Souri's "vinylrecorder" machine

[tightbottom]

Good Afternoon Gentlemen (& ladies ??)

My very first posting on this splendid site, is going to be by way of a bit of support for Souri & his “vinylrecorder”. I have seen various, (not all very well informed or reasonable) negative comments about his machine, and having put a machine pretty well through it’s paces myself, speak with, some direct experience.

* PRICE. Some people have commented that the selling price, (compared to the likely cost of the components) is way too high.
I can’t imagine how much people value their own time, but if they had to first develop and then small scale manufacture the machine, they would realise that there is a LOT of time to account for. Further, if you buy the machine direct from Souri, you get, at least, one day’s introduction / training, a host of spares, a starter pack of blank vinyls, and even your over night stay accommodation in Germany included in the price. Actually, it all starts to sound like astonishingly good value for money to me!.
Anyway, why on earth shouldn’t the man make an honest living !.
No one is forcing you to buy !
And, Souri, is probably doing more to keep disc cutting alive, and introduce disc cutting to new people in an affordable “table top” form, than any one else. Basically, if you can afford to run a car, you can afford to cut with a vinylrecorder.
This situation reminds me of a narrowboat builder in the uk (Springer), who made lightweight “cheap” boats and put more people on the water than any other 2 or 3 builders put together, but still got bad press for their efforts !.

* CUTTERHEAD. Comparisons have been drawn between Souri’s head and the Kingston’s cutter head, resulting in some pretty unfair comments. After all, there's a 100% price difference between the machines (although you have to add the price of an amplifier to Souri’s).
As I understand it (I may not be 100% correct !) Souri’s machine was born from a necessity to have vinyls cut for a totally different business, and gradually developed, largely “self taught”. For this, Souri should be getting a pat on the back, rather than negative comparisons to “unlike” more expensive machines.

* BLANKS. I’ve seen comments that are clearly suggesting that preheating vinyl/vinyl substitute blanks with “waste” heat from lamps is a “bit of a joke”. Personally, I would think there's nothing wrong, and a few things right, with that. Given that a DJ cutting on the kitchen table at home, needs nothing more specialist than a light source !.
We pre warm vinyl/vinyl substitute, for use on any lathe, in a purpose made cabinet, heated by infra red, which is more even, and warms the blank more thoroughly. Exactly the sort of additional equipment and cost a “home” / “DJ” / “hobby” record cutter DOES NOT need !!
* PERFORMANCE. The cutterhead does have a high frequency roll off, of course, but for the most part, this seems to gently “follow” the spectral content of many music genre, rather than modify the spectra. We’ve done several measurements of music, and of the head response and will be only too pleased to support this statement with graphical evidence - should any one want to see it.
Generally, frequency response is a bit of a funny issue !.
CD stops dead shortly after 20K, while analogue formats should have the ability to go well beyond. Should this even matter ???. Well, all our analogue equipment components in the studio are capable of at least 35K, including our monitor speakers, and, even listening to CD, you CAN tell the difference. It’s pretty well recognised that human hearing goes up to 20K, but I (and many others) know that something happens above that !.
Personally my own hearing starts to fall away at 18K, and between 20K and around 27K I get absolutely nothing. Above 27K however I can definitely “feel” something. “Feel” rather than “hear” !.
So, perhaps, the ability to cut up to 30k or so onto vinyl would be nice, but then probably only if you start with a master that goes significantly beyond 20K. This matter is really another debate altogether, but serves to “contrast” between a really “full” range system, and one like Souri’s cutter head, which limits to around the human hearing response.
Even with this limitation (and any others the machine may have) we’ve been stunned at the “quality” we’ve been able to achieve. Not necessarily “pure technical” quality, baring in mind frequency response limitations, but without any doubt, a huge musical, and involving quality, with nothing significantly “missing” frequency wise.
Of course you have to “tweak” any system to get the best from it, and we spent a lot of time, both sides of 50 12” blanks, and 3 styli doing just that.
In any event, Souri does a "half speed kit" for his machine.

