In the early '90s, I played on a record that was then cut at Abbey Road. Now I know how it was done! I'm still proud to have been on something that was part-manufactured here.
@@elektroskeptic481 They can, audiophile grade records today are the highest fidelity they have ever been. But if you want a modern press of an album from the 60s, the main limit is the age or generation of the master, since analogue is a format that degrades.
I have a copy of Bob Marley's Legend that was cut in half speed, the difference is incredible. You can hear so much more detail in the little background percussion sounds, it takes on a life of its own. Just looked at the inner margin and there's MILES's name! Great job, Miles!! It sounds really amazing!
I have a copy of Paul McCartneys Flaming Pie half speed mastered and I’ve just checked, it was Miles that did it! It sounds incredible I didn’t know how much better it would sound and now I wish everything was half speed mastered!
Absolutely AMAZING material. Thanks to everyone who made it possible. Hope you'll get a lot of views on that one. More material like this, please. Even if it's a little bit trickier to made, you leave behind an amazing and resourceful footage for future generations.
That last comment is right on the money, when I listen to vinyl, I listen to one, then another, then another, then another, the vinyl pulls me in! When I listen to digital, usually one or two sides and I'm done, digital just seems to be much less involving. So when someone asks me why is vinyl better than digital, that is the answer. Doesn't make sense, but that is almost always what happens.
It’s been said that within a block of marble is the sculpture before it’s sculpted, and it’s the sculptor who simply reveals it. A blank for cutting vinyl, mind blowing to think every single permutation of music that could ever be written is contained within that disk, and the vinyl lathe simply reveals one of them.
Tangible music. If that doesn't hit close to home, I don't know what will. I think EVERY downloading, file sharing, digital junkie of this generation who has never held any vinyl in their hands should watch this great video all the way through. After years of having me put music on her iPod, I can still remember the first Saturday that I took my baby girl into a locally owned record store. That store is gone now, and I am so glad we shared the memory. I took a picture of her actually holding the Michael Jackson album Thriller, which she had never seen a physical copy of. She was in awe. Priceless magic.
"Disc cutting systems roll off top. That's what they do. It's the nature of the beast. That's why records sound warmer. They don't add low end. They roll top off." There it is. The secret of vinyl. I've never heard it explained so succinctly.
One could roll the top off of digital with an e.q and while it may get close it is not the same. Analog just works on a wave length that's more connected to our brains, our souls and the universe. IMHO, YMMV 😉
Great getting it straight from an expert at the legendary Abby Road. The processes in making the stamper is so involved and probably wasteful and toxic waste too. The environmentalist me says, digital all the way, but I really do enjoy my vinyl records.
@The Horu Journal Digital is a different type of environmentally taxing, and blanket statements like “digital is more” are not helpful. For example, to say that you need power just to read music from your phone or computer ignores the fact that your phone or computer is often already on when you go to listen to music. The extra contribution to retrieve a song from an SSD and process is minimal compared to what your device is already doing. I don’t have facts and figures to hand, but I know that digital electronics consume less power than physical turntables. Running any cloud service can be wasteful, but can also achieve economies of scale that the equivalent number of analog devices playing back at the same time could never achieve.
@@williamd1891 Right at the beginning one of them mentions loading a file or tape into a workstation, which I take to mean a digital conversion, which is where the eq and level adjustment for the cutting is done. My take from this video is that every vinyl disk ends up being cut from a digital master made by these two engineers in the cutting room even if they start with an analogue-all-the-way master tape from the studio, which one of them said was very rare anyway. It was also mentioned that they do different compression of the same master for vinyl and CD, which will affect the final sound quality in ways which has nothing to do with analogue v digital discussions. Another significant point is that, other than physical CDs, any digital source you listen to will have suffered significant bit-rate compression (mp3 being a well known example) which can seriously degrade the quality of the music coming out of your loudspeakers. This applies to any copies you make of CDs onto your computer or phone unless you choose to directly copy the source file which will take up a lot more memory. There are lots of worms in this particular can, and it is the different decisions made by human operators about how different recordings will be processed that is the real issue here. There is no fundamental "analogue is like this, digital is like this" difference. It is down to the quality of the design and manufacture of the specific equipment in the signal chain and how real people choose to use it that will decide the quality of the sound you will hear at the end of it.
Records will always be more magical than any other form of music because it was a record that first breathed life into and captured, a recorded voice and music.
Would be lovely to have an extra of how they cut things like locked grooves, reversed grooves (plays outwards) and I have a Kevin Sanderson record that has parallel grooves so depending which one you drop the needle on is which track plays (E-Dancer - Velocity Funk / Banjo / The Move on KMS records)
the first time I played a record or the cruise went backwards I I was trying to mix out of a song and I couldn't figure out what the hell was happening I kept putting it on at the beginning and then it was just going off so I actually had to end that mix and recording right there because I let the the song play out before I figure it out I had a reverse record.
Thats not really hard to understand how those things work: You cut two spirals. You just have to increase the space between two grooves to fit a second one on it. You can simulate that with a piece of paper and a pen. Outward is recording from the inside to the outside.
You definitely don’t want to play any groove that takes you from the inside to the outside. Turntables are set up with “anti skating” on the tonearm to counteract the excessive force pulling the arm towards the middle.
Absolutely fantastic. I was grinning all the way through that. Oh the good old days indeed. I love the little mastering tips too, which many so called home mastering 'experts' might find helpful 😁
The technical aspects of this fascinate me to no end. The fact a cutting head can etch such audio detail with a relatively simple procedure. CDs and tapes seem logical, knowing how they’re made, but the fact you can replicate what is on that tape on grooved disc with all the same audio content blows my mind. It doesn’t seem logical. It’s a groove physically cut into a solid surface.
I agree and before I knew how it was done, I imagined something like a big clean room, enclosed and being constantly suctioned to create some type of vacuum so dust couldn't exist. In fact, it looks more like the records are just being cut in an office, right on top of someone's desk, after lunch...lol.
