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.



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