Making Vinyl Scott Hull with Kevin Gray

Masterdisk's Scott Hull talks with Vetren Disk Cutting and mastering engineer Kevin Gray.   Keven is well know for decades of work in mastering some of  vinyl-s best sounding LPs and re-issues.   This episode was recored for Making Vinyl - an industry conference. 

Making a record of your own? Your music deserves the best.
Learn more about Masterdisk here.


Mentioned :

People
 

• Kevin Gray
• Scott Hull
• Chad Cassim
• Don Was (Blue Note)
• Patricia Barber
• Prince
• John Prine
• Bernie Grundman

Studios / Companies
 

• Coherent Audio (coherentaudio.com)
• Masterdisk (masterdisk.com)
• Apollo (lacquer factory fire)
• MDC ( Lacquer Manufacture) 
• Blue Note (Universal)
• Warner Brothers Records
• Concord Records
• Fantasy (catalog)
• Riverside (catalog)
• Fania Records
• Sheffield (direct-to-disc)

Podcast/Show
 

• Making Vinyl (the conference)
• Making Vinyl at Masterdisk (Scott's podcast)

Albums/Projects referenced
 

• Blue Note reissue catalog
• Van Halen catalog (remaster, )
• Prince's albums 
• John Prine remasters
• Patricia Barber project

Transcript

Speaker 3: 00:03
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Making Vinyl, the virtual conference. This is track number one, and this is what goes into making the best vinyl possible. So, what goes into making the best vinyl possible? We're gonna talk about some of the pitfalls, we're gonna talk about some of the best practices, and I'm here today with Kevin Gray, the owner of Coherent Audio. Hello, Kevin. Good morning. Hey, thanks for joining me. I'm Scott Hall. My pleasure. I'm Scott Hall. I'm the owner of Master Disc in New York. And uh Kevin and I have both been doing this, uh doing this thing called uh record cutting for a number of years, um, probably more years than either one of us are gonna admit. But um, I thought it would be a great opportunity to get two people that um you know are doing the really the same thing, you know, uh and talk about um all the things that can go right and go wrong about making um a really quality vinyl release. Um we all sort of know that it's pretty easy to send your digital files off to the internet and have uh a box of records show up. But what happens, what do you do when that's not good enough? Uh Kevin, I assume you you get the calls after people have tried the cheap version and you uh you know they ask you, well, you know, what went wrong and how do I make it better?

Speaker 1: 01:18
Um I assume Well I tried to head them off at the past by uh having a little discussion with them before they send me the files. But you know, a lot of times it's already pre-mastered and I don't have that option.

Speaker 3: 01:28
Right, exactly. Exactly. We'll get into a bunch of these uh a bunch of these topics uh in in depth, I'm sure. I wanted to start out by seeing how many different things we could name um and feel free to Kevin to jump out in here with me. Um that get in the way of making a great record. So these are things that we see almost every day that really you know cause us to uh to either have to repeat work or spend extra time or spend more of the client's money, or just things that actually make it impossible to make a good sounding record. Um what do you would you say are some of your things?

Speaker 1: 02:03
Well, I think the number one is is uh way too much compression. Uh compression works great when you're trying to make stuff loud on an iPod, but it's not great if you're uh or i iPod, I'm dating myself there, iPhone, let's say. Uh if you're trying to make it something digital, sure. Yeah, you know, mastered for iTunes, however you want to say it. Um but it doesn't really work that well for a phonograph record. Um and I think one of the reasons that people want to buy phonograph records is that they whether they're trying to get it in a fairly uncompressed or not as compressed sound. And so uh I try to tell people to back off on the compression. Uh I've I've I've got a couple of my clients trained to actually they they like to do their pre-mastering with with somebody else, which is fine with me. And um, but I'll tell them, you know, try to do two versions. Do one high-res and with less compression, you know, do it at some multiple 44.1 if your ultimate thing is a CD. And then um, you know, do do the compression as the last pass for your C D.

Speaker 3: 03:01
Yeah, that's really similar to the process that we use here when we know in advance that it's going to be digital and vinyl. Right. Um, that really helps uh uh helps kind of save the day. And and in the process, a few times um clients will actually come to learn to like the less compressed version.

Speaker 1: 03:17
I've had that happen too, yeah, several times.

