Advice for mastering

[Nail Soup]

I didn't fully understand the difference between mixing and mastering until late.

Mastering, as someone said, is optimising the mix for a particular medium. In that sense I don't master, just create one final mix and that's it.

 

For a start, I'm not really putting my music out in different mediums (Soundcloud and Youtube maybe) , and second I would know what to do differently for any given medium.

 

Interesting thread.

 

[Dad3353]

49 minutes ago, Nail Soup said:

I didn't fully understand the difference between mixing and mastering until late.

Mastering, as someone said, is optimising the mix for a particular medium. In that sense I don't master, just create one final mix and that's it.

 

For a start, I'm not really putting my music out in different mediums (Soundcloud and Youtube maybe) , and second I would know what to do differently for any given medium.

 

Interesting thread.

 

 

[meterman]

8 hours ago, Nail Soup said:

I didn't fully understand the difference between mixing and mastering until late.

Mastering, as someone said, is optimising the mix for a particular medium. In that sense I don't master, just create one final mix and that's it.

 

For a start, I'm not really putting my music out in different mediums (Soundcloud and Youtube maybe) , and second I would know what to do differently for any given medium.

 

Interesting thread.

 

The guy who masters my stuff reckons mastering for a vinyl release is usually the most time consuming for him, whether it’s a 7”, 12” or even a 5” release. But he says CDs are easier and that prepping for streaming is the quickest for him to do.

 

I’m guessing the kind of music he’s working with has some bearing on it too?

[Dad3353]

5 hours ago, meterman said:

The guy who masters my stuff reckons mastering for a vinyl release is usually the most time consuming for him, whether it’s a 7”, 12” or even a 5” release. But he says CDs are easier and that prepping for streaming is the quickest for him to do.

 

I’m guessing the kind of music he’s working with has some bearing on it too?

 

The musical genre has an influence, but each medium has its own constraints (bandwidth, dynamic range, linearity, and more...); vinyl has maybe more technical issues than CD's, I would think. A Mastering engineer would probably be more experienced in some combinations of genre/medium/target audience than others, and thus more equipped to deal with these constraints. It's pretty much a 'dark art', though, and musical taste can play a part; a 'successful' mastering for one might be quite different to that of another. Choosing the person (or studio...) can be important, to get the final sound that's wanted.  

[BigRedX]

6 hours ago, meterman said:

The guy who masters my stuff reckons mastering for a vinyl release is usually the most time consuming for him, whether it’s a 7”, 12” or even a 5” release. But he says CDs are easier and that prepping for streaming is the quickest for him to do.

 

I’m guessing the kind of music he’s working with has some bearing on it too?

 

The problem with vinyl is because it is a mechanical delivery medium there are various limitations as to what can actually be reproduced and they all have to be checked for and fixed if necessary, and that's before you get into the complications of optimising the running order of an album so that you get the best possible reproduction for each track in relation to its physical location on the record. This can often require a compromise between what the artist wants and what will give the best overall listening experience.

[WinterMute]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

The problem with vinyl is because it is a mechanical delivery medium there are various limitations as to what can actually be reproduced and they all have to be checked for and fixed if necessary, and that's before you get into the complications of optimising the running order of an album so that you get the best possible reproduction for each track in relation to its physical location on the record. This can often require a compromise between what the artist wants and what will give the best overall listening experience.

I remember watching Porky at Porky's Prime Cuts mastering and cutting plates on that beautiful old Neumann valve lathe he had, he managed to get so much bass in his cuts it was miracle the damn discs didn't just fall into huge black spirals.

 

There's an art to mastering for vinyl.

[meterman]

57 minutes ago, WinterMute said:

I remember watching Porky at Porky's Prime Cuts mastering and cutting plates on that beautiful old Neumann valve lathe he had, he managed to get so much bass in his cuts it was miracle the damn discs didn't just fall into huge black spirals.

 

There's an art to mastering for vinyl.

Porky! He cut my first album in 1993, and it was such a ‘hot’ cut (needles in the red) that it came back a bit distorted on the top end, a bit sibilant. The bass sounded pretty beefy but the high end was super trebly, like an early Stereolab 45 or something.

 

I attended the cut and do remember he was brilliant craic, but I never heard the actual record until 18 months after it came out. All I had to go on was a pre-master cassette of the album mix. Was quite surprised when I heard it on vinyl for the first time.
 

It does have “A Porky Prime Cut” engraved in the runout groove though, just like ‘proper’ bands records did back in ye ooooolden days, so I don’t mind 😂

[Velarian]

15 minutes ago, meterman said:

It does have “A Porky Prime Cut” engraved in the runout groove though, just like ‘proper’ bands records did back in ye ooooolden days, so I don’t mind 😂

I always wondered what that meant! Another piece of the jigsaw falls into place. 🙂

[meterman]

11 minutes ago, Velarian said:

I always wondered what that meant! Another piece of the jigsaw falls into place. 🙂

As far as I remember George ‘Porky’ Peckham would engrave “A Porky Prime Cut” on your record if you attended the mastering session and he liked the music or if you weren’t totally up yourself. Otherwise, if the record label just sent a courier round with the master tape you might only get “Porky’s” engraved in the runout groove. That’s what I was told anyway.
 

I think if you attended the cut, and got on with him, he might ask if you wanted any messages engraved in the runout groove too. We had part of a song lyric in ours, but we shouldn’t have got something a bit funnier really.

 

There’s a record by The Monochrome Set that had “we’re still not going to pay you, Morris” engraved in the runout, presumably as a riposte to Morris Windsor who’d played with them briefly? Loved finding stuff like that on records. Don’t know who did that one though.