* EQ, HEAD RESONANCE & TEMPERATURE It’s not necessarily that simple !. There are dynamic (non feedback) cutter heads like Souri’s (and others) which may or may not have a naturally “flat” response.
EQ is (can be) the answer. But lets not forget just how complex and dynamic the whole process of cutting and replaying is. The cutter head, apart from it’s natural mechanical and electromechanical resonance's, is a continuously “moving target” for the driving amplifier. Just like a speaker coil, the cutterhead coils increase in temperature massively with the first snare beat, and before they can recover, along comes the next snare beat.
The result is, the amplifier sees a completely different set of electrical parameters from the cutter coils, one beat to the next. Not as big an issue as cutter head resonance's, but a good argument for NOT cutting a record in winter with the doors and windows open !. A warm head, with warm coils, will have stabilised a certain amount, and the transient temperature rises be less. Then, there's the “dynamic” of the vinyl itself, and the platter.
The way the two respond to each other when having large amounts of energy thrown at them will have some effect. And, when dealing with the energy represented in miniature, by the groove modulations - tiny movements of the vinyl on the platter, and, the way in which the platter itself absorbs and reflects energy will “smear” the intended (input) waveform. Then, there are similar issues in the playback cartridge and arm assembly. It’s a wonder “grooves in vinyl” works at all, never mind being capable of actually sounding quite good !.
Souri’s dynamic head definitely requires eq, over and above the RIAA curve. We’ve done lots of work on this too. Using a digital eq (sampling at 96K and so having an extended analogue response) we have arrived at 3 basic curves, all that measure reasonably flat (when playing back pink noise) but all with massively different eq curves. This serves well to demonstrate the complex dynamic of the system as a whole, where, just like when applying eq to a room, the situation is so complex, with everything interlinking and dependant on each other, it is easily possible to arrive at more than 1 eq setting that measures “flat”.
None of which are “right” or “wrong” but only 1 may sound right !
In our case, all 3 sound good, but different !. One, amazingly, considering it’s nothing more than eq, brings vocals 2 feet forward out of the loudspeakers !. Of course you do need good, accurate, extended high frequency monitoring with the ability to “recover detail” to hear it. Less “hi” Hi-Fi speakers would just present the vocal forward in the mix rather than physically forward in the room.

IN CONCLUSION The “Vinylrecorder” is actually quite capable of very good results, and as such, amazing value for money. Specially for those of us that don’t have a spare 30000 or 40000 for a VMSxx !
Generally, Souri is a clever guy, who has actually done what many of us may have just talked about wanting to do!. His standard of both electronic and mechanical engineering is really ok, specially for the money involved, so, at great risk of being outcast before we’ve started, he gets my vote - completely.

Well. Enough waffle... & I need a cup of tea !!

[jacques artifex]

I agree with you, man.

[tightbottom]

jacques, Does this mean you have (or have tried) a "vinylrecoder" ??

[motorino]

You sell souri merchandising too? ......

I do not know if you know the character so bad that this man has, for me is more than enough to no longer buy ANYTHING

Nor will I go into the difference of a kingston and vinylrecorder, it is obvious, a lot of post here, use the search

[tightbottom]

I have seen the posts. This is what prompts me to tell my experience.
No, I do not sell his merchandise, but I have tried it, and it works just fine - specially for the relative cheap price. Perhaps you have a personal argument with souri for some reason, any way, I'm sorry your experience did not work out for you. It was good for me. Obviously, you can't win them all !

[jacques artifex]

yes, I have a Vinylrecorder and Souri its a great guy.

[tightbottom]

Absolutely.... a really nice guy. It's amazing how much opinions differ !!

Do you run yours on a SL1200 ??

We are insane !..... we modified a 30 year old Garrard 301: main bearing rebuild / modification, and a huge 1/2 horse power motor mounted under lathe, shaft driven to original 78/45/33 pulley. Took some engineering, but very very stable !.

[motorino]

I do not sell his merchandise, but I have tried it, and it works just fine - specially for the relative cheap price.

excuse me for my english, but, souri sell t-shirts? i like one

hope you have fun and make money with your machine, with my heart

but please, do not try to count on this gentleman here fables, which are not really intend for this post

good luck!

[MEGAMIKE]

yes the war is on and iam a knight of the vinylrecorder..(prince megamike )partrige saint of quality cuts and like the holy grale i will honour and protect it..every day i do battle with dragons like serato laptop and cdj fools and i win...
1 .. weight of serato compared to my own personal cuts.(the little box and laptop weigh more than my 4 records with my 2hour dj set)
2 .. quality compared to mp3s (most of serato and cdjs are playing poor quality mp3s at clubs)and most reacently i got records pressed and the quality of the two were the same.
3 ..souri dont shit on nobody and has the best service,always answering his emails and quick shipment and cheap prices.the only people that diss him are the ones that donot deal with him and have his machine and pepole that dont have his machine and shit talk coz they dont know.
4..I DONT HAVE TO CHASE other people for diomonds blanks and service.

souris machine is the best for polycarbonate dub plates..
all the other lathes were built for not cutting poly

sorry for bieng a bit silly

[tightbottom]

Montorino, Hi. Theres nothing wrong with your English. Better than mine sometimes, and I'm English!. At least you use English. More than I can do with your language !.
T shirts .... what a great idea. I think every lathe manufacturer should have T shirts and bass ball caps. Perhaps we could consider a range of perfume too.
"scent of the cutting room" - a new fragrance for men !!!!