Speaker 3: 03:19
Yeah, that's a that's a win-win um uh where where they actually slow down long enough to and and and uh and spend enough time listening carefully to not not to the thing that the mix engineer uh smashed you know with a two bus compressor or limiter, um, but actually listen to their you know the quality mix that they have after some really good mastering. I I I've got uh one for me is is long sides. Um it's it's pretty obvious uh for a cutter that uh you know the length of the side is is proportional to the level. And uh well, it's it's a it's a it's more complicated than that, but the simplistic version is um a longer side with the same um type of material, we're gonna have to reduce the level. Um but I feel like that's coupled with some bad advice on the internet because it's quite possible to get um with a if you follow your quality control through the steps through the whole process, it's quite possible, it's quite practical to cut alongside these days, um, uh but understanding that it's not gonna be as loud as, but it it um I'm finding uh people coming through the door insisting that they can't put more than 20 minutes on the side of a on a side of a record, and I immediately point to the 26, 27, 28 minute side that I just cut just cut. And it's it's it's really doable. Um what I think is the the pitfall is that the um you know uh somebody that's working fast and cheap, let's just we kind of call it that, um, will um roll off the bass and will mono the bass and roll off the top end and then lower the level to get it to fit, and then it's gonna be really boring sounding. So you have to follow your quality control, you have to really um go for every half dB that you can find and then get and have sure the EQ is right, and then these long sides can work. So, but you if you if you follow along, um that means it's not gonna be cheap. It's not gonna be fast. It's it's but hopefully it can turn out good. So that's that's one of my things. I I I I I want people to know that long sides are a problem, but not long sides are a problem.

Speaker 1: 05:26
Yeah. Well, you know, just as a general rule, I tell people to keep it to 24 minutes as a maximum. I mean, of course they're gonna go over that. A few people are and say, well, what am I what are my trade-offs? And I said, just volume, you know, you're it's not gonna sound as loud when you play the record back. But uh yeah.

Speaker 3: 05:43
Um another uh barrier to making a great sounding record um in my mind is um you know it's kind of we kind of touched on it, clients haven't really listened carefully to their masters before they send them out for cutting.

Speaker 2: 05:54
Yeah.

Speaker 3: 05:54
Um it's uh it just really kind of surprises me how you know the the first quality control step that we find is the test pressing. You know, we've already we've been sent the masters for cut, and they're just not um they're just not paying attention. Um it's um um uh follow up on that or give you uh what other things do you think uh uh get in the way of making making a great record?

Speaker 1: 06:21
What what well um too much top end, you know, extreme top and extreme bottom, I think, are are two of the issues. Um as another cutter would know, but just to tell the general public that hasn't dealt with it. Um vocal sibilance is a is a real killer and and really sizzly sounding symbols can be a killer. I mean I can correct it in cutting, but then it's not gonna sound like the CD or the or the digital, and then they'll come back and say, well, why doesn't it? And so uh again, I've I've put some stuff on on the net trying to explain this to people, uh, you know, so so they know what they're up against. I mean what I tell people is is listen to some good sounding phonograph records that are in the genre of your music, and if your file has a lot more top end than than is there on the the record that you're comparing, then you've got a problem.

Speaker 3: 07:11
Yeah. If you were watching my videos now, you see it'd be a big nod for me while you were saying that. That was that's really important. Um records really sounded their best when the when the mixing and mastering was uh intended for vinyl, was customized for vinyl. And um uh I get it, you know, we're not uh you know, we're listening with 20-20 ears and we're trying to create a master that really you know was best suited for ears we had in the 1970s and early 80s.

Speaker 1: 07:43
Exactly, exactly. It's true. Yeah, so uh I think I think more and more uh younger people are getting attuned to that because they've bought turntables and they're listening to vinyl now. And uh that's that's been a big I I've seen an improvement, I think, just in the last decade, because uh even the so-called newbies are at least uh you know vaguely familiar with vinyl. They've heard vinyl. They've probably even heard vinyl in their home or a good friend system, and um and so they they know what's what they're up against.

Speaker 3: 08:11
Yeah, I think we can um we we work well uh to tell our clients to to think about you know what uh what the customer, what the consumer is going to expect when they buy a vinyl. I'm I think they're gonna expect it to sound a little warmer, a little smoother, maybe a little less compressed and a little more open, all the things you mentioned as well. You know, and I think when they buy digital, they're gonna expect it to be competitively loud and um you know have the first chorus be just as loud as the last chorus. Right. That's what um the vinyl process, the vinyl, I I you know we're speaking to the choir here, we're speaking to people of a making vinyl conference, so they kind of get it. Um, the the buy-in and the why everybody uh likes the format. But um, you know, it it enters in the quality control process um in several different ways. Um, you know, and uh we touched on the one of them there about high frequency content. Um there's certainly quite a bit written about why that's a problem um uh on the internet, and certainly you could independently anybody watching could you know contact us independently from our off our websites and ask us why uh we'll we'll give you we'll give you uh uh an hour's worth of 20 reasons why that's not gonna work. Um yeah but you literally have to be standing in front of a lathe and look at the and understand the physics of it to know why. So um um this is an area where uh um you know a good client really needs to to to uh pick somebody that they can trust and then trust them to make these judgment calls uh for them. Um I find uh um I still a remarkable number of my vinyl clients don't have a decent turntable setup.

Speaker 1: 09:54
Right. Um or they have an entry-level one or uh or a crossly or something like that.

Speaker 3: 09:59
No, or something that that used to be a cool turntable you know 20 years ago. I mean the time there was a long period of time between when vinyl was in everybody's home and and this resurgence. And most of those turntables need to be serviced or or replaced. The good news is you can replace a cartridge and replace a belt and and sometimes you get your machine pretty much back into good shape. But uh geez, how many times do you get uh calls from people playing a ref or test pressing and they're telling you that it's skipping all over the place? I know. And we know that we don't cut something that's gonna skip. We we exactly we know this. We we do this every day.

