Mastering for Vinyl

[tcatzere]

I know there are differences in mastering for vinyl as opposed to mastering for CD. Can anyone elaborate those differences? As bizarre as it seems, apparently the vinyl market is still quite alive.

Tom

[HarBal]

The main differences that I'm aware of are making the low frequency content (below 150Hz) mono to avoid the needle jumping out of the track and keeping the high frequency content (around 2-6kHz) more controlled to avoid tracking distortion on playback.

I can explain tracking distortion like this. You can think of the stylus and the groove it follows as being analagous to a cam follower (as in a car engine for example). The stylus has a maximum velocity that it can reach governed by the mass of the stylus and the stiffness of the stylus suspension. If you exceed that speed then the stylus (or follower) doesn't follow the track (cam). That is tracking distortion and on a HF sine wave that is too loud the single coming out of your phono preamp would look more like a triangle wave than a sine wave.

You can also get cutting distortion in the vinyl master when you try to squeeze too much music onto a side and is most commonly heard on the innermost tracks where the wavelengths are shortest. This too, is most pronnounced if the HF content is too loud.

Yep vinyl is very much alive in the dance music scene!

Cheers,


Paavo.

[har-bal]

I know there are differences in mastering for vinyl as opposed to mastering for CD. Can anyone elaborate those differences? As bizarre as it seems, apparently the vinyl market is still quite alive.

Tom

Tom

Paavo is correct. I just finished a vinyl master last night for Bass Nectar out of California and it is extremely important to make sure your bass area is in mono. Quite a few folks have a habit of stereoizing the bass frequencies. This is the wrong way to go. We had placed a link to a tool that enables you to make sure the bass region is in mono.

You can find it here http://hdqtrz.com/Files/otiumFX_bassLANE_VST1.2.zip

The VUmeter I am always referring to has a window that allows you to view the stereo phase of all the frequencies. This way you can look at the bass region and determine right away if you need to make the correction.

Cheers

Earle

[tcatzere]

Thanks, guys, for the info -- this is very helpful.

Paavo . . . just what exactly do you mean by "keeping the high frequency content (around 2-6kHz) more controlled?" Controlled in what way?

Earle . . . which view of the VUmeter "shows the stereo phase of all frequencies?"

Tom

[har-bal]

Thanks, guys, for the info -- this is very helpful.

Paavo . . . just what exactly do you mean by "keeping the high frequency content (around 2-6kHz) more controlled?" Controlled in what way?

Earle . . . which view of the VUmeter "shows the stereo phase of all frequencies?"

Tom

Tom

Go to screen #6 on the following page to see what the stereo phase screen looks like. If you look at screen #4 you will see what Paavo is referring to. The audio needs to be balanced across the entire spectrum.

http://voyager.adsl.dk/knef/vumeter/

Earle

[HarBal]

By controlled I just mean not too loud. You can push it up loud if you wish but it will likely result in tracking distortion on most turntables, particularly if they don't have moving coil pickups (most commonly moving magnet). What too loud actually is I'd be hard pressed to tell you since I've never had experience with mastering for vinyl. One way to find out (provided you still have a record collection and a turntable to go with it) is to go through them to find tracks that sound distorted at the high frequency end and track that sound pristine and clear. Then do an analysis in Har-Bal to see what the difference in levels are in various parts of the spectrum.

Regards,


Paavo.

[tcatzere]

I assume all of this applies to everything above 6kHz as well. Is that correct?

Tom