Anywhere do limited vinyl runs?

Da Funky Munky

Hi all

Myself and a friend are looking to press up just 100 copies of something we're working on, this place came recommended but they only do a minimum of 500 copies.

All suggestions welcome

PaulBrewer

I know www.fluidmastering.com do vinyl cutting. Perhaps they could point you in the right direction. Drop them a line. Nick or Tim are the guys.

seannash

i gotta ask why?
surely you could just burn em to cd.
most djs these days are playing cds.
not trying to mock you but i am curious as to why you want vinyl

Sham Squire

You should check out yesterdays Guardian for the answer as to why anyone would want to press vinyl. It's a whole other market. Nothing to do with getting played. It has basically become the format du jour for indie,reggae and a couple of other genres. Vinyl sales in the UK are up 80% on the previous year and bands like Arctic Monkeys (and more recently Alex Turner side project The Last Shadow Puppets) have sold out of thier vinyl runs. EMI are now releasing a few classic albums (all of Radioheads back catalogue and a couple of other artists I've forgotten) on remastered vinyl with the original packaging and gatefold covers,etc. If EMI are doing it you can be guaranteed there's money in it.

PaulBrewer

Sham Squire wrote: »

You should check out yesterdays Guardian for the answer as to why anyone would want to press vinyl. It's a whole other market. Nothing to do with getting played. It has basically become the format du jour for indie,reggae and a couple of other genres. Vinyl sales in the UK are up 80% on the previous year and bands like Arctic Monkeys (and more recently Alex Turner side project The Last Shadow Puppets) have sold out of thier vinyl runs. EMI are now releasing a few classic albums (all of Radioheads back catalogue and a couple of other artists I've forgotten) on remastered vinyl with the original packaging and gatefold covers,etc. If EMI are doing it you can be guaranteed there's money in it.

Interesting. The Fluidmastering boys bought their Lathe specualitively as they'd both had a history in that area.

Recently they been doing a few sides a week, up a lot from last year.

studiorat

100 could be a problem because of the tooling up required for the job. Prolly end up as expensive!!!

You can get one off dub plates handy enough. But 100 is a case of being too much for a one off run and too little for a manafacture run.

I wandered into the vinyl section in a record shop a few days ago. Was good to see so much stuff available on vinyl. Transformer by Lou Reed caught my eye. It looks much better as a 12" than a CD!! There's a certain a value added aspect to vinyl over CD and much more so than MP3 downloads.

http://www.wiretotheear.com/2008/03/18/tim-xaviers-manmade-mastering-vinyl-cutting-room/

A trip to Berlin could be in order!!!

Sham Squire

I must say I'm delighted to see it make a comeback, if only from the point of view of the return of the record cover. CD covers just cannot inspire the same feeling as a 12" piece of art. Properly resembles something you could hang on a wall, which you'd never consider doing with a CD cover, no matter how well it's done.
Obviously there's other reasons for loving vinyl, reggae always sounds better off vinyl, but nice record covers make me happy.

PaulBrewer

Sham Squire wrote: »

Obviously there's other reasons for loving vinyl, reggae always sounds better off vinyl, but nice record covers make me happy.

Not to be harping on as we've great Mastering guys, Richard + Fergal here, but Tim from Fluid has been remastering all the Trojan label stuff for re-release.

Sham Squire

Sorry for my ignorance but I don't know Fluid. Can you give me the low down Paul? They Irish? Specialise in vinyl? I might have a release coming up this year and I'd love to do a vinyl run but the mastering for vinyl is something I always worry about. I've heard some awful stuff.

PaulBrewer

Sham Squire wrote: »

Sorry for my ignorance but I don't know Fluid. Can you give me the low down Paul? They Irish? Specialise in vinyl? I might have a release coming up this year and I'd love to do a vinyl run but the mastering for vinyl is something I always worry about. I've heard some awful stuff.

Check my first post there - www.fluidmastering.com

iquinn

Da Funky Munky wrote: »

Hi all

Myself and a friend are looking to press up just 100 copies of something we're working on, this place came recommended but they only do a minimum of 500 copies.