Speaker 1: 10:37
It's it's um uh Yeah, they think that like you personally sabotage their project for some reason.

Speaker 3: 10:44
Yeah, I had a funny feeling when we got talking, we would we would we would be sharing a lot of the same the same war stories.

Speaker: 10:51
Uh sure.

Speaker 3: 10:52
Um our our raw materials um sometimes have been a problem. Um, you know, we uh we managed to get through the devastation of uh of Apollo's factory fire. Um and uh honestly. Yeah, it was big. That looked like that was gonna derail the um um derail our profession for a while, but uh MDC has stepped it up and uh it seems like are you have uh ample disks?

Speaker 1: 11:17
I do, yeah. Well, you know, uh I think there was a slowdown with COVID too, and and some of the cutters were not cutting during that period. I mean I I stayed cutting the whole time with the exception of maybe uh April and May uh were really, really down months for me. Yeah but uh I've I've stayed fairly busy, uh but a lot of people apparently aren't because the letters that I get from the the importer are saying, well, we've got a few more lacquers this month if anybody wants them, and I've been taking them, you know. I'm yeah I've got a stock.

Speaker 3: 11:42
Same here. I'm I've not been hoarding them because I know everybody needs them, but um you know I don't think there's that many. No, no, but a month's supply is nice to see. Right.

Speaker 1: 11:52
Well, you know, I I was uh I you know I was grandfathered in with them because I had been buying their lacquers for almost two and a half years before the Apollo fire. And uh I was I was getting basically 75 a month. I'd get 51 month and 100 the next month and alternate back and forth. And then all of a sudden they didn't want to give me more than 50 a month, and I went, wow, that's gonna really cut back on my business. And then one month they would only give me 25, and I'm looking I like guys, I I can't make a living doing this. And so so they uh they upped it after that, and then uh I've been getting you know basically 75 to 100 a month.

Speaker 3: 12:24
Yeah, yeah. Well in the set of similar numbers. I mean, I think that's well um when you've got uh a real studio overhead and you're not just cutting out of a bedroom. Um I think Well, I kinda am.

Speaker 1: 12:35
I'm cutting out of my garage. It's a nice garage, it really is. You'll have to see it.

Speaker 3: 12:40
Lucky duck, because I that's a move I should have made 20 years ago. I uh moved out of the city my operation out of the city into a much less expensive uh commercial um operation. But um we were fortunate um during the lockdown, we have um uh essential businesses in the building, so with extra cleaning and protocols, uh the building was uh remained open, so we weren't locked out of the building, which was really fortunate. And yes, I I generally work alone or you know, I'll have to Me too. Yeah, so the uh the support staff you know worked from home and I I sequestered myself at the studio.

Speaker 1: 13:13
Right. And I've I've just let a very few of my very, very good clients come in and we mask up and all of that kind of stuff. So yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:21
Yeah, it's uh it's the same kind of thing here. Um kind of keeping you know uh balancing risk and reward kind of thing with uh you know, there's certain clients I would never want to, you know, exclude from the room, and there's uh there's other people that I it just doesn't make sense. The right um uh the the it's not and I don't even talk about the risk of being sick, it's the risk of the downtime, the risk of the financial loss of having to close for 14 days or 20 days or or you know, and then in in infecting other people that that are maybe more vulnerable.

Speaker 1: 13:54
Right. Well, back in April and May there were a lot of plants closed too, both even in Europe, and that was a problem. And I understand, you know, I I I send a lot of stuff to two plants in Germany, and I'm understanding that Germany's under quite a lockdown right now, so I'm wondering how that's going to affect things for the next few months.

Speaker 3: 14:09
Yeah, yeah, that's what I hear from our um from our contacts there as well. Um so uh that's kind of our list. I mean, I think budgets um you know may not uh uh affect us quite as much as other cutters, but I think the budgets and unrealistic deadlines kind of get uh are an obstacle to making a great record.

Speaker 1: 14:28
Yes, they can be. Agreed.

Speaker 3: 14:30
Um, you know, uh we all like to say, you know, if you want uh uh good and cheap, you know, you can't get fast. Or if you want fast and cheap, it's not gonna be good. Exactly.

Speaker 1: 14:42
Um it's you're getting a headshake on most of these things.

Speaker 3: 14:47
For sure. Um and I think the budgets get set um sort of arbitrarily because uh you know I've done a little um uh internet research and they find out how much does it cost to make a record. And so they get a nice simple answer coming back from Google and and they kind of go into the process thinking that's what it's supposed to cost. And um then when you or I are telling them, well, no, really we need a separate master, and this is gonna take a few extra hours. We really need to have the references cut, and uh if you're not gonna listen to them carefully, at least we need to or somebody needs to.

Speaker 1: 15:19
Exactly.