Spent yesterday in an Analogue Studio with some serious kit that cost a fortune back in the day. We were doing some tracks for a Student doing a Music Production Degree at University, we had to do each song as a complete take, very different from how would be done now digitally, only overdub will be vocals, everybody playing in separate booths, took me back 30 years!!
“Be naked in church” And “Master ate your cat” Are the best “cryptic” groove autographs I’ve ever come across on a record. Coincidentally…. They where both on acid house music records.
Thanks enjoyed that, I recognise some terms, swarf, land etc. In 1964 I used to cut laquers at Natec Sound in Sydney on a Nutall lathe well before computers. We used to use French made Pyral laquers. We cut some K-TELL masters, eg: 20 Explosive Hits with 10 a side. To fit them on we’d cut some bass and lower the volume, with many test cuts.
those are real mastering engineers who know every aspect of the craft and thats why i personally as a mixer dont like to call myself mastering engineer on top even with a good understanding of the field.
So great to see. How great are those guys. Truly astounding engineering. Neumann has always been the king! Try any of their mics. All incredible engineering. I agree on the involvement. I’ve been recording since the 80’s and people are asking me for vinyl and tapes again haha why shouldn’t they be able to experience it! I’m into it and building my own vinyl cutter. There are actually a few companies making machines the T560 in Germany and the stunning and super cool V3000 Automatic/Manual/Semi-automatic beast. WANT
When I was a kid my Mum worked for Diamond Stylus, which at the time was based in small shed like building less than 10mins walk from home. Sometimes she would bring her work home - a circular disk (about 100mm diameter) that would have 500 ‘needles’ sticking vertically up, a little tray full of tiny diamonds, and with specially made tweezers and the aid of a magnifying glass she would place a diamond on the end of each needle. I would often help out and do a complete tray myself. I never really gave it much thought at the time - but thousands of people would have been playing their records with styluses (styluii ?) that I had placed the diamond on. Groovy : )
How very interesting ,always have been fascinated with record pressing plants & the hole electro plating processes ,but this is just brilliant ,thank you .
Fascinating elucidation on the vinyl cutting process. I'm of the view that sound recording reached its peak around the 70s. Beyond that digital sound which is excessively busy. I'm sure there are wonderful frequencies to behold but I'm not a dog so can't really appreciate them.
The sound is maybe not as good as a CD but there's something about buying a vinyl version of your favourites albums that's very special. The thought of music being imprinted on a physical object, the artwork is the size that's supposed to be, you also have the labels artwork looking like it's supposed to be too, and the ritualistic actions to get the record out, put it on your turntable, and then playing it, knowing that a lot of work has to be done for you to have it, and enjoy it, I'm convinced that there's a little bit of magic in all of this. You can have it sounds different depending on what turntable, Tonearm, and phono stage, amplifier and speakers you use, and when you change only one of theses parameters, you can discover new things you never heard before, more emphasis on certain sounds, and all of these make the vinyl records very different from anything else. Vinyl are like the music itself, it's about emotions. And that's why they're important to me. CD also can sounds different depending on the which edition, remix and if it's compressed or not, and a lot of precision is involved in their fabrication and playback too, I don't really think the experience is less enjoyable, they're 2 different things and I enjoy both equally. I only have to say a good thanks to the people who make these experiences possible. They do the very important jobs to make people forget everything and just sit down and listen to their favourite music, and that's essential.
Very cool. Wish we got to hear from Sean Magee! He cut the lacquers for my last album at Abbey Road and pulled off a lot of cool tricks, like locked grooves on each side. Total masters of their craft!!
Wow! This is so great - to hear these details explanations of the cutting process is fascinating and makes me value my vinyl collection all the more. I think I'm gonna watch and share the heck out of this! What fascinates me is the process which Miles describes of how they go from the master through to the stampers. I've always wondered whether precision in the sound is lost during those several transfers from ridge to groove and then back again. I know from my own experience that original vinyl copies of a track CAN retain just as much detail and range as a digitally remastered copy made years later - albeit that the vinyl always has that more rounded sound - but conversely some vinyl versions compare very badly with digital remasters. I wonder what stage of the vinyl making process those problems would be most likely to come in at - cutting the master, or the subsequent processes? At one time (1970s) I met an engineer called Bill Foster. I had an album called "Jan and Dean's Greatest Hits" and Bill wanted to listen to it all through. Why? Because he had previously worked at a mastering company who had tried and failed to produce a master of that album to the record company's satisfaction, and eventually someone else did it. Bill wanted to hear how the finished product turned out! That was my first ever inkling that there was just so very much more art and science to creating records than I had previously guessed at! Great video - many thanks. Alan T.
Amazing for me as a vinyl head, I have thousands goin back to the 50's though to today, there is NOTHING better than good cut vinyl, and I've always wondered who and what the messages and names were on the run out groove
I think the most amazing thing is that they were doing this decades before all this modern computerised tech was available. Now THAT is an mind-blowing thought.
Hahah, even more: with all this modern tech they CAN'T produce ANYTHING with the headspace, dynamic range and detail of the 60-s and 70-s vinyl. None. Ever. Forget about it.
Fantastic insight, from a very professional and highly respected specialist! Thank you for showing this video, of a very fascinating and exact process!
The sheer quantity of awesome gear in that place makes me totally nerd out. BTW got a 2018 remaster of Siouxsie and the Banshees' "The Scream", with Abbey Road comment carved on the empty space in the middle, like shown here.
Brilliant. Never heard it explained so well. And the thing about the cutter head cutting a wider groove for bass sound and the space between each groove I never contemplated before. So cool.
It's the minimal signal path from performance to aural ecstasy that is the magic. Aided by recording and mastering engineers who truly know their stuff. Every album should be produced on double-heavyweight virgin-vinyl, give those grooves some space to breathe!
