Yet another Vinyl vs. CD/Digital debate

[Karlheinz Noise]

> Thats how they used to do it. Yes, and on some it worked great. The lasers are the "modern way" of creating it.

Sorry, but you are wrong.

Every single person who presses records, that I know about anyway, use a lathe that physically cuts the grooves into the lacquer using a needle connected to an amplifier. There is a "new" method of pressing called Direct Metal Mastering, but that just cuts the grooves into a copper plate instead of a lacquer - thus saving one step in the plating process, and theoretically losing less high end, but at the cost of being able to press fewer records from a single master. But DMM uses the same lathes as the lacquer process does.

They used to cut records directly from a microphone ("direct-to-disc"), but they stopped doing that in the 1950's when they invented magnetic tape.

Here are some videos that show how records are made:

How Vinyl Records Are Made PART 1 OF 2 (from the Discovery Channel's "How It's Made")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUGRRUecBik

How Vinyl Records Are Made PART 2 OF 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IReDh9ec_rk

How vinyl records Are made (interview with Ron Murphy, RIP)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDmBx4R-Gas

How a record is made (inside The Cutting Suite, London - this one is kinda dumb, I included it to show that they use an regular lathe as well)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihNrtCac9Fs

Tour of United Record Pressing plant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43n5bVXAqzo

Command Performance (1942)
http://www.archive.org/details/CommandP1942

See also this thread:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/archive/index.php/t-44239.html

One thing to consider: The idea that vinyl is more of a "pure" sound than CD shows how little anyone knows about audio. The physical properties of vinyl definitely color the sound; in order to compensate for this, all audio mastered for vinyl must go through a rather extreme equalization process (called the RIAA Curve):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

In addition, both the upper frequency limit and dynamic range of vinyl are lower than can be achieved on a CD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_recording#LP_versus_CD

My favorite "vinylphiles" are those dorks who believe that it vinyl sounds better than CD's when you rip them to 192K MP3. (And don't get me started on cassettes...)

Now, you may say that records produced on vinyl "just sound better" than records produced on CD. And you're right - they often do. But this isn't the fault of the medium; it's the fault of the producers, recording engineers, and mastering engineers. Simply put, making a good-sounding record requires years of experience, and those who were actually good at it are too used to their analog tools to learn digital, so those who do it digitally are constantly having to re-invent the wheel.

And that's assuming modern artists are interested at all. The future of music resides in bedroom musicians. How many of them want to pay $2000 just to have someone master their mixes, when they can do a crappy job with their LADSPA plugins (or cracked VST's) for free?

I know I don't.

-Karlheinz
_______________________
http://www.khznoise.com
_________________________________________________________________
Climb to the top of the charts! Play the word scramble challenge with star power.
http://club.live.com/star_shuffle.aspx?icid=starshuffle_wlmailtextlink_jan