Speaker 3: 15:20
And uh I I actually it sounds a little bit like I'm trying to say you've got to spend more money um, you know, to to to antee up, but quite frankly, uh you you're just there's too many different ways for it to go wrong. And if we don't spend the time looking, we we we just won't find them.

Speaker 1: 15:35
Right. They might be a little bit upset with the upfront cost, but they'd be a heck of a lot more upset if they got their test pressing and there's a problem and the thing's supposed to be, you know, shipping in three weeks.

Speaker 3: 15:45
Yeah. Well, there's also the you get your test pressing back and it doesn't sound good, and then the plant tells you so what, you know, see it, take it or leave it. Um so you all of that money that you've spent up to that point is uh produces a result that you're not excited about selling. And so I try to get make sure people, you know, contemplate the cost of having to do it all over again and factor that into you know whether or not you know paying for some insurance is is not a bad idea. Exactly.

Speaker 1: 16:15
Did I leave anything out that you uh that you find yourself button up against the well we talked we talked about the top end, uh you know, bottom end can be a problem too. I mean, I don't do much rap anymore, but that was always a fight because of of potential skipping problems. But uh even you know, one thing that I find, I you know, I've got subwoofers that go down below 20 hertz, and I'm finding a lot of bass below 60 cycles that you know if you were listening on on small monitors, you're not gonna hear. So, you know, there there's sometimes some some uh uh steps that need to be taken there in mastering to make it so that it'll play on a cheaper turntable.

Speaker 3: 16:50
I just got my my my my uh um a big surprise recently. Um we pulled a uh a client pulled an old master out of the vault from the 70s and I went to cut went to cut it and everything seemed very normal. It was an acoustic singer-songwriter. Um a lot of dynamics, which I uh you know had to con you know either decide to manage or control a little bit uh from analog tape. And um, you know, originally I was going for a level that I thought they'd like, and I had my elliptical filter in because there were a couple vocal peaks that were, you know, you know, um caused uh some too much depth, too much side information. And um so the client asked, says, you know what, we don't need it to be this loud. We think it's actually too loud. Bring it down a couple dB. That's nice. Yeah, okay, great. And then I looked at it and said, well, you know, I don't need the EEE filter. So that's uh, you know, it's a win-win. Let's turn it down. Well, the top end will sound better. Well, guess what happened? Um unbeknownst to me, in the middle of uh in two songs, one on each side, there was a mic bump uh that I never that I never heard of. Super subsonic, and it was in one channel, and it was completely covered when you're listening in stereo, only audible when listening to the side.

Speaker 1: 18:11
Yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:12
So the client didn't order refs, and so it was picked up uh yeah, in the pressing plant. Fortunately, it didn't get pressed, it was just picked up on test pressings. But wow, what a surprise.

Speaker 1: 18:23
Um I've had similar things. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:25
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:25
So um little things that'll bite you in the ass when you're not not looking for.

Speaker 3: 18:30
These are the kind of things I usually tell um mix engineers about when they tell me they want a pre they want a pre-EQ or pre-master for vinyl. And um and even some non-cutting mastering engineers that don't quite have all of these um uh parameters worked out. I mean, literally, I'm doing this every day like you are, and I'm s I I get uh thrown off guard by something like that. Um there would have been there was i if I if I stood there and stared at the depth meter through an entire pass, you know, I would have caught it. But that's not how we master. We check the depth, we look at the loud spots. This wasn't even in a loud spot of the recording, because it was a microphone bump.

Speaker 1: 19:11
Yep. Yep.

Speaker 3: 19:12
It was in between. Yeah, so when uh consumers, when producers, labels, and non-cutting mastering engineers uh talk to us about this stuff, and we seem to have we seem to be like super paranoid and and and and and like afraid of our own shadows sometimes when it comes to this stuff. It's because we've been through um we've been through uh uh trials and tribulations like this. And and you you've uh you're you're really as good as as the number of failures you've lived through.

Speaker 1: 19:47
Right. It's true.

Speaker 3: 19:49
Um because each one of them.

Speaker 1: 19:50
That's the stuff that gets posted on the internet.

Speaker 3: 19:53
Yeah, that's a that it it it didn't used to be quite so uh scary when um you know when uh but now yeah. Uh if it gets out in the public's hands, it's uh it can be a mess. I want to let you talk a little bit. Tell me about um how you prepare a client for cutting from tape. Like uh you've got a either a new product or a re-issue, which other one you'd like to go down, and and tell me about how you walk the client through that special.

Speaker 1: 20:17
Well, I'm in I'm in a niche where 85% of what I do is re-issue. Uh 50, 60s, 70s jazz and and rock and roll. I've I've kind of gotten into a jazz niche. I'm doing tons and tons of uh Blue Notes for Universal. And I've been doing this since 2000. Well, actually going back to 2007 for a couple of third party guys, but since 2017 for Blue Note themselves, the the current Blue Note. That's a great catalog. Don was. Well, yes, we're doing some we're doing some of the new stuff too. Oh, cool. Um yeah. And Don is great to deal with. I I I was a little intimidated by him when I first met him, but after I'd been talking with him for 10 minutes, I felt like I'd known him 10 years, you know, which was really amazing. Um and he's a walking encyclopedia of jazz. It blew me away. I didn't know that. Uh so um yeah, it's been a really fun project, and the sales are unbelievable on this stuff. They're selling selling like 12,000 copies on a typical release and 17, I think, on the most, uh, the last time I checked.

unknown: 21:12
Wow.

