On Fri, 11 Jan 2002, Alexandres Lugo wrote: > "The technology for making records has not changed since the 50's. Digital > production techniques are making it difficult to maintain fidelity when > transferring to vinyl. People are not making tracks that will sound good on > records anymore." > > I was fortunate enough to hear about a 2 hour discourse (almost a rant ;) > about the subject from our nameless masterer. I think he may have a valid > point. > All you have to do to make it sound good on vinyl is this:
1. No out of phase frequencies below 200hz. Basically, keep your bass mono and panned center. You can check for this if you listen to your track in mono -- if the bass gets phasey or fades in and out, you're doing it wrong. This is the main cause of record skip, as out of phase bass will result in a shallow groove at an extreme of the left to right travel of the needle. 2. Don't overdo high frequences -- above 16khz. While vinyl records can reproduces frequencies in excess of 20khz, if they are too loud relative to other frequencies, they tax the ability of the cutting head to move far enough fast enough. 3. Don't go over 12 1/2 minutes per side for a fixed-pitch lathe, and roughly 14 minutes for a variable pitch lathe. Once you go past those time limits the track pitch gets smaller and you literally cut at half volume. 4. It's helpful to make your tracks mono-compatible, which means to go easy on stereo expansion, stereo flange, etc. Listen to your tracks in mono and make sure they don't sound weird. Vinyl has a lot more channel cross talk than digital audio, and really out of phase material will sound fluttery and hollow due to partial phase cancellation. A lot of producers don't bother to learn these basics which aren't rocket science. The biggest problem is the high-frequency overload, which I think comes from people being half deaf from too many loud nights in the club. I know that Keith and the other people working on the Shari Vari project know how to produce tracks that will sound good on vinyl, so I don't think that they are the problem here. > > My favorite quote in the 2 hours: > > "People like Mike Banks know how to produce a track to sound good on a > record." > Sure. Because Mike Banks is a good producer, period. He makes tracks with an even overall use of the sound spectrum, and he avoids the pitfalls listed above. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