Amazing video. I've been buying vinyl since the 70s but this is the first time I've ever seen how they actually cut vinyl. Really interesting to watch.
Thanks guys. Yes I saw a few others about record cutting and stamping but you's was different. Now what always made me wonder is several things about sound recording and especially the vinyl record is this multiple sounds at once, and then also somehow separate left and right sounds from one groove. You can point out what might be the sound of certain instruments at a certain spot on the record, but really there are many things being played at once as we hear it together. Even more interesting is these are all based on sound frequencies of different things all making their noise/sound together. So the real amazing thing is how we can hear it and make sense of it all. God's design of the human ear! However the single groove to get stereo and many sounds at one time is just shockingly wild. Also the vinyl record is the most durable way to preserve data, especially since you don't need much to play it back once it is created as long as you don't melt it. yes a better machine will make it sound almost 100% live and real, but for the point of getting the information, no electronics are needed at all if our world would get to that point. What most people don't know and with all recordings something has to be done to make it all work, certain sounds even on the MP3 are cut down or out for it to work, and the lower the compression data the more of it is lost. Here on the vinyl more is preserved but something to loud, to high or to low has to be modified or cut for it to not sound like junk. I thought also for many years, what made rock and roll and disco popular was their instruments covered a lot of the background noise you have one vinyl records, cymbals and snare drum can mask much of the high end noise.
It has nothing to do with "God's design of the human ear!". There is no one who designed our ears. Our ears are quite simple as audio is quite simple. They only need to create a structure which allows independend translation of vibrations into nerv signals. The 'magic' actually comes from our brains and the part of our brain which does that, is learning this. Our brain hears, not our ear. People who learn to hear later due to implants, have to learn to hear and to separate sounds. If you want to understand how the ear evolved, you can read up on it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_mammalian_auditory_ossicles As a side note, if you want to know how our eye evolved: th-cam.com/video/qrKZBh8BL_U/w-d-xo.html
"Multiple sounds at once" is just addition. It's the same concept as throwing a tennis ball from the back to the front of a moving car. The speed of the ball is (the speed of the ball + the speed of the car), at least, relative to the environment the car is in. You might want to add the rotation of the Earth into that. So it is with sound. Mixing sounds is just adding the pressurized or rarified air, or electrical voltage, or numerical values. Stereo in a single groove is slightly more complex. There's a bit of legacy there from when recordings were all mono. So, to retain forward and backward compatibility, the recording uses Mid/Side technique, where the L/R channels are refactored to be a combination of total amplitude (mid, or L+R), and relative phase (side, or L-R). It's a bit like how color television took the original black-and-white carrier and added color difference information to it, so you could consume it as a pure B&W signal, or read the additional color carrier if it exists and the device is capable of processing it. IIRC, the mono (mid) signal is encoded as depth of cut, and the phase (side) signal is encoded as width of cut. So you have a 3D trench that can be followed in 2D (depth) only for mono, or 3D (depth+width) for stereo.
@@nickwallette6201 Your stereo on the vinyl record does not make sense because on the needle you will hear a more left or right as you move your finger back and forth on it. I just saw another person came the same thing you did, but in reality this can't be so. The old up and own type records don't play well on the modern turntable. If your explanation was true then they would only play out of one channel. The other factor is they are amplified directly, no special phase or comparator electronics. And still from a single needle. Thanks for the reply...
@@rennethjarrett4580 OK, well, I just looked it all up (which is something you could also do), and I wasn't 100% correct. But not too far off. The grooves are cut at 45-deg angles, so one channel's amplitude is cut into the right wall of the groove, and the other channel's is cut into the left wall of the groove. It uses both horizontal and vertical space, since it's not parallel or perpendicular to the surface, but jutting outward from the center point of the stylus. The net effect is similar to what I said before, in that the vertical and horizontal axis form a phase relationship with each other, and if you don't track the groove with 3D movement (but instead, a single plane), then you can recover the Mid channel (L+R) for mono compatibility. I think it was this bit that led me to my incorrect recollection of how it worked, physically. At any rate, you can indeed convert from L/R to M/S without active electronics. All it takes is an audio transformer -- a couple coils of wire galvanically isolated so they aren't referenced from the same point. You _could_ do this in a phono cartridge, and it was my mistaken understanding that they, perhaps, did just that -- if the cart interface was L/R at all, which until very recently, I wasn't aware that it was. Lots of things use M/S transmission, like FM Stereo, for example, which is why the signal collapses to mono when the reception is too weak to track the stereo pilot carrier.
Great documentary with two great guys! And Abbey Road Studio's are the legend. Maybe a stupid thought since I'm not hindered by any technical knowledge in this matter, but looking at this I'm wondering why the cutting head is a tangential tracking one and not a radial, as a pickup tone arm. Wouldn't this optimize the tracking angle of the pickup stylus to zero when playing records?
I think the word i’m looking for is compression! I think if 20 mins is used well across the side then the bass is usually well expressed and it doesn’t sound quiet and “tinny” so you don’t have to turn up the bass and treble on your stereo and apply more volume to make it sound good, because the dynamics are all there and impressive! Infact your usually trying to scale it down because the pressings dead loud!!!!
Brilliant stuff! Some qustion (sorry if I missed the answer in the clip): 1) if the cutting machine has a memory, is that compressing an analogue source? 2) would you not have dust problems with an open cutting machine?
This is a very interesting video. I’ve been buying records since the mid 60’s and love my records from the 60’s and 70’s. Some of my favorites are from Sheffield Labs. They made wonderful sounding records.
Fantastic fascinating video! Having sat through mastering sessions as a creator it was nice to understand how it all works! On an aside, the licensing term 'mechanicals' actually originated in an older than phonographs. Piano rolls and the licensing of them are where the term originates!
16:39 can't it be done automatically? In most cases there is 3 seconds silence between the tracks and when the system is looking forward, it can detect it all.