All suggestions welcome

7", 10" or 12"?

ameise do short run 7":
http://amei.se/
nice chaps.

handle with care might be able to either sort you out, or point you in the right direction.
http://www.handlewithcare.de

another great cutting engineer:
http://www.saltmastering.com/home.htm

danjokill

Interested to see how this will work out ........ do you need special mastering here? Also I remember reading somewhere that extreme panning of low end sounds can be an issue. Anyhow .... would be interested to see how much a run of a 100 would work out at.

PaulBrewer

danjokill wrote: »

Interested to see how this will work out ........ do you need special mastering here?

Mastering for Vinyl is where Mastering as a concept came from.

Where as Mastering today is an Artistic only job (if you want the L and R out of phase you can) Vinly mastering was squeezing as much as you could onto a disc with compromises to be made to make that work.

When I started there was 2 sessions on Mastering done one for Disc and one for Cassette.

danjokill

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Mastering for Vinyl is where Mastering as a concept came from.

Where as Mastering today is an Artistic only job (if you want the L and R out of phase you can) Vinly mastering was squeezing as much as you could onto a disc with compromises to be made to make that work.

When I started there was 2 sessions on Mastering done one for Disc and one for Cassette.

Interesting, Compromises?

PaulBrewer

The groove on a record is V shaped so if you had silence on the left and a monster noise on the right the needle would pop out of the groove!

Similarly the amount of bass a record and particularly the phase between L+R must be watched.

Have a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LP_album

iquinn

danjokill wrote: »

Interested to see how this will work out ........ do you need special mastering here? Also I remember reading somewhere that extreme panning of low end sounds can be an issue. Anyhow .... would be interested to see how much a run of a 100 would work out at.

there's two ways that people tend to get vinyl done- either get a mastering engineer that has a lathe to cut a master lacquer and get that replicated, or have an engineer do a pre-master digital file that gets sent to the pressing plant and they make the master lacquer from that....and replicate it.

As far as mastering goes pretty much anything can be cut, but you you might have problems getting a loud cut or tracking problems when playing the record on your turntable.

I'll paraphrase from some possibly useful info i posted on another fourm:

"Levels- if mixing on a hard disk system, protools, cubase etc. no need to go near 0dbfs on your meters. For 24bit recordings -6dbfs or even lower is fine, for 16bit -3dbfs.
Any unwanted distortions i.e. distortion due to clipping on channels or effects etc will probably be exaggerated at the cutting stage. Plus you want some headroom if the mastering engineer needs to make any eq adjustments or other processing.

Bass/phase- keeping bass frequencies centered is a good idea to avoid your record skipping/jumping during playback.
Also just in case the cutting engineer is a little over zealous with their elliptical equalizer (for summing the bass freqs).
Depending on your mix, the mastering/cutting engineer might mono from 200hz or even much higher, this will change the sound of your mix and you might not like the results.
If you want to hear how your mix would sound being mono'd and have the required tools, here's a handy PC pluggin:
http://www.otiumfx.com/basslane.php
So it's a good idea that your mix holds up if you listen to it in mono.

sibilance/high frequencies- these areas can be a problem and best tackled at the mix stage, the reason being, say you have a sibilant vocal that will create a problem at the cutting stage, the mastering engineer only has the stereo mix, so they'll have to use a de-esser or multiband compressor over the whole mix to treat the problem.
You can hone in on the offending frequencies, but a certain amount of high frequency content that isn't a problem may also be effected and you could end up with a slightly duller sounding record than necessary. But a good mastering engineer shouldn't have a problem treating those kind of issues.
But basically when cutting, sibilance and harsh high frequency content translates into- not so nice sounding distortion, so excessive boosts around 8khz & 16khz should be avoided.

-Compression/limiting- go light, if at all. the cutting engineer will likely use compression/limiting anyway to get the best level. Over-compressed/limited material usually translates into distortions and limiting for loudness/volume purposes is pointless as the cutting engineer will dictate the final volume.
Compression for tone/"glue" is fine, but not for increasing volume.

Put the more dynamic, high frequency material at the start, quieter/duller tracks at the end.

All the above factors contribute to the overall volume of the record and vinyl as a medium has an inherent amount of noise, so you're striving to get as loud a cut as possible, so that if you have any quiet sections, the surface noise won't drown out the actual music.
And basically the more possible cutting issues you tackle at the mix stage the more likely your finished record will sound like your finished mix, which is what you want!