Speaker 1: 21:13
Wow. So I mean who who would have guessed in 2020? You know, it's just that's simple. But um but yeah, when but when I'm dealing with a new client. Well, oh well first let me mention whenever I do a reissue, and and for anybody who wants to bring in a reissue as a third party, I I tell them to try to get a good pressing of the original release. Because it's always nice to know what the uh producer, engineer, artist was going for in the beginning, uh, which you can't always tell by listening to the tape. So, you know, you can only guess.

Speaker 3: 21:42
Yeah. Um I occasionally you'll find cutting notes in an old master buff, but they don't really tell you that all that much about No, because everybody's equipment's different. What what kind of level and how much TSing and all these sort of things.

Speaker 1: 21:54
Very true. Very true. But um so that you know that's that's kind of a starting point on a reissue. On new stuff. It seems to me that most of the guys that are doing stuff is you know, they're sending me tapes for mastering uh kind of know the limitations. They seem to be a little bit more f you know, I I don't get that many newbies saying I want to send you a vinyl, uh sending a a tape for for doing the vinyl. So um Yeah. You know, I I would warn people the same idea, you know. Not so much the compression, because it's not going to be that compressed on tape, but but to tell them, you know, just just watch the extreme top and the extreme bottom.

Speaker 3: 22:30
Cool. The um um things that I find surprise my clients is uh how much time it takes to assemble the real into a running order. Yeah. Um I'm still pretty good with a razor blade, but um we have complete as a society, as a profession, everyone's forgotten about how long it's a lot of the.

Speaker 1: 22:50
Oh yeah, the only four inches, four-inch gap uh, you know, before the downbeat and uh yeah, that kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 22:55
Well it's it uh you know, everything can be done with a workstation in um um at light speed now. Uh I can download the files, assemble them in a master format, get them back up on the internet faster than I can even rewind the the egg. I know, I know.

Speaker 1: 23:09
That's that's a little bit of the frustration of cutting from uh from uh tape. But uh I try to tell people to have it assembled before they bring it to me. If I have to do a little bit of finish work on the assembly, that's fine. But at least at least get all the tapes in sequence on a reel for each side for me.

Speaker 3: 23:24
Well, I'm uh yeah. I mean from the labels, I think you from some of the um some of my folks that have you know dusted off a tape machine or or even uh had a uh an old tape machine refurbished and they're very excited about using it, but they don't even trust themselves with with razor blades. So I I'm I'm always pretty c I I don't have to do every part of the process, but if I'm gonna end up having to fix their problems later anyway, um or like losing them losing a take or or not organizing the you know the real property. But you're right. If if they would do it first, it would certainly save the save us time and and their money. But um it's a um it's uh in the um in the digital world of things, there's not a lot of um people with tape handling experience, tech product experience.

Speaker 1: 24:09
Well, a couple of the other uh uh you know frustrations in the in the analog tape domain is is tapes having to be baked from the 70s. That's just a constant thing. I'm I'm baking it seems like uh at least once or twice a week something. Uh and the other thing is old, old tapes that have paper leaders uh that have sat for a long, long time, the the adhesive winds up sticking to the to the paper leader, but or to the tape, but it doesn't stick to the paper leader anymore. And you know, it's got it's it's absorbed into the paper. And so I find uh I I'm having to like re-leader and read, you know, put new splicing tape on on splices constantly.

Speaker 3: 24:47
That's just a lot of that tape remediation process is uh is is challenging.

Speaker 1: 24:51
Um I feel like I'm I'm doing their archival work for them, you know, but I charge them.

Speaker 3: 24:56
So yeah, yeah, that's uh uh and you don't you don't know it until the tape falls apart on you, you know.

Speaker 1: 25:02
Exactly.

Speaker 3: 25:03
And and you're in the middle, now you've you've booked a half a day to do or a day to do the session, and you end up spending uh you know, sometimes a couple hours uh going back and re because once you once one spice falls apart, then you've got the risk of the yeah.

Speaker 1: 25:17
Yeah, you're you're absolutely right.

Speaker 3: 25:18
As i iron ironically, that same project with the uh with the mic thump also had spices falling apart, and um the adhesive on mine um was sticking to the pinch roller. So as it would come across the the pinch roller, it would stick and start wrapping the tape around the pinch roller.

Speaker 1: 25:35
I just had that happen recently. It's so funny you'd mention that. I can't remember that ever happening before. That happened to me like uh two weeks ago. Oh, no. I was I was in the middle of cutting a side, and all of a sudden I look over and the the takeup reel's not turning, but the music's still playing, and I'm like, what? And then I realize that the it's wrapped around the pinch.