[Velarian]

2 minutes ago, meterman said:

As far as I remember George ‘Porky’ Peckham would engrave “A Porky Prime Cut” on your record if you attended the mastering session and he liked the music or if you weren’t totally up yourself. Otherwise, if the record label just sent a courier round with the master tape you might only get “Porky’s” engraved in the runout groove. That’s what I was told anyway.
 

I think if you attended the cut, and got on with him, he might ask if you wanted any messages engraved in the runout groove too. We had part of a song lyric in ours, but we shouldn’t have got something a bit funnier really.

 

There’s a record by The Monochrome Set that had “we’re still not going to pay you, Morris” engraved in the runout, presumably as a riposte to Morris Windsor who’d played with them briefly? Loved finding stuff like that on records. Don’t know who did that one though.

Next time I’m at my mum’s I’ll dig my old records out of the attic and have a closer look at them. 

[WinterMute]

1 hour ago, meterman said:

Porky! He cut my first album in 1993, and it was such a ‘hot’ cut (needles in the red) that it came back a bit distorted on the top end, a bit sibilant. The bass sounded pretty beefy but the high end was super trebly, like an early Stereolab 45 or something.

 

I attended the cut and do remember he was brilliant craic, but I never heard the actual record until 18 months after it came out. All I had to go on was a pre-master cassette of the album mix. Was quite surprised when I heard it on vinyl for the first time.
 

It does have “A Porky Prime Cut” engraved in the runout groove though, just like ‘proper’ bands records did back in ye ooooolden days, so I don’t mind 😂

I've still got a few pressing plates from promos in the loft with the same inscription, George was a proper character.

[meterman]

32 minutes ago, WinterMute said:

I've still got a few pressing plates from promos in the loft with the same inscription, George was a proper character.

Totally!

[Nail Soup]

4 hours ago, WinterMute said:

I remember watching Porky at Porky's Prime Cuts mastering and cutting plates on that beautiful old Neumann valve lathe he had, he managed to get so much bass in his cuts it was miracle the damn discs didn't just fall into huge black spirals.

 

There's an art to mastering for vinyl.

Cool story, but leads me to a question... sorry!

Is the mastering done as part of the 'cutting' (i.e. you hand Porky the final un-mastered mix and he sets the controls to give the best master and then makes the cut)? Or you make a new mix made for vinyl and hand that over to Porky?

[meterman]

39 minutes ago, Nail Soup said:

Cool story, but leads me to a question... sorry!

Is the mastering done as part of the 'cutting' (i.e. you hand Porky the final un-mastered mix and he sets the controls to give the best master and then makes the cut)? Or you make a new mix made for vinyl and hand that over to Porky?

No problem! We definitely took a DAT tape of the finished mix to Porky’s and he definitely did the mastering, and as far as I can recall, the cut too. But thinking about it now, it’s possible he might have sent the master off to be cut elsewhere? The 1980’s / early 90’s are a bit hazy for me, to be fair.
 

I’d ask our label manager but I haven’t seen or heard from him since 1998. Or our royalty statements 🤔😂

[WinterMute]

3 hours ago, Nail Soup said:

Cool story, but leads me to a question... sorry!

Is the mastering done as part of the 'cutting' (i.e. you hand Porky the final un-mastered mix and he sets the controls to give the best master and then makes the cut)? Or you make a new mix made for vinyl and hand that over to Porky?

He'd do the lot for the vinyl master, as that's a different set of skills than CD mastering and this was before streaming, I used Abbey Road for CD mastering, different approach.

[BigRedX]

In the pre-digital days the mastering and cutting were pretty much one and the same since vinyl was the only serious delivery medium. The only time you would perhaps need to use some mastering techniques prior to cutting would be if you were making a compilation LP with the tracks coming from disparates sources, although I used to have several such albums from the late 70 and early 80s where the only attempt to homogenise the tracks appeared to be making sure that they all peaked at the same level.

 

This is why cutting engineers like Porky and Bilbo (almost all my albums from the 70 were either "Porky Prime Cuts" or "Bilbo Boppers") were so respected and in demand.

 

Incidentally regarding the messages on the runout groove, the first record any of my music appear on is a "Porky Prime Cut" even though none of our band attended the cutting session. However I believe The Instant Automatons who were also on the record and essentially our record label were there.

[Nail Soup]

I haven't heard about Porky for ages, then we have this thread and I listedneted t olast nights MArc Riley show on 6music and he was talking about Porky.

Marc has had roles as a musician, A/R and label owner and spoke very highly of Porky, especially the run out grooves. The Fall had particularly good run out groove comment IIRC.

He also mentioned that Porky was responsible for cutting Hey Jude to 7".... apparently the longest song on 7" at that time (don't know about since).

[meterman]

32 minutes ago, Nail Soup said:

I haven't heard about Porky for ages, then we have this thread and I listedneted t olast nights MArc Riley show on 6music and he was talking about Porky.

Marc has had roles as a musician, A/R and label owner and spoke very highly of Porky, especially the run out grooves. The Fall had particularly good run out groove comment IIRC.

He also mentioned that Porky was responsible for cutting Hey Jude to 7".... apparently the longest song on 7" at that time (don't know about since).

I only knew him from his cuts in the late 70’s on punk or new wave records. Only found out later he’d not only done cuts for Apple, but Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, T.Rex, The Who, Faces, Toots & The Maytals, Genesis, Serge Gainsbourg, etc. What a career!

[BigRedX]

IIRC either International Musician or Sounds International printed an article on Porky and Bilbo and the art of cutting vinyl sometime in the late 70s (or maybe early 80s).

[BigRedX]

Here's an mid 80s article about George Peckham:

 

from One Two Testing...

[BigRedX]

And here's an article form 1985 with a fairly comprehensive technical description of the cutting process. And two more articles that follow on describing the whole record manufacturing stages.