Mixing and Mastering for vinyl

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nate_dennis

nate_dennis

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After reading this article http://www.urpressing.com/master_more.php i'm curious if one should change anything in a mix if you plan on releasing to vinyl. If one would make changes, would these changes still need to be made if the mix was done from and to tape?

Would you mastering engineers do anything differently knowing that the music would be pressed to vinyl? Thanks guys.
 
I don't really think so. The mastering guys will provide RIAA EQ curves and the like to make sure that it remains up to technical specs.
 
I wouldn't wait for the mastering guy to take care of the 'little things' - But then again, those things are pretty typical.

You don't want excessive sibilance, distorted high end spikes (cymbal crashes and the like). You obviously don't want non-centered low end content - The kick and bass should have a solid anchor in the center.

These things aren't impossible to fix during the mastering phase - But your mix might sound awfully different. If it's reasonably balanced before the vinyl guy gets it, it's going to sound much more like you remembered mixing it.
 
I'm repeating this to make sure I'm understanding correctly. (Kind of "active listening" on a BBS.)

A solid mix that is done "properly" with plenty of headroom should make it through the vinyl pressing stage just fine. Right? Thanks for the help.


-Nate
 
nate_dennis said:
I'm repeating this to make sure I'm understanding correctly. (Kind of "active listening" on a BBS.)

A solid mix that is done "properly" with plenty of headroom should make it through the vinyl pressing stage just fine. Right?
Click to expand...

Yes, As John said, as long as your low frequencies (below 200hz) are centered, there is no excessive sibilance, your not crushing with a bw limiter and your peak levels are below -.3 dbfs, you should be good.
 
nate_dennis said:
A solid mix that is done "properly" with plenty of headroom should make it through the vinyl pressing stage just fine. Right?
Click to expand...
A solid mix that is done properly is all you should ever have to worry about at the mixing stage. The eventual medium on which it will wind up is irrelevant, and its the job solely of the mastering engineer to worry about. But that doesn't mean that the mxing engineer should phone in his own job.
dodgeaspen said:
However, my question is if I wanted to have a recording with instruments on one side and vox on the other why is that not exceptable?
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I don't know that I can say that it's not acceptable, but it isn't ideal on vinyl. A lot depends upon the nature of the bass (and everything else, FTM.) If the bass is exceptionally heavy and rather attack-y, that can create more problems.

The thing is that because vinyl is a physical medium and bass frequencies cause the largest "bumps" in the groove, excessive bass can really toss the stylus around a bit. This is one of a few reasons why vinyl mastering guys apply RIAA equalization when cutting a vinyl master, it helps keep the bass bumps under control.

When you throw all you bass to one side, instead of the bass grooves tending to just throw the stylus up and down, it wants to push the stylus sideways as well. Too much of this - especially with improper anti-skating on the playback turntable - can make the album more difficult to track without skipping.

As you say, It can be and has been done, but usually you'll find that the bass is not as up-front-thumping. or that the bass overtones might be more accentuated with the fundamentals more subdued, or some other kind of mastering trick(s) applied to make the vinyl more trackable.

G.
 
Thanks for the info SouthSIDE. I now have a better understanding of the process.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
The eventual medium on which it will wind up is irrelevant, and its the job solely of the mastering engineer to worry about.
Click to expand...

So you think a mastering engineer would work differently with a project that was heading to vinyl? What if it was going to vinyl AND CD? Would there be two different masters? Am I just being dense?

You guys rock!
 
Oh yes, there would be two different masters for sure. In today's loudness wars, while the CD would be crushed to death, the vinyl will have most the dynamics intact (but due to the nature of vinyl, it will have to be compressed due to vinyl's limited dynamic range). This contributes to the myth that vinyls "sound" better than CD's.
 
nate_dennis said:
So you think a mastering engineer would work differently with a project that was heading to vinyl? What if it was going to vinyl AND CD? Would there be two different masters? Am I just being dense?
Click to expand...
Well, this is where it kind of gets back to the difference between the traditional definitions of mastering and the way mastering is usually meant today.

*In theory*, anyway, the ideal should be that who ever is actually creating the true master for the medium should be the guy that makes the adjustment for the medium. In the case of vinyl, that would be the guy actually cutting the physical master stamp at the lathe. Whether things are still that "pure" or not anymore, I'm not sure. Mastering guys like John and Tom these days often feel the need to do the mixing because real mix engineers are practically non-existent on the DIY market; the same problem may exist on the media cutting end too, I don't know. They can answer that better than I, probably.

G.
 
Bit of a subject change....

Are you guys talking about vinyl today or over the years? I have tonnes and tonnes of records that I can think of off the top of my head that play fine in clubs and at home with minimal issues that are panned all over the place. The last ones I played out were some Heatwave records and they had some serious hard panning. I'm nowhere near my decks at the moment but I'd even go as far as saying that one of their tunes if not a couple. They even pan the bass.
 
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