Mastering—the work of transferring a recording to its final physical format—is literally the last artistic piece of a long process and one TVD is delving into over the coming months from a variety of angles with Scott Hull, mastering engineer and the owner of world-class and world-famous Masterdisk studios in New York City
Scott will be presenting a master class in mastering, from the fundamentals to the final product, as we count down to Record Store Day 2011 when a select few of you will be given the opportunity to win a personal tour of the record mastering process at Masterdisk.
Onward to Week #4!
The Modern Vinyl Cutting System | One of the most sought after vinyl-cutting systems in the world is the nearly indestructible VMS-70 and VMS-80 cutting systems built by Neumann. The VMS-82 was the last of these produced. I’m thankful to say that we get to use our VMS-82 lathe every day to cut lacquers for clients around the globe.
The actual cutting happens at the cutter head. In this case, the BMW of cutter heads, the SX-74.
Though it was initially built in 1974, this design was never dramatically improved. It was capable of cutting with sufficient level and flat frequency response to please nearly everyone.
The head has been removed from the lathe and is sitting upside down for viewing.
Now just a little closer look to see the working parts of this little marvel.
The two round “cans” on either side are the voice coils. You can also see the cutting stylus: a faceted sapphire glued to a pin that mounts in the tube that connects to each voice coil. Also in the foreground are two fine wires. These carry a small voltage that heats the stylus to an optimal temperature so that it slices smoothly through the lacquer instead of dragging and causing extra noise from a jagged cut.
The drive coils of the stereo cutter head are mounted at right angles. When there is audio in the left channel the left coil goes in and out, just like a speaker does. And when there is audio in the right channel the right coil goes in and out. One voice coil in the cutter head is wired deliberately out of phase so that when a mono signal is cut, as the left coil is moving in the right coil is moving out. Thus, a mono signal cuts a lateral groove that looks like this.
Why is this done this way you might ask?
We have go back to mono to find out. Early records, initially 78′s and then LP’s, were mono. Systems that cut mono records had only one drive coil and it moved the cutting stylus back and forth creating a lateral, constant-depth groove. There was little concern about the depth of the cut so long as it was deep enough to hold the playback stylus in the groove. Then along came stereo. Researchers needed to find a way to carve two channels of audio into a record but make the new technology compatible with mono records and players.
Unfortunately, today’s technology designers don’t put quite so much effort into forward- and backward-compatibility. That’s a soapbox speech for another time.
So what they came up with was to record the mono component of the stereo audio laterally, like on a mono record. Then by adding a second coil and wiring it “out of phase” with the first coil they created depth modulation which records the stereo or side signal.
If I’ve lost you, take a breath and read on; I’ll try to make it clearer.
Stereo is made up of a left signal and a right signal. OK, that’s simple. But stereo can also be described as the mono component (everything that is exactly the same in both speakers) and the difference component (everything that is different). This is commonly called Middle and Side, or M-S for short. A stereo signal can be converted into an M-S signal and back again with nearly no change at all. FM radio is transmitted in M-S. The middle signal is a strong “full wave” signal and it is this signal that you hear when you are far away from the radio tower. That signal is mono. As you get closer to the radio tower, your radio can tune in the sub carrier signal, which carries the difference (side channel). When you receive a strong enough signal, the FM station now plays back in full stereo because it has BOTH the middle and the side signals. It can be hard to believe, because we commonly think in left-and-right rather than middle-and-side. But it’s true. It’s a matter of physics and alternating current electronics. Are you still with me?
The groove shows us the “difference” signal by it’s depth. So a mastering engineer speaks “lateral” and means the mono aka “middle” signal. And when the engineer says “vertical” he or she is referring to the “difference” aka “side” signals. Got it now? Good.
Once you have a hold of that concept then we can start to talk about why some records seem to make the vocals spitty and sibilant. And why some recordings have to be modified with equalization to minimize out-of-phase bass.
But there is one more thing to understand before we can control our quality. It was a standard developed in the 1950′s called the RIAA Curve.
Next week I’ll talk about what the RIAA curve is, why it was standardized, and what steps we have to take to make records sound really good.
Scott Hull is a mastering engineer and the owner of Masterdisk (founded in 1973) in New York City. In his 25-plus year career, Scott has mastered records for Sting, Bob Dylan, Steely Dan, Os Mutantes, John Zorn, Uncle Tupelo, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings and hundreds more. Visit Masterdisk online or on Facebook.