Now really looking forward to hearing my new Roxy Music first album from 1972, re-mastered at half speed by Miles. By coincidence, I only picked it up yesterday from Burning Shed in Norwich. It’ll be cool to compare it with my original, which I bought new in ‘72 and have enjoyed many, many times.
If these are the guys that did The Beatles in Mono lp series...I didn't do much comparing with original mono EMI pressings, but regardless, they did a decent job with that, know what they're doin. Good lil vid, thanks
Yes I love what ive seen.More of this please I want to see the whole process to be honest. The factory making of the fathers and mothers and stampers,just everything.A new subscriber here.
I'd love to know just who the Acid House producer with a mum called Beryl is? I remember that a lot of the records I bought in the 80's had 'A Porky Prime Cut' etched into the run out groove.
Remember all the stuff in the late 90s and early 2000s cut by 'Simon @ The Exchange' and all the cryptic messages on all the UR records and other electronic stuff distributed under Submerge
I've got to tell you, when I looked on eBay and saw the price of The Wallflowers"Bringing Down The Horse"(on vinyl), I drew my line long before that. It was as little as $114.00 Including postag5 to as much as $300.00 new. Anybody that would pay that much is nuts. I paid less than $9.00 for the CD and I'm well satisfied.
Sometime in the 80's I read someone's suggestion in a stereo magazine that if all technology had progressed as it had - except for the invention of the phonograph - and then in modern times an engineer had said, "let's stamp a groove into soft polyvinyl chloride and then drag a diamond along that groove at a pressure amounting to hundreds of PSI, and see if we can use that to record and play back music," that engineer would have been carried off to the loony bin.
absolutely nails it ! It requires effort! One of the happiest moments of my entire life was having and participating in the mastering of my Sony LP Last True Family Man at Abbey Road.. incredible memory!! And incredible Mastering engineer!
Production trend is not equal to digital media capability. Studios have to produce digital records without compression. I think classical music published on CDs is not compressed since it has full dynamic range of the recorded music.
@@williamd1891 Yes you are sooo right! Every single peace of music today, everything, is from untallented kids of famous parents auto tuning the crap out of it. EVERY SINGLE ARTIST since the last 10 years. No come on what is your issue? Just ignore the auto tune shit.
A most enjoyable video, only spoiled by being told to click the bell and subscribe in the outro. Let people choose how they want to interact with your channel.
And there was the album covers, posters and many of both were collectable and gained a lot of value too. Or the giant Rolling Paper in Big Bambu, The cover that turned into a 3D school desk, Alice Cooper Schools out, and also disposable panties on the vinyl. that's all gone with the albums too, but man, dynamic range is through the room these days.
Records will always seem like some bizarre futuristic technology to me. A piece of plastic that sings to you when you scrape a diamond over it. Magic
science
Have you heard about archaeologists extracting sounds from the grooves of ancient pottery ?
@@AutomaticMilk I was amazed when I first heard about that but upon further research it turned out to be a myth
@@extremeanalogmusic6296 yeah, we all know is science but I love fantasy
@@extremeanalogmusic6296 YET HEART IN ITS MUSIC
In the early '90s, I played on a record that was then cut at Abbey Road. Now I know how it was done! I'm still proud to have been on something that was part-manufactured here.
The life that vinyl has given to the music industry is invaluable. Thanks for a glimpse into this incredible process that is the epitome of analog.
As long as I live, I will never stop being fascinated with the entire process from recording to my turntable.
I'm also fascinated why they can't achieve detail and headspace of the 60-s and 70-s vinyls anymore.
@@elektroskeptic481 They can, audiophile grade records today are the highest fidelity they have ever been. But if you want a modern press of an album from the 60s, the main limit is the age or generation of the master, since analogue is a format that degrades.
I have a copy of Bob Marley's Legend that was cut in half speed, the difference is incredible. You can hear so much more detail in the little background percussion sounds, it takes on a life of its own. Just looked at the inner margin and there's MILES's name! Great job, Miles!! It sounds really amazing!
I have a copy of Paul McCartneys Flaming Pie half speed mastered and I’ve just checked, it was Miles that did it! It sounds incredible I didn’t know how much better it would sound and now I wish everything was half speed mastered!
Yea, just wishing I'd coin some day to buy them.
Absolutely AMAZING material. Thanks to everyone who made it possible. Hope you'll get a lot of views on that one. More material like this, please. Even if it's a little bit trickier to made, you leave behind an amazing and resourceful footage for future generations.
That last comment is right on the money, when I listen to vinyl, I listen to one, then another, then another, then another, the vinyl pulls me in! When I listen to digital, usually one or two sides and I'm done, digital just seems to be much less involving. So when someone asks me why is vinyl better than digital, that is the answer. Doesn't make sense, but that is almost always what happens.
It’s been said that within a block of marble is the sculpture before it’s sculpted, and it’s the sculptor who simply reveals it.
A blank for cutting vinyl, mind blowing to think every single permutation of music that could ever be written is contained within that disk, and the vinyl lathe simply reveals one of them.
A bit like a pig being full of sausages and chops.
What's really amazing is to think that it's simply black plastic....
What a treat to have such excellent insights into the recording process.
Tangible music.
If that doesn't hit close to home, I don't know what will. I think EVERY downloading, file sharing, digital junkie of this generation who has never held any vinyl in their hands should watch this great video all the way through. After years of having me put music on her iPod, I can still remember the first Saturday that I took my baby girl into a locally owned record store. That store is gone now, and I am so glad we shared the memory. I took a picture of her actually holding the Michael Jackson album Thriller, which she had never seen a physical copy of. She was in awe. Priceless magic.
Thanks but i still can appreciate music without having a record at home.
@@Sicaine Good for you
What a cracking documentary, been playing vinyl for 55 years and never gave the cutting a thought until yesterday!