And, thanks, we'll certainly have fun with the machine, but I doubt we'll make money - never mind, fun and music is what counts.

Cheers.

[tightbottom]

Good morning "Prince" Megamike......
I am sure we ALL forgive your "sillyness"

I had a moment of sillyness myself yesterday.....
Popped out of the studio to make a coffee, and when I came back, there was a LOUD hum !.
But not from the monitor speakers ... Finally tracked it down to "mechanical" hum from a very very hot valve amplifier. The solid state rectifier had blown and made a short circuit on the 300v supply rail !!!
This is what you get for using "cheap" Chinese valve amps !!!
Although to be fair, it's been switched on 8 to 12 hours every day for 2 years, so 1 fault I guess isn't so bad. All fixed now though, which means the bass section of monitoring is back, alive, & well and truly kicking.
We put cryogenically treated valves in these amps, re-route a few internal cables (away from hot components) and replace a handful of capacitors before we even use them - replacing the "bridge" rectifier will be added to the list I think !.

As Souri would say "Cut cut cut"

[Internet]

you forget an essential point:
one should not compare the quality cut with a professional system.

for 3200€, you have a sound of 3200€

you can do what you want with this cutter, eq, compress...or others things...
the first thing 'll be : it sounds good. Now compare with the original master...

cut a hihat :
orginal : tsic tsic tsic...
vinylium : tsic tsic tsic
vinylrecorder : che che che

cut a snare :
orginal : tchac tchac tchac
vinylium : tchac tchac tchac
vinylrecorder : toc toc toc (who's there? come in!)

You 'll certainly think that thoses examples are pretty stupid, but I think other people knows what I'm talking about

Personnaly, I prefer to hear a "Poum Poum tchac tsic" as a "Pom Pom toc che"

hahahaha

The vinylrecorder is a pretty good "home cutting system".

I have the both system actually : vinylium and vinylrecorder. vinylrecorder is nice. vinylium is amazing.

Trust me (or not) but there is really a big quality difference between the both system but not so big...with the price.

Thus except all that I am of agreement with what you say

sorry for the Onomatopoeia...I will start soon to make some beat box

[MEGAMIKE]

wot about the disk are you comparing vilinium laquer to a souri poly???
saphire on laquer or dimond on poly? or both???
but seeing that you have both then i canot judge you

[MEGAMIKE]

ps my hihat is tish tish clean. not che che che..
you must upload a wav of both cuts and show us please dunka..

[Internet]

I compare only poly.

Both cut to post are impossible now for me...My vinylrecorder is in my own museum



But Why not compare a sound from different cutting system. could be a good idea ))

[TotalSonic]

I'm curious whether anyone has compared cuts made with the Vinyl Recorder with their feedback cutterhead option to the Kingston as well. Seems this would be a more apples vs. apples comparison.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[TotalSonic]

Another thing I'm curious about is whether anyone has ever used the Souri Vinyl Recorder to cut into copper DMM blanks.

You'd need a really strong motor to do this due to the greater weight of the copper over steel substrate blanks - and you'd need to set depth to be less deep than what you are cutting into PVC - and chip pickup might be problematic (the Neumann VMS-82 had variable suction and angle based on cutting depth - although with fixed lower depth I guess you could possibly find a single angle/suction strength that could work) - but the sound quality of copper is excellent and then you could also use the Vinyl Recorder as an actual mastering machine instead of just for one offs.

I believe either Portal Space in UK or Optimal Media in Germany could supply DMM blanks (they were pricy when I last got a quote from Optimal - a little over 50 euros each) - but it might make an interesting experiment.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[TotalSonic]

Just thought of one other thing that would make my idea probably impractical to implement is that you would need a strong vacuum to secure the copper blank to the turntable platter as well in order to cut it successfully.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[motorino]

I also had a vinylrecorder, and a Vestax too...

I believe the vinylrecorder have a weight problem (or difference) in the driving coils and stylus holder bundle, isnt a drive coil dimension like a neumann or westrex cutterhead, its "like" a 1" Vifa tweeter? And the energy transmision to the stylus, more long and resonant? Its my impression

The vinylrecorder feedback system its very "peculiar"? its like a phono catrigde with her styli up the cutter stylii holder
I believe use a accelerometer with one Emerson CSI.... more accurate



Now I am working in an aluminum casting, i look some guys use a hi tech components for made inyection molds, needs ultraviolet light for cure, we speak for and we progress for some day (no bosses) made a stamper witha pressed vinyl disc, im very spectant.
I look some years ago some components like ones used for made the shoes sole, inyection molds too

At today day a lot of new components in the market...

i promisse pics

[bancho]

I think you can use only VMS82 and sx84 cutterhead for cutting into copper.
but I'm not sure

maybe someone should try it