How exactly does the Vinyl cutting process work?

V

vrada501

New member
I've found a couple videos showing the process of cutting music into vinyls with the cutting lathe.
The only thing was I feel like they weren't deeply specific about it.

The questions I had about it that those videos didn't answer were...

1. What are all those machines involved in this assembly style process (including the name of the machines the master tape/source plays off of)?
Besides the cutting lathe itself, I only heard of the compressor and limiter

2.What order do they have to be in?

3. What do each of them do?

4. How are they connected (What kind of cable if any, etc)? Is the music source (1/4 reel tape, digital) plugged to whichever next's machine the same way?

Thanks for looking, hope to see replies.
 
This goes over quite a bit -- https://youtu.be/ZbTPKCtdhSA

A lot of the other stuff (the entire audio processing portion) is somewhat subjective... The source si generally called "the source" whatever it may be. Mostly computers these days.

The cables are whatever the connectors are. Usually XLR, sometimes TRS or TT.
 
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"How exactly does the Vinyl cutting process work?"

Badly (Sorry! Could not resist )

Dave.
 
Massive Master said:
This goes over quite a bit -- https://youtu.be/ZbTPKCtdhSA

A lot of the other stuff (the entire audio processing portion) is somewhat subjective... The source si generally called "the source" whatever it may be. Mostly computers these days.

The cables are whatever the connectors are. Usually XLR, sometimes TRS or TT.
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing that awesome video, that's definitly the most detailed video of the pressing part I've seen. Though it was mainly the "Audio Processing" part I was hunting info for, which you also provided a helpful little : )
So, basically the source players and lathe cutter or whichever pre-machine(s) are always compatible as long as they share the same connector, with the corresponding cord provided?
 
That might be a stretch, but "dumbed down" you're just hooking a source to a recorder. There are the typical and unique functions on the source and the typical and unique functions on the recorder. Just like any other source to any other recorder.

The audio processing portion is a completely different story... Yes, you'd be pressed to find a mastering facility without small collection of compressors, equalizers, limiters, etc. But (as is always in recording) the source dictates the processing.
 
One special signal processor for vinyl mastering that I know of is the elliptical equalizer. This concentrates the bass sounds towards the center of the soundfield to prevent the stylus from jumping out of the groove at playback.
 
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