"Disc cutting systems roll off top. That's what they do. It's the nature of the beast. That's why records sound warmer. They don't add low end. They roll top off."
There it is. The secret of vinyl. I've never heard it explained so succinctly.
One could roll the top off of digital with an e.q and while it may get close it is not the same. Analog just works on a wave length that's more connected to our brains, our souls and the universe. IMHO, YMMV 😉
Great getting it straight from an expert at the legendary Abby Road.
The processes in making the stamper is so involved and probably wasteful and toxic waste too. The environmentalist me says, digital all the way, but I really do enjoy my vinyl records.
@@williamd1891 lol do you have some evidence to support that or it's just your own fantasy?
@The Horu Journal Digital is a different type of environmentally taxing, and blanket statements like “digital is more” are not helpful. For example, to say that you need power just to read music from your phone or computer ignores the fact that your phone or computer is often already on when you go to listen to music. The extra contribution to retrieve a song from an SSD and process is minimal compared to what your device is already doing. I don’t have facts and figures to hand, but I know that digital electronics consume less power than physical turntables. Running any cloud service can be wasteful, but can also achieve economies of scale that the equivalent number of analog devices playing back at the same time could never achieve.
@@williamd1891 Right at the beginning one of them mentions loading a file or tape into a workstation, which I take to mean a digital conversion, which is where the eq and level adjustment for the cutting is done. My take from this video is that every vinyl disk ends up being cut from a digital master made by these two engineers in the cutting room even if they start with an analogue-all-the-way master tape from the studio, which one of them said was very rare anyway.
It was also mentioned that they do different compression of the same master for vinyl and CD, which will affect the final sound quality in ways which has nothing to do with analogue v digital discussions.
Another significant point is that, other than physical CDs, any digital source you listen to will have suffered significant bit-rate compression (mp3 being a well known example) which can seriously degrade the quality of the music coming out of your loudspeakers. This applies to any copies you make of CDs onto your computer or phone unless you choose to directly copy the source file which will take up a lot more memory.
There are lots of worms in this particular can, and it is the different decisions made by human operators about how different recordings will be processed that is the real issue here. There is no fundamental "analogue is like this, digital is like this" difference. It is down to the quality of the design and manufacture of the specific equipment in the signal chain and how real people choose to use it that will decide the quality of the sound you will hear at the end of it.
This was absolutely fascinating and enjoyable. Thank you to all of those involved for educating me.
Records will always be more magical than any other form of music because it was a record that first breathed life into and captured, a recorded voice and music.
Would be lovely to have an extra of how they cut things like locked grooves, reversed grooves (plays outwards) and I have a Kevin Sanderson record that has parallel grooves so depending which one you drop the needle on is which track plays (E-Dancer - Velocity Funk / Banjo / The Move on KMS records)
Yes, that would be awesome 👌! Great idea!
the first time I played a record or the cruise went backwards I I was trying to mix out of a song and I couldn't figure out what the hell was happening I kept putting it on at the beginning and then it was just going off so I actually had to end that mix and recording right there because I let the the song play out before I figure it out I had a reverse record.
Thats not really hard to understand how those things work:
You cut two spirals. You just have to increase the space between two grooves to fit a second one on it. You can simulate that with a piece of paper and a pen.
Outward is recording from the inside to the outside.
You definitely don’t want to play any groove that takes you from the inside to the outside. Turntables are set up with “anti skating” on the tonearm to counteract the excessive force pulling the arm towards the middle.
And quadrophonic LPs
Absolutely fantastic. I was grinning all the way through that. Oh the good old days indeed.
I love the little mastering tips too, which many so called home mastering 'experts' might find helpful 😁
The technical aspects of this fascinate me to no end. The fact a cutting head can etch such audio detail with a relatively simple procedure. CDs and tapes seem logical, knowing how they’re made, but the fact you can replicate what is on that tape on grooved disc with all the same audio content blows my mind. It doesn’t seem logical. It’s a groove physically cut into a solid surface.
I agree and before I knew how it was done, I imagined something like a big clean room, enclosed and being constantly suctioned to create some type of vacuum so dust couldn't exist. In fact, it looks more like the records are just being cut in an office, right on top of someone's desk, after lunch...lol.
Spent yesterday in an Analogue Studio with some serious kit that cost a fortune back in the day. We were doing some tracks for a Student doing a Music Production Degree at University, we had to do each song as a complete take, very different from how would be done now digitally, only overdub will be vocals, everybody playing in separate booths, took me back 30 years!!
“Be naked in church”
And
“Master ate your cat”
Are the best “cryptic” groove autographs I’ve ever come across on a record.
Coincidentally…. They where both on acid house music records.
Thanks enjoyed that, I recognise some terms, swarf, land etc. In 1964 I used to cut laquers at Natec Sound in Sydney on a Nutall lathe well before computers. We used to use French made Pyral laquers. We cut some K-TELL masters, eg: 20 Explosive Hits with 10 a side. To fit them on we’d cut some bass and lower the volume, with many test cuts.
This is such a special insight into what's always been a pretty mysterious process to me. Thank you!
Makes me kind of ill to think they may be using those pos s-10's in any way at all to make a Beatles record.
those are real mastering engineers who know every aspect of the craft and thats why i personally as a mixer dont like to call myself mastering engineer on top even with a good understanding of the field.
I never tire of this subject! I love records so much!
Excellent high quality demonstration of classic technology by true professionals. Thanks to SOS for this.
I’ll never be able to look at my wall of vinyl the same again!
That was an amazing insight!
Thanks for sharing!
Excellent informative video that very mixing engineer MUST watch! 650w amps, wow.
So great to see. How great are those guys. Truly astounding engineering. Neumann has always been the king! Try any of their mics. All incredible engineering. I agree on the involvement. I’ve been recording since the 80’s and people are asking me for vinyl and tapes again haha why shouldn’t they be able to experience it! I’m into it and building my own vinyl cutter. There are actually a few companies making machines the T560 in Germany and the stunning and super cool V3000 Automatic/Manual/Semi-automatic beast. WANT
Not only the records, also this video is magical and enthusiastic.
