Vinyl pressing in digital world.

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Hello everyone,

A friend wants to produce a music album in both CD and vinyl format on a small scale. Since I guess almost all recording studios may have switched to digital format would it make sense to bring out vinyl ?

I believe if recording is done in digital format with high bit depth and sample rate a vinyl pressing sound quality would be good compared to normal audio CD (16bit & 44k sample rate). Am I right or are there any other things involved (beside bit depth and sample rate) in pressing truely analogue vinyl pressing ?

Are there any small affordable analogue recording studios in US/UK/Germany/Australia ?

Thanks and regards.
 
not "brick wall" but 1st order

if you're talking "power bandwidth" as limited by cutting velocity limit then the frequency corner should be a lot lower

where do you set digital max "0 dB" - 25 cm/s ?

you get even more roll-of of frequency as you move to the inner grooves

digital recording practice has evolved to incorporate much higher high frequency content than during the era of vinyl only commercial recording production

possibly of interest:

Sick Of Talk
 
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Hello everyone,

A friend wants to produce a music album in both CD and vinyl format on a small scale. Since I guess almost all recording studios may have switched to digital format would it make sense to bring out vinyl ?

I believe if recording is done in digital format with high bit depth and sample rate a vinyl pressing sound quality would be good compared to normal audio CD (16bit & 44k sample rate). Am I right or are there any other things involved (beside bit depth and sample rate) in pressing truely analogue vinyl pressing ?

Are there any small affordable analogue recording studios in US/UK/Germany/Australia ?

Thanks and regards.

Hello Hiten,
Here is a link to a vinyl studio in Nashville. United Record Pressing - Your one stop record shop since 1949
I would suggest that you try to find a studio near you because vinyl records are heavy and the shipping cost is going to be expensive. :eek:
 
Thanks a lot h_a, gpapag, jcx, c2cthomas.

c2cthomas this is exactly the same company I recommended to my friend. Thanks again.
Here is the link : Lucky Ali's new Album on LP?

I guess my friend will only be producing vinyl format of the artist's album, and has probably zeroed in on one or two vinyl pressing cos. in US and Germany (I dont know which are they). I think they will be recording here in India and give masters to vinyl pressing cos.

My curiosity is if they record in digital format and don't have analogue master is it worth producing a vinyl format ? How would an audio cd(16bit, 44k) compare to vinyl pressed from higher bit depth and sample rate digital master ?
 
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hi, I got the same 'doubt' as Hiten, after 20years with my old record collection, I want to start investing in new pressings, I did hear some of them, not at home though, agreed better & got more depth than CD although they're fully digital mastered..but...is it worth it?
please enlighten me ;)

regards
TeguhPS
 
Thought I should update. The album mentioned in first post was out on 8th of July in digital format. But probably (I am guessing) vinyl format will not be produced. Digital format won this time I guess. :sad:
But I sincerely thank everyone for their input and time.

Regards :)
 
Hello everyone,

A friend wants to produce a music album in both CD and vinyl format on a small scale. Since I guess almost all recording studios may have switched to digital format would it make sense to bring out vinyl ?

I believe if recording is done in digital format with high bit depth and sample rate a vinyl pressing sound quality would be good compared to normal audio CD (16bit & 44k sample rate). Am I right or are there any other things involved (beside bit depth and sample rate) in pressing truely analogue vinyl pressing ?

Let's see if i can help.

Is it worthy in terms of sound quality? YES! Even if the vinyl is made from a 44KHz/16bit "cd-standard" digital file, chances are that the DAC (digital to analog converter) used at the vinyl mastering phase is 500% better than a consumer dac on a common cd-player or even an 'audiophile' CD-player.

The vinyl medium, when done right, is very sonically transparent, thus using an excellent DAC at the vinyl cutting phase can potentially give a sonic advantage to the final LP over the final CD.

If the source file is high resolution digital, then even better.
 
Vinyl needs entirely different mastering than CD (mono-bass, limited left right separation, bass cut off, upper frequency limit of 22kHz and so on).

I wouldn't say "entirely different", simply taking care of not over-exaggerating the high frequencies (15Khz+), making sure to use a de-esser in the vocals, or to elimitate sibilant vocals from the beginning, and to be mindful that bass content below 40Hz will have to be severely reduced.

