some don't take it as seriously. Some some don't um feel like they're really the their purpose is to make audiophile records. Um their purpose is to make records as cheaply as they can. Um back in the day you could almost have both because a lot of a lot more records were actually physically made and a lot more records were sold. So you could kind of you know you could kind of make a midline priced um good quality record that most people would enjoy. Um there was still um there were still both ends of the spectrum back then. There was there was clearly the um the the record club uh Columbia House and and uh and things like that kind of records that you know were really subpar. And then there were audio file labels that um produced you know the ultimate in in vinyl reproduction. And um you know, shop by the brands that do it the way you like. I I love that it's it's becoming um popular now, uh at least in some circumstances, to to put the credits on the back of the jacket so that the buyer can actually see, you know, who cut it and who plated it and who pressed it. Right. So it's really, really, really good information to have when you're trying to choose which record did you want to put your money into.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

And record reviewers are also getting you know pretty good about that. Um making note not only of the musical content, but you know, the quality of the record.

SPEAKER_01 39:15

And rightly so. If it's uh such an integral part, um then you know, if you're if you're reviewing a record, you're reviewing a record. It's not just about the music. Um you know, as you said, this is there's an art form to this, uh to to plating and pressing and cutting and mastering and um you know th those credits should be called out.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Yeah, I I like to think that if you if someone puts their um those credits on the back of the record that they they they're saying that they're very proud of the process and proud of the way that the record turned out because um they they chose to um put that extra effort into it. If someone doesn't credit um those components or those uh those companies that worked on it, um it may just be an oversight, but it also may be it's not necessarily going to be the great greatest sounding record.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

So there you go. Everything you ever wanted to know about test pressings. But if there is something else that uh you want to know, hit up Scott and the team, um Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever, go to masterdisc.com and uh send them a note and ask your questions. Um these are the people who know. Uh get it from the horse's mouth, you know.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

It's great talking to you as usual, KJ. And um yes indeed. We will um we'll see you on the next podcast. This has been Making Vinyl at MasterDisc. And until next time, happy vinyl.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

Bye everybody.