When I was a kid my Mum worked for Diamond Stylus, which at the time was based in small shed like building less than 10mins walk from home. Sometimes she would bring her work home - a circular disk (about 100mm diameter) that would have 500 ‘needles’ sticking vertically up, a little tray full of tiny diamonds, and with specially made tweezers and the aid of a magnifying glass she would place a diamond on the end of each needle. I would often help out and do a complete tray myself. I never really gave it much thought at the time - but thousands of people would have been playing their records with styluses (styluii ?) that I had placed the diamond on. Groovy : )
Stylii
Awesome video giving us a rare insight of everything involved in creating a record. Thank you!
this was awesome - thanks for the visit
How very interesting ,always have been fascinated with record pressing plants & the hole electro plating processes ,but this is just brilliant ,thank you .
I’m watching this over and over. Good advice on mono bass
Fascinating elucidation on the vinyl cutting process. I'm of the view that sound recording reached its peak around the 70s. Beyond that digital sound which is excessively busy. I'm sure there are wonderful frequencies to behold but I'm not a dog so can't really appreciate them.
The sound is maybe not as good as a CD but there's something about buying a vinyl version of your favourites albums that's very special. The thought of music being imprinted on a physical object, the artwork is the size that's supposed to be, you also have the labels artwork looking like it's supposed to be too, and the ritualistic actions to get the record out, put it on your turntable, and then playing it, knowing that a lot of work has to be done for you to have it, and enjoy it, I'm convinced that there's a little bit of magic in all of this. You can have it sounds different depending on what turntable, Tonearm, and phono stage, amplifier and speakers you use, and when you change only one of theses parameters, you can discover new things you never heard before, more emphasis on certain sounds, and all of these make the vinyl records very different from anything else. Vinyl are like the music itself, it's about emotions. And that's why they're important to me. CD also can sounds different depending on the which edition, remix and if it's compressed or not, and a lot of precision is involved in their fabrication and playback too, I don't really think the experience is less enjoyable, they're 2 different things and I enjoy both equally. I only have to say a good thanks to the people who make these experiences possible. They do the very important jobs to make people forget everything and just sit down and listen to their favourite music, and that's essential.
A lot of early vinyl is miles better than what is done today. I have stopped buying new vinyl as it sounds so close to the CD
What a joy to watch. I soon had to look at my half-speed master LP of Amy's Frank - and yes, Miles' name is there! Amazing. Thanks very much!
Great insight to mastering vinyl, the format will always be in demand.
Very cool. Wish we got to hear from Sean Magee! He cut the lacquers for my last album at Abbey Road and pulled off a lot of cool tricks, like locked grooves on each side. Total masters of their craft!!
I grew up with vinyl. As the years go by, I transferred to CDs, but the vinyl still has the traditional warmth to it.
Thanks Sound on Sound for doing this - a really great look at the process.
Wow! This is so great - to hear these details explanations of the cutting process is fascinating and makes me value my vinyl collection all the more. I think I'm gonna watch and share the heck out of this!
What fascinates me is the process which Miles describes of how they go from the master through to the stampers. I've always wondered whether precision in the sound is lost during those several transfers from ridge to groove and then back again. I know from my own experience that original vinyl copies of a track CAN retain just as much detail and range as a digitally remastered copy made years later - albeit that the vinyl always has that more rounded sound - but conversely some vinyl versions compare very badly with digital remasters. I wonder what stage of the vinyl making process those problems would be most likely to come in at - cutting the master, or the subsequent processes?
At one time (1970s) I met an engineer called Bill Foster. I had an album called "Jan and Dean's Greatest Hits" and Bill wanted to listen to it all through. Why? Because he had previously worked at a mastering company who had tried and failed to produce a master of that album to the record company's satisfaction, and eventually someone else did it. Bill wanted to hear how the finished product turned out! That was my first ever inkling that there was just so very much more art and science to creating records than I had previously guessed at!
Great video - many thanks. Alan T.
Amazing for me as a vinyl head, I have thousands goin back to the 50's though to today, there is NOTHING better than good cut vinyl, and I've always wondered who and what the messages and names were on the run out groove
Excellent presentation, thank you !
I think the most amazing thing is that they were doing this decades before all this modern computerised tech was available. Now THAT is an mind-blowing thought.
Hahah, even more: with all this modern tech they CAN'T produce ANYTHING with the headspace, dynamic range and detail of the 60-s and 70-s vinyl. None. Ever. Forget about it.
Wow ! Very cool to see how my records were made. I hope this guys knowledge will be passed on !!
Fantastic insight, from a very professional and highly respected specialist! Thank you for showing this video, of a very fascinating and exact process!
nice presentation
The sheer quantity of awesome gear in that place makes me totally nerd out.
BTW got a 2018 remaster of Siouxsie and the Banshees' "The Scream", with Abbey Road comment carved on the empty space in the middle, like shown here.
Tonearm on the lathe looks to be an SME 3009 Series 2 btw.
What great insight from two different individuals both passionate about their craft.
We've just did it Vinyl cutting at Abbey Road Studios. For the Beatles Alaturka. And it was done by Mr. Geoff Pesche, obviously was wonderful..🥂
Brilliant. Never heard it explained so well. And the thing about the cutter head cutting a wider groove for bass sound and the space between each groove I never contemplated before. So cool.
Watching this only makes me understand more what I saw Leon at Music House do when he was cutting all those dubplates for me. Respect.
Yes. More vids from people who’ve been at it for decades and less from people who just bought an Apollo interface.
Lol the industry isn’t what it used to be, that’s for sure. Change is good, but I’ve seen such a decline in the last 8 to 10 years that it’s stunning.
🔥😂
Ditto. They're the ones with the knowledge and experience we need to learn from.