PaulBrewer

iquinn wrote: »

elliptical equalizer

What's that then? Never heard that term before.

PaulBrewer

iquinn wrote: »

t For 24bit recordings -6dbfs or even lower is fine, for 16bit -3dbfs.

I don't understand the reasoning behind this either.

iquinn

PaulBrewer wrote: »

What's that then? Never heard that term before.

used to reduce the stereo width of bass frequencies.

PaulBrewer

iquinn wrote: »

used to reduce the stereo width of bass frequencies.

Ah, every day's a school day. I was aware of the concept but unaware of the name.

iquinn

PaulBrewer wrote: »

I don't understand the reasoning behind this either.

i mean the peak level on your master digital meter. You want some headroom for the engineer if they need to do any processing.

PaulBrewer

iquinn wrote: »

i mean the peak level on your master digital meter. You want some headroom for the engineer if they need to do any processing.

I understand that ok.

Just the 6db 24 bit 3db 16 bit.

I've not heard of that, how were these figures arrived at and by whom?

iquinn

PaulBrewer wrote: »

I understand that ok.

Just the 6db 24 bit 3db 16 bit.

I've not heard of that, how were these figures arrived at and by whom?

smarter people than me.

sometimes your digital meters may not catch every peak that's over 0dbfs, inter-sample peaks and what not, so it's just about practising safe levels.

A 16bit system's dynamic range is about 93db, give or take a dew db, 24bit is about 115db. So you've about 20db more headroom, so you can get a cleaner recording without endangering any digital clipping and unwanted distortion. I say -6db just because it's safe and there's no real benefit from going over that, it's not going to sound better any louder than that and it's well away from any potential clipping (and the same for-3db for 16bit.)

I'll dig out some science references later.

PaulBrewer

iquinn wrote: »

smarter people than me.

sometimes your digital meters may not catch every peak that's over 0dbfs, inter-sample peaks and what not, so it's just about practising safe levels.

A 16bit system's dynamic range is about 93db, give or take a dew db, 24bit is about 115db. So you've about 20db more headroom, so you can get a cleaner recording without endangering any digital clipping and unwanted distortion. I say -6db just because it's safe and there's no real benefit from going over that, it's not going to sound better any louder than that and it's well away from any potential clipping (and the same for-3db for 16bit.)

I'll dig out some science references later.

Fair enough!

Sham Squire

There's some great anecdotes in the Recording The Beatles book regarding mastering for vinyl. The Beatles (well Lennon and McCartney) would constantly be bringing in vinyl cuts of Motown stuff and asking the cutting engineers why they couldn't get that kind of bass heaviness on their records. Apparently the white coats at EMI were very strict with the level meters and it was only after constant hassle that one of the Beatles engineers sneaked in to the cutting room and cajoled the cutting engineer to really push the meters that they got near the kind of bass sound they had always been after. That track was Paperback Writer and what a bass sound.
There's also mention of some technical development regarding the shaping of the groove to make it wider when volume was needed and then narrowing it when the music got quiet so you could literally fit more bass response in. Not sure what that was called.
There should be a trainspotters icon that I can add at this point.

Run_to_da_hills

If there was enough interested in low volume vinyl runs you can get the VESTAX VRX 2000 Cutter for a little over 6 k. http://www.vestax.com/v/products/recorders/vrx2000.html

iquinn

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

If there was enough interested in low volume vinyl runs you can get the VESTAX VRX 2000 Cutter for a little over 6 k. http://www.vestax.com/v/products/recorders/vrx2000.html

i've seen those, apparently the results aren't that good, i haven't heard anything cut on them though.

for the same price: the vinylinium cutter allegedly sounds much better:
http://www.vinylium.ch/dubcut/dubcutter.html
you need a technics deck though.

They supply cutting heads for neumann lathes and the dubcutter uses the same engineering.
The cutting amp though will mono everything below 700hz, so that's going to radically alter your mix!
And you can only really cut dubplates though, but you can do a 10" master lacquer for a 7".

not sure what size the vestax can take?

stomper45

vinyl carvers, get used alot by northern soul and reggae djs, mainly for copies of
unreleased (on vinyl) tracks

www.vinylcarvers.com

cheers

Danny