Vinyl Cutting and Mastering Process

Importance of Cleanliness

So once we finish doing our cuts and our test cuts, what's really important is to use one of these air blowers to blow off any excess swarf or offcuts that might have been caught up on the record, and any dust that might have landed in the groove. Cleanliness is key at this point.

Checking the Grooves

We can actually check under the microscope to see:

• How the grooves have packed
• How they have formed
• If there's any overcuts or problems caused by too much volume or too many heavy bass frequencies in either the left or right channel

We carefully check pretty much all of the grooves. There's a lot of them to check.

Key Elements to Look For

The things that we're looking out for are:

• Good solid edges on the grooves
• Any grooves that may be touching each other (which is okay)
• Overcuts: Any grooves that crossed over each other (this is a bad thing and will mean having to recut the side)

Also, we're looking for any abnormalities at points where the groove may become:

• Too wide
• Too narrow

If there's anything under 25 microns, it can cause the needle to skip out of the groove, resulting in a dodgy record. You won't get a needle that tracks through the grooves properly, and it will jump and skip.

Testing the Cut

Actually, looking quite nice, nothing too erratic. We can go back and play this.

"Because this is just a test lacquer, we can go back and play this on the turntable to see if it came out okay."

This sounded all right, sounding good.

Playback Considerations

One thing to take note of:

"You'd never play back an actual cut that you're preparing to send off for duplication."

The only reason why we're playing this back is just because it's a test cut. Actually playing the lacquers that you want to press can cause damage to the grooves, affecting the final pressings. That's not what you want to do.

That was just for demonstration purposes.

Completing the Full Run

Once you're happy with the cut and the tests that you've done, you proceed with:

• The full run through of the side
• The full cut with all the scrolls
• The running groove
• The run-out groove at the end

Etching Information

What's customary on the B side for the cutting engineer is to etch:

• The catalogue number of the disc onto the inner groove
• Their initials on the inner groove

Packaging and Shipping the Lacquer

Once you're happy with the cut:

• Package it up
• Get it sent off to your pressing plant in under 48 hours or into the fridge as soon as possible.

This is important because you can experience spring back:

"Spring back is when the surface of the lacquer, because it's not that solid, can shrink back after being cut and it starts to relax."

This can cause a loss of about 2dB of volume, so to avoid that, you should either:

• Send it to the pressing plant for them to refrigerate it quickly, or
• Place it in the fridge yourself until you're ready to send it off.

Storing the Lacquers

This is the lacquer box that you want to store your records in when sending them off to Optimal or whichever pressing plant you choose.

• Storage Method:
  • Place your side A face up inside the box.
  • Use spacers in between side A and side B.
  • Put your side B face down so both faces are facing each other inside the box.
  • Fill the rest of the space with more spacers, then securely screw the lid on.

"You want to make sure it's fastened securely."

Tape around the box and ship it off in less than 48 hours.

Test Pressings

Daryl here has received a few test pressings back from the factory:

• Once we've cut something, we send that master as described in the tin.
• What we get back is a test pressing, which comes in a cardboard sleeve, no pretty pictures, no labels, usually done on lower quality vinyl.

Quality Control Process

With the test pressings, we do the following:

• Play both sides
• Check the grooves for quality control
• Conduct a reflection test using light Bookman Mayer reflections

We look for nice diffuse lines going across the whole groove face.

Playback of the Test Pressings:

• We use our Audianote record player or the EMT record player.
• We also play it back on another setup next door, which comprises little BBC LS35A speakers and a Riga turntable (a more entry-level system).

Rigorous Testing

We need to ensure that everything is tested thoroughly, checking each of the five test pressings from each master rigorously to make sure there are no issues.

Once that's done, we give an order to the pressing plant, and a few weeks later, the records are produced, having completed the artwork and sleeves, of course.

Conclusion

This concludes our short, basic course on:

• How to cut vinyl
• How to master for vinyl
• The process involved with cutting the lacquers
• The filters you need to apply
• The considerations while cutting vinyl and mastering for vinyl

I hope you enjoyed this overview.

The End Result:

"Oh yeah, this is the end result: a couple of hour-and-releases here, complete with lovely artwork and sleeves."