Speaker 3: 25:52
I know the machines don't know to stop in that situation.

Speaker 1: 25:55
Exactly. There's no shutoff on that side.

Speaker 3: 25:58
But um, let's see. But clockwise, we've got about you know, probably about 10 minutes or so more. Let me run through a few clickies so people know what kind of stuff you're doing. I'm asked this all the time. I I know my answer for it. What's your answer? Uh does 180 gram uh mastering different and uh cutting or is it different, or it and uh how do you approach it if if differently at all?

Speaker 1: 26:20
In my world, there's no difference. Um and when people ask me, does 180 gram sound better? I'll say not technically, uh, but there are reasons why it can, and that is that you know there's less prone to they are less prone to warpage. So uh and and there's that sort of cachet that you get with 180 gram for your sales that you don't get with a lighter weight record. But um yeah. Well, I know they are a little bit harder to press, and I also know that uh 200 grams are really hard to press. So, you know.

Speaker 3: 26:52
I know a couple plants we work with regularly. Non film um feel that the 160 is sort of a good compromise, and they get the quality they want, and they get a they get that uh the uh durability that they want, but they also don't wear the stampers out so fast. Um but what an interesting point I usually make to uh to people when they ask me this question is that a 180 grand project has the opportunity to sound better because if you if the client knows going in that they're going to be selling a premium product, uh my experience is they'll spend a little bit more time in quality control, they'll spend a little bit more time the order references, they'll listen to it, they'll check your test pressings more carefully. So it ends up being a better sounding project because um quality control has been looked at throughout the whole process. Um, you're absolutely right about that. In the digital file, even in the CD realm, um uh quality management, quality control has just gone away entirely. We don't even talk about it. Uh is as if if the file doesn't glitch, then it's ready for the internet. But man, there's so many ways for the vinyl to fail. It could actually be a whole half another half an hour conversation on what can go wrong in vinyl.

Speaker 1: 28:05
Um let's not scare people.

Speaker 3: 28:07
Well, right. Well the the punchline at the end is uh you know, find somebody that you trust and and and hopefully they'll steer you down, you know, keep you on the yellow brick road as you find your way.

Speaker 1: 28:18
Well, I think one of my one of the biggest surprises is I get I get emails all the time from people saying, well, I'd like to press this on vinyl, but I'd really only like to get 100 copies. And it's like uh you're not going to find a plant that'll do less than I don't think a thousand anymore, let alone five hundred.

Speaker 3: 28:31
There are a couple in the States that are doing so. Yeah, a couple of them have reverted back to it was um I think they but they rolled some of that back uh um after COVID because they they they no longer had a backlog of projects. But I'm sure that's going to come back again as the as the uh quantity of work comes back. Um they charge a lot for them, and and I just think it's boy, if you can't sell hundred if you can't sell uh a couple hundred copies of something, yeah. What's the point? Sure what kind of business you're you're getting into. Yeah. Um I don't usually tell clients that directly, but but for for for this monk for this audience, um you know, um the cost per unit is just way too high. Um so the only opportunity, the only option you have is to go with the cheapest possible cutting and pressing.

Speaker 1: 29:18
Uh and then you're gonna get what you pay for.

Speaker 3: 29:21
You're gonna get uh if you're lucky, you're gonna get what you pay for. Um and uh but that's um there are times when uh a very timely record or a a keepsake kind of um uh memento kind of record needs to be made quick and fast. And and that's fine. There's there's there's reasons for that. Just don't expect it to to uh win an award for sound quality. That's you know exactly right. Let's um do you um I I don't know the answer to this question. Do you have speed mastering?

Speaker 1: 29:50
I don't.

Speaker 3: 29:51
That's interesting. I have not either. Um I've dabbled with it. Um I have too.

Speaker 1: 29:56
Uh it's I'm not a fan. It changes the sound, and not for the better, in my opinion.

Speaker 3: 30:02
It's um there are some people well, you know, there's different opinions, very different opinions across the internet. So um um if you're you know if you really think your title uh needs to have speed mastering, um you you would have to look beyond Kevin and I. That's true. Um have you um I've done a little bit of direct to direct to disc recording. Um not too much. I've done a lot. You've done it.

Speaker 1: 30:24
I've done over over 30 of them at this point. Oh, cool.

Speaker 3: 30:26
You still you still currently well I've post-COVID, are you gonna continue doing that? Well, I've got this one.

Speaker 1: 30:32
No, I was doing them with Chad Cassim. He has a church that he's turned into a studio in Salina, Kansas, and he was doing this blues festival every year. Uh and so we wouldn't try to record the festival directed discs, but we would set up sessions with one or two or three of the artists who were performing that weekend, and we'd do D to D's with them. And uh I did that for over a decade.

Speaker 3: 30:52
Wow.

Speaker 1: 30:53
And uh stuff.

Speaker 3: 30:55
That's the all that's the ultimate. That's what every cutter kind of wants, you know. Ever every master engineer wishes they could be a disc cutter at some point just to learn the process, and every disc cutter wants to do direct to direct a disc.