This is one of the most interesting videos I have seen in ages! Thankyou.
Wow. That was lovely, amazing. Thanks to all
More documentary like this , Please (Mixing , Mastering process etc)
Who knew that it started as a 14"?? Excellent video, & what a job to have!
It's the minimal signal path from performance to aural ecstasy that is the magic. Aided by recording and mastering engineers who truly know their stuff. Every album should be produced on double-heavyweight virgin-vinyl, give those grooves some space to breathe!
Amazing video. I've been buying vinyl since the 70s but this is the first time I've ever seen how they actually cut vinyl. Really interesting to watch.
Then you know not to call a record "vinyl" the material it's made out of. Do you refer to CDs as plastics
@@zebunker No I refer to CD's as CD's. What do you like to call them? I think I'll continue to refer to records as vinyl if that's ok with you.
Brilliant!
So looking forward to buying a Souri T560. Most exciting thing in the history of joyous stuff.
💚👌🏻🌀
I wonder what that acid house track was, i really enjoyed this thank you so much.
excellent (cut a 12" there once). I appreciate the long-form approach.
What a joy of a video! :) Thanks SOS
Thanks guys. Yes I saw a few others about record cutting and stamping but you's was different. Now what always made me wonder is several things about sound recording and especially the vinyl record is this multiple sounds at once, and then also somehow separate left and right sounds from one groove. You can point out what might be the sound of certain instruments at a certain spot on the record, but really there are many things being played at once as we hear it together. Even more interesting is these are all based on sound frequencies of different things all making their noise/sound together. So the real amazing thing is how we can hear it and make sense of it all. God's design of the human ear! However the single groove to get stereo and many sounds at one time is just shockingly wild. Also the vinyl record is the most durable way to preserve data, especially since you don't need much to play it back once it is created as long as you don't melt it. yes a better machine will make it sound almost 100% live and real, but for the point of getting the information, no electronics are needed at all if our world would get to that point. What most people don't know and with all recordings something has to be done to make it all work, certain sounds even on the MP3 are cut down or out for it to work, and the lower the compression data the more of it is lost. Here on the vinyl more is preserved but something to loud, to high or to low has to be modified or cut for it to not sound like junk. I thought also for many years, what made rock and roll and disco popular was their instruments covered a lot of the background noise you have one vinyl records, cymbals and snare drum can mask much of the high end noise.
It has nothing to do with "God's design of the human ear!". There is no one who designed our ears. Our ears are quite simple as audio is quite simple. They only need to create a structure which allows independend translation of vibrations into nerv signals.
The 'magic' actually comes from our brains and the part of our brain which does that, is learning this.
Our brain hears, not our ear. People who learn to hear later due to implants, have to learn to hear and to separate sounds.
If you want to understand how the ear evolved, you can read up on it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_mammalian_auditory_ossicles
As a side note, if you want to know how our eye evolved: th-cam.com/video/qrKZBh8BL_U/w-d-xo.html
"Multiple sounds at once" is just addition. It's the same concept as throwing a tennis ball from the back to the front of a moving car. The speed of the ball is (the speed of the ball + the speed of the car), at least, relative to the environment the car is in. You might want to add the rotation of the Earth into that. So it is with sound. Mixing sounds is just adding the pressurized or rarified air, or electrical voltage, or numerical values.
Stereo in a single groove is slightly more complex. There's a bit of legacy there from when recordings were all mono. So, to retain forward and backward compatibility, the recording uses Mid/Side technique, where the L/R channels are refactored to be a combination of total amplitude (mid, or L+R), and relative phase (side, or L-R). It's a bit like how color television took the original black-and-white carrier and added color difference information to it, so you could consume it as a pure B&W signal, or read the additional color carrier if it exists and the device is capable of processing it.
IIRC, the mono (mid) signal is encoded as depth of cut, and the phase (side) signal is encoded as width of cut. So you have a 3D trench that can be followed in 2D (depth) only for mono, or 3D (depth+width) for stereo.
@@nickwallette6201 Your stereo on the vinyl record does not make sense because on the needle you will hear a more left or right as you move your finger back and forth on it. I just saw another person came the same thing you did, but in reality this can't be so.
The old up and own type records don't play well on the modern turntable. If your explanation was true then they would only play out of one channel. The other factor is they are amplified directly, no special phase or comparator electronics. And still from a single needle. Thanks for the reply...
@@rennethjarrett4580 OK, well, I just looked it all up (which is something you could also do), and I wasn't 100% correct. But not too far off.
The grooves are cut at 45-deg angles, so one channel's amplitude is cut into the right wall of the groove, and the other channel's is cut into the left wall of the groove. It uses both horizontal and vertical space, since it's not parallel or perpendicular to the surface, but jutting outward from the center point of the stylus.
The net effect is similar to what I said before, in that the vertical and horizontal axis form a phase relationship with each other, and if you don't track the groove with 3D movement (but instead, a single plane), then you can recover the Mid channel (L+R) for mono compatibility.
I think it was this bit that led me to my incorrect recollection of how it worked, physically.
At any rate, you can indeed convert from L/R to M/S without active electronics. All it takes is an audio transformer -- a couple coils of wire galvanically isolated so they aren't referenced from the same point. You _could_ do this in a phono cartridge, and it was my mistaken understanding that they, perhaps, did just that -- if the cart interface was L/R at all, which until very recently, I wasn't aware that it was.
Lots of things use M/S transmission, like FM Stereo, for example, which is why the signal collapses to mono when the reception is too weak to track the stereo pilot carrier.
Totally over my head but enjoyed every second of this video.
the bass and drums always in the center !! Remember People!
Thank you for sharing, a visit to the vinyl factory would be nice to see how it really works
definitely...