Also, highly important, taking care that your digital file never clips. But that is a good practice in digital audio, not a 'special' measure confined to vinyl mastering.

The "mixing the bass to mono" can be done by the vinyl mastering engineer at the mastering phase, and it's not a mandatory thing. You CAN put 20Hz bass, you CAN have full bass in only one of the two channels (left-right), but the record playing time will have to be cut.

Basically i would say that the first thing you need to be careful, is to be sure your record side playing time is as short as possible. I'd say 12-20min (per side) for the best audio quality.
 
Upper frequency limit of 22kHz for Vinyl mastering ?

No, that's the CD audio standard. You can put up to 50KHz on the vinyl record using half-speed mastering. But for 'standard' mastering, the upper limit will depend on (1) the cutting head itself, (2) the position of the groove [inner vs outer], (3) signal cutting level and (4) how conservative the cutting engineer is going to be.

Typically you'll have full response up to and including 20KHz on the outer grooves and on the inner grooves the high frequencies will have to be reduced a little bit, and/or the cutting level will have to be reduced.

OR the cutting engineer may be given free reign to create a 'monster' record with high levels and high frequencies at the inner grooves, but then it will only track properly with very good cartridges sporting very fine elliptical or advanced styli.
 
Which one is better?

Well, the first on that comes to mind is the Classic Records 180g Led Zep I.

To be honest the last 4 180gr LP's I heard were really bad and completely unacceptable by any means.

What albums?
Let's face it, lots of labels are just pressing standard every day masters using 180g as a marketing tool.

jeff
 
IMHO
It's not wether the original recording was analogue or digital.
Or the weight of the pressing
What is vital is the final mix and how much "Compression" has been used.
If the mix used for the vinyl pressing is the same as for a cd optimised for boom box or car radio then it is not worth having.
 
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I have a number of 180gm pressings including a now several year old copy of the Black Eyed Peas "Monkey Business" and one double album collection of Daft Punk. (forget the name and not found online) I also have two pressings by Sarah McLachlan "Laws of Illusion" and "Mirrorball", and my latest 180gm purchase is a copy of Allison Krause and Union Station's "Paper Airplane" - all of these were pressed here in the US and all sound unreservedly excellent. (Played using an Ortofon SPU Classic GM E II on a Thomas Schick arm.)

I have numerous other 180gm pressings and all seem pretty good to me, with one or two being just a bit noisier than I would have expected.

A list of titles that don't sound so hot on your system would be interesting.
 
Thanks flavio81, yes its assuring to know high resolution files and high end DAC is used to press vinyls. colinA's compression point is also good to decide preferred format of the same album. I guess as technology improves, there may be few more advantages then old times. For ex. new materials for vinyls to reduce surface noise, or if recording is done in digital format cutting engineer would have few problems cutting the vinyl if cutting is first simulated on computer and if OK master record is cut., etc.
 
...chances are that the DAC (digital to analog converter) used at the vinyl mastering phase is 500% better than a consumer dac on a common cd-player or even an 'audiophile' CD-player.

Any evidence of that?

In my somewhat jaded view of the world of work, people don't have time for such niceties. What I expect is that a man with a cough in a slightly grubby blue or brown smock, will place your CD in a bog-standard Denon CD player (bought from the shop down the road in 1993), fed via a decidedly non-audiophile cable (terminated in a DIN plug) to a 1970s era box with a couple of analogue meters on it. It will kill everything above 16 kHz and mix all bass to mono. Another DIN cable (spliced, with PVC tape around the joint) will then go off to the cutting machine. Some of the equipment will still smell of cigarette smoke all these years later.

Either that, or it will just be a PC that takes your 16 bit master and performs compression/de-essing algorithms on it in the digital domain and sends the output to its middling quality 24 bit consumer sound card (costing $100) and onwards.
 
haha amusing observation CopperTop :).

But there would also be a passionate vinyl cutter/engineer with 20/30 years of experience taking pride in his work. Still doing his job sincerely taking care of all critical things.
Not arguing about vinyl/analogue vs CD/Digital. For that my unexperienced view is vinyl within its limitations does a fantastic job and normal CD (44.1/16) already does a good job but there may be a scope for improvement. Also if one has option and access to listen to good recording, format should not matter, I mean one can listen to both.
Regards
 
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