Speaker 1: 31:06
Hey, hearing hearing the first Sheffield direct to disc was one of the things that got me interested in disc cutting. Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 31:12
And and they were when you I'm sure you you would say the same thing. Once you actually try to do it yourself, um boy, hats off to those folks who are.

Speaker 1: 31:20
You have a lot more appreciation for it. That's for sure.

Speaker 3: 31:23
Oh my god. Of all the things that can go wrong, and then even the stuff after it's cut, you can make a perfectly good plate, and it could be damaged to shipping, damaged to silvering, damaged to, you know.

Speaker 1: 31:35
Scary.

Speaker 3: 31:36
Uh yeah, I I I I got kind of cold feet after looking at all of that. So I I decided to modify my expectations to uh so my my uh I have a an adjacent recording uh facility here and so we're gonna record live live to tape and then cut from uh edit and cut from tape to simulate and I'm kind of starting up the same thing. It's gonna start to simulate the the 70s uh era style, you know, live in a room. Um that allows you to you know cut a second set if it if you have a great success. You could actually you know keep the presses running and and uh and give the artist a little bit of uh freedom to you know to not have to cut up to record a whole side. Right.

Speaker 1: 32:16
They can do some editing, they can do a little intercutting if they need to.

Speaker 3: 32:19
Right. But still frame it in this you know, live in the studio, you know, kind of realm. Right. Um a lot of my favorite records were were done that way. So you know the I'm all for it. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:30
We're on the same page.

Speaker 3: 32:33
Um uh the answer to this question might simply be yeah, you you don't do this, but how so feel free. But if you um were asked, if if a client uh uh really came to you with a budget that you felt was going to be a compromise, uh how do you how do you make those decisions? Well, how do you walk them through uh still accommodating their budget but getting a product that you're you know that you're gonna do that?

Speaker 1: 32:56
Yeah, I don't deal with that too much. Um since COVID, I've taken some new clients, but up until a year ago, I hadn't taken any new clients in over two years. So and I would just you know try to refer them to a couple of people that uh that I know. But um yeah, I haven't dealt with that much.

Speaker 3: 33:13
I think between us I'm probably doing more newbie, um, more you know independent first timers, um, you know, thanks for my hat's off to you. And it's the the education process is brutally challenging.

Speaker 1: 33:24
Um do you have a paper on your on your website to kind of uh start them off?

Speaker 3: 33:28
I I've got a video and I'm gonna do a f a couple more videos. I I've learned a few years ago that nobody's reading what's on my website because I'm saying the same things over and over and over again. Right. Um but people are watching the videos. People listen, I've got a podcast um uh I call Making Vinyl at MasterDisc. Um not to be confused with Making Vinyl, but uh to pay homage to making vinyl.

Speaker 1: 33:50
Okay.

Speaker 3: 33:51
Um it was uh that was named with uh with Larry's uh approval. But um it's it's a pretty good way of getting some information out in an informal setting. And um I've it's actually helped because clients have come in the door with a little bit more knowledge um uh after after sitting through a couple hours of me babbling about vinyl.

Speaker 1: 34:11
Okay. Well yeah, every every little bit helps. It really does.

Speaker 3: 34:15
Um so um, you know, we start we we we kind of made the um um um talk about some of the uh if you've in the last uh closing minutes here, if you've got a project or two or a cont well we already talked about Pluno, but something you're really proud of, or stories, the success stories, things that really turned out well, um uh would that would be great to share.

Speaker 1: 34:36
Well, it's it's really interesting that I'm doing more and more and more stuff from from tape because uh even five years ago, I think probably at least 70 to 80 percent of the stuff I was doing was from digital files, with the only the other 20 or 30 being from analog. It's kind of flipped the other way now. Um I'm I'm doing way more from analog tape. And uh so I I do a lot of work for Warner. I I've been uh doing remasters on a lot of records, some of which I actually got the first time around, which is fun. Kind of fun, yeah. And uh and the same thing for uh Concord. I'm doing a lot of the stuff from the fantasy catalog, the Riverside catalog, and uh and they took on uh um a Hispanic label that they bought called FANIA. Fania? F-A-N-I-A. Anyways, I've been doing a lot of stuff from that. And uh there's been some real gems in in all of this stuff, so that's fun. I you know I got to do I I I I it seems like every time a performer passes on, I wound up getting wind up getting deluged with stuff like uh after Prince's death. I I think I did seven of his albums. Um most recently I I was expecting some Van Halen. Somebody else must have already remastered the catalog, maybe Bernie Grundman. But um uh lately it's been John Prine. Lots and lots and lots of John Prime. Okay.

Speaker 3: 35:56
Yeah. Uh well that's it.

Speaker 1: 35:58
Uh it's it's sad on one hand, but it's good for business.

Speaker 3: 36:01
Yeah, a little bit of press. Uh they say, you know, bad news is is still good press.

Speaker 1: 36:05
Yeah, right.

Speaker 3: 36:06
Uh but um well, I think we've kind of covered uh a lot of the things that can go wrong and a couple of the good processes and things.