Great documentary with two great guys! And Abbey Road Studio's are the legend. Maybe a stupid thought since I'm not hindered by any technical knowledge in this matter, but looking at this I'm wondering why the cutting head is a tangential tracking one and not a radial, as a pickup tone arm. Wouldn't this optimize the tracking angle of the pickup stylus to zero when playing records?
Run of the mill recording studio is still run of the mill despite the fame of those who recorded there.
Miles did excellent work with the half speed masters of ABBA.
I think the word i’m looking for is compression! I think if 20 mins is used well across the side then the bass is usually well expressed and it doesn’t sound quiet and “tinny” so you don’t have to turn up the bass and treble on your stereo and apply more volume to make it sound good, because the dynamics are all there and impressive! Infact your usually trying to scale it down because the pressings dead loud!!!!
Brilliant stuff!
Some qustion (sorry if I missed the answer in the clip):
1) if the cutting machine has a memory, is that compressing an analogue source?
2) would you not have dust problems with an open cutting machine?
Awesome video. Everything Geoff Pesche says comes out mastered already.
Thank you! Great documentary!!!
This is a very interesting video. I’ve been buying records since the mid 60’s and love my records from the 60’s and 70’s. Some of my favorites are from Sheffield Labs. They made wonderful sounding records.
Japanese pressings Of records are also excellent.
Fantastic fascinating video! Having sat through mastering sessions as a creator it was nice to understand how it all works!
On an aside, the licensing term 'mechanicals' actually originated in an older than phonographs. Piano rolls and the licensing of them are where the term originates!
love these kinda videos more of this please
I treasure the vinyl I own that has been mastered by Miles Showell. I'm pleased to have a few albums!
16:39 can't it be done automatically? In most cases there is 3 seconds silence between the tracks and when the system is looking forward, it can detect it all.
Do all SHMC's have custom lettering? This one says 'Abbey Road' where it normally says "Mastering Compressor".
Very cool. Miles is such a nice guy. This process will always fascinate me.
touching material, love for Abbey Road 💞 thank you
Now really looking forward to hearing my new Roxy Music first album from 1972, re-mastered at half speed by Miles. By coincidence, I only picked it up yesterday from Burning Shed in Norwich. It’ll be cool to compare it with my original, which I bought new in ‘72 and have enjoyed many, many times.
If these are the guys that did The Beatles in Mono lp series...I didn't do much comparing with original mono EMI pressings, but regardless, they did a decent job with that, know what they're doin. Good lil vid, thanks
What a great documentary. I love my records!
Yes I love what ive seen.More of this please I want to see the whole process to be honest. The factory making of the fathers and mothers and stampers,just everything.A new subscriber here.
Any chance Miles could share that acid house record??
Imagine what guys like Doug Sax had to pull off to be able to cut direct-to-disc albums with no preview for groove spacing.
That is why those albums tend to have quite short running times per side.
@@meeder78 Yep, and also to avoid inner-groove distortion, as well as not torturing the musicians to try to play 20+ minutes without a mistake.
I'd love to know just who the Acid House producer with a mum called Beryl is? I remember that a lot of the records I bought in the 80's had 'A Porky Prime Cut' etched into the run out groove.
Need to go and dig all my vinyl out of the cupboard and check them all !
The 'Porky Prime Cut' was because the record was cut by an engineer called George Peckham, nicknamed Porky. He cut many records in his career.
Adamski or Mark Moore is my guess.
porky did a lot of the dance music into the early 90s also. Rephlex stuff was porky. Matt Colton was/is protege i believe.
Remember all the stuff in the late 90s and early 2000s cut by 'Simon @ The Exchange' and all the cryptic messages on all the UR records and other electronic stuff distributed under Submerge
Can we have not compressed music on CDs??? Can we have digital masters on our computers?
I've got to tell you, when I looked on eBay and saw the price of The Wallflowers"Bringing Down The Horse"(on vinyl), I drew my line long before that. It was as little as $114.00 Including postag5 to as much as $300.00 new. Anybody that would pay that much is nuts. I paid less than $9.00 for the CD and I'm well satisfied.
Older vinyl sounds much better than nowadays. But i would have to love the album for £300
thank you for this.
And to think the band I was in around 1984 cut an album in one of these rooms! Wow!
Sometime in the 80's I read someone's suggestion in a stereo magazine that if all technology had progressed as it had - except for the invention of the phonograph - and then in modern times an engineer had said, "let's stamp a groove into soft polyvinyl chloride and then drag a diamond along that groove at a pressure amounting to hundreds of PSI, and see if we can use that to record and play back music," that engineer would have been carried off to the loony bin.
absolutely nails it ! It requires effort! One of the happiest moments of my entire life was having and participating in the mastering of my Sony LP Last True Family Man at Abbey Road.. incredible memory!! And incredible Mastering engineer!
Long live the Vinyl! The only source of music that keeps away from the stupid hiper-compressed/loudness on today's music production trend.
Production trend is not equal to digital media capability. Studios have to produce digital records without compression.
I think classical music published on CDs is not compressed since it has full dynamic range of the recorded music.
Well back then music was made by actual talented musicians. Today it's just a bunch of auto tuned crap from the no talent kids of famous parents.
Feel free to read up on it here en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war#2020s
Due to quality of digital media, the dynamic is still better than vinyl.
@@williamd1891 Yes you are sooo right! Every single peace of music today, everything, is from untallented kids of famous parents auto tuning the crap out of it.
EVERY SINGLE ARTIST since the last 10 years.
No come on what is your issue? Just ignore the auto tune shit.
Thanks. A great inside look at vinyl wizardry
A most enjoyable video, only spoiled by being told to click the bell and subscribe in the outro.
Let people choose how they want to interact with your channel.
And there was the album covers, posters and many of both were collectable and gained a lot of value too. Or the giant Rolling Paper in Big Bambu, The cover that turned into a 3D school desk, Alice Cooper Schools out, and also disposable panties on the vinyl. that's all gone with the albums too, but man, dynamic range is through the room these days.