What Goes Into Mastering for Vinyl
Mastering for vinyl is becoming a more and more frequent request from artists today who recognize the value and demand for the resurgent medium that is vinyl. It's a different process mastering for vinyl versus mastering for a digital release or even a compact disk release, so let's discuss the difference and what exactly goes into mastering for vinyl right now.
Mastering For Vinyl
Many people and disturbingly even mastering engineers will tell you that a compact disk or digital master is perfectly suitable for a vinyl release, as well. This is the case sometimes, but given that vinyl carries a number of limitations over digital or compact disk formats of audio, a master for one medium doesn't always translate perfectly to another.
For instance, just from an aesthetic audio point of view, a master with too much trilly high end or booming low end which works and sounds just fine on a digital release won't translate well to vinyl. Too much booming bass requires extra room on the vinyl grooves and can make the record lose its place while it places. Too much sibilance will cause the record to fall out of alignment, as well.
Vinyl also doesn't have quite as much dynamic range as a digital or compact disk medium. While some records which are relatively squished with compression will translate all right between mediums, too much dynamic range just can't be written to a vinyl record. Think about an orchestral recording as an example of something with a lot of dynamic range. The music softens and swells throughout and this type of music contains some of the greatest dynamic range you'll find anywhere. This wouldn't be able t o translate to vinyl and reproduced like it would on a compact disk or digital file.
Once you bear in mind that mastering for vinyl is a different process aesthetically, it's similar to mastering for CD logistically. The mastering engineer creates a single audio file which is sent to the cutting plant so that master is transferred/cut to the master vinyl record. That master is what is used to create hundreds of replications.
The cutting engineer might shave off some low or high end before cutting the test master, and they'll likely also break up the album accordingly to fit it between the different disks as typically each side of a 12' vinyl record can hold approximately 20 minutes of audio before the quality begins to suffer.
Related to this and something else to consider is the fact that more dynamic tracks should be placed earlier on the record as the sound quality will suffer and be sacrificed the closer you get to the end of a record. This is why ideally your more dynamic songs which cover a lot more ground and are generally louder should go early and your quieter tracks should go near the end.
Ultimately mastering for vinyl is very much worth it if your fanbase is the kind which would appreciate an audio collectible piece of history of your band in the form of a vinyl record of your music, and AudioMasteringCDMastering.com is happy to offer this pre-mastering service to our clients.