Speaker 1: 36:12
Um it's done right, it just can sound wonderful. I mean that's that's what I tell people who you know, I'll bump into a line in the grocery store wearing a shirt that has something about vinyl on it, and they'll say, Well, why are people doing vinyl again? I said, because it can sound really, really good and it can blow away people, is how much better it can sound than a uh uh you know a regular 44-16-bit CD.

Speaker 3: 36:34
Right, right. I forgot to ask you, um you must be doing cutting from um high-res digital files uh as well.

Speaker 1: 36:41
Um I do it from CDs still too, occasionally, very occasionally. But uh yeah, I do a lot from high-res digital, and I have no problem with that. I mean, I understand the whole idea of you know make it analog all the way through, and and and there's a real validity to that. But you know, if it's on high-res digital and it was properly transferred, um, I don't think most people would actually know the difference, to be honest.

Speaker 3: 37:02
Well, when you're talking about a tape that's you know literally falling apart before your eyes, right? There's that too. Yeah, it's it's it probably would be a good idea to work off of the ditch. Um there's you know, there's licensees. I work with a few licensees that that you know specialize in exclusive analog, you know, only original masters, 100% analog processes. And um and I get it, uh they don't even want to put their name on it, they don't even want to release it if it has to be digitized. Um but um from a consumer standpoint, you're absolutely right. That high-res digital would be completely transparent um to their experience uh because it had come off of a first generation tape copy. But um that's a little heretical.

Speaker 1: 37:45
Yeah, well, of course it can also it can also be a new digital recording, too, you know. My only caveat there is I'm hoping that it's not really compressed like it was for the you know, sometimes the the the compression had already happened in the recording, and then sometimes it's pre-mastered. But uh, you know, if if it's either a transfer or a new recording um in high-res uh where it's not really compressed, it can just sound incredible and vinyl.

Speaker 3: 38:08
Yeah, yeah, it really can. We're working from from uh DSD and DXD um formats. And uh the only caveat there is high frequency uh content goes way, way, way up above.

Speaker 1: 38:22
Yeah, you're getting a headshake on that one. I've I've dealt with a few of those. By the way, have you done any stuff in in DSD 256? Yeah, yeah. That's wonderful because it gets the out-of-band noise way up above the audio range. That's no longer a problem. And I like it sonically. I've always had kind of a problem with DSD, to be honest. I'm not a big fan of the sound. But once once they went to 250, 128 didn't fix the problems I was hearing, but 256 does. Totally.

Speaker 3: 38:47
That's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah. We um uh the producers uh and I both felt that the um well it was the double-edged uh uh thing dealing with sibilants, but the the integrity of the high frequency content in the sibilances meant that um uh it didn't hurt your ear as much. But it but it's but it still annoyed the cutting amplifiers.

Speaker 1: 39:11
Yes, yes. Well, you know, you bring up an interesting point there. I mean, if it's a sibilance that's already starting to break up on the tape, if it's analog, there's nothing you can do about that. It's gonna be on the record. Um, you know, but if it's clean sibilance, you know, we can we can help it out.

Speaker 3: 39:27
Uh uh a uh notable um recent project for Patricia Barber um required some old school DSing moves using a lyric sheet and circling the S's and writing.

Speaker 1: 39:38
I just did a record for her too. That's so funny.

Speaker 3: 39:40
Oh, that's great. Yeah, she's she's um um uh but she loves her S consonants. Oh yeah. Boy, does that make uh make it a lot of extra work. But um yeah, uh yeah, I'm sure like me, you know, you enjoy the challenge because it's appreciated. You know, the works of the the integrity is appreciated um in in the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 40:02
Yes.

Speaker 3: 40:03
Well, thanks, uh Kevin. Thanks for spending the time. Oh, you're most welcome.

Speaker 1: 40:07
It's always good talking to you, Scott.

Speaker 3: 40:09
Yeah, thanks. And I hope people at uh Making Vinyl um at the comments enjoyed this. You can find out more information from uh about Kevin Gray at coherentaudio.com and for me at masterdisc.com.

Speaker 1: 40:21
Uh it's just coherent.com.

Speaker 3: 40:22
It's just coherent.com.

Speaker 1: 40:24
Yeah, no audio. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 40:25
Very good. And um um, you know, we uh it's uh it's a profession where there's a lot of misinformation. So if you if you really want to know the the right way to go about these things, um um this is this is one of the places to start with somebody who who uh who's seen a lot of mistakes. I think we've seen them all, haven't we? Well, I had seen them all until this one with the mic thump. I just I felt so embarrassed that I didn't that I missed that.

Speaker 1: 40:51
But um I think I beat you to it on that one. I had one of those a few years ago.

Speaker 3: 40:56
I uh it was just inaudible. I mean, I guess my speakers go down pretty low, and it was uh well anyway, I'll beat myself up for that for a couple weeks, and then I'll then a new problem will come along. But um thanks again and goodbye, everyone. Hope you enjoy the conference and uh see you next time. All right.