What basic/minimum mastering knowledge required?

This is where record cutters raise questions about cutting, and trade wisdom and experiment results. We love Scully, Neumann, Presto, & Rek-O-Kut lathes and Wilcox-Gay Recordios (among others). We are excited by the various modern pro and semi-pro systems, too, in production and development. We use strange, extinct disc-based dictation machines. And other stuff, too.

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e3sa934
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What basic/minimum mastering knowledge required?

Post: # 48552Unread post e3sa934
Fri Nov 24, 2017 3:30 pm

Just wondering what you really need to know from a mastering angle before commiting to cutting a disc. I’ve seen at least one lathe cutting company stating that files sent must have been correctly mastered for vinyl, and that they (lathe cutters) don’t take responsibility for bad results due to improperly mastered tracks. However, assuming that someone is bound to ignore this, and send something with rogue high end and bottom end, what checks should the lathe cutter make? I’d be interested to find out what checks and associated minimum software setup are recommended to address this.

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Greg Reierson
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Re: What basic/minimum mastering knowledge required?

Post: # 48558Unread post Greg Reierson
Sat Nov 25, 2017 12:46 pm

Your biggest problem is always going to be excessive HF content, distortion, sibilance, etc. Get a few good de-essers, just about any current mastering EQ and you'll be on your way.
Greg Reierson
http://www.RareFormMastering.com
VMS70 :: SAL74B :: SX74

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jesusfwrl
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Re: What basic/minimum mastering knowledge required?

Post: # 48676Unread post jesusfwrl
Fri Dec 08, 2017 1:23 pm

This brings us back to the question of what is actually meant by the term "mastering".

I am hoping to finish a very informative text I am writing, attempting to answer this particular question, since I am asked this so often, that I am tired of trying to answer it each time anew.

I will post a link to it as soon as I am done. It will be long as I really do not want to offer oversimplified answers to this and it really is a big subject of debate, since the term "mastering" is being used by different people to define fairly different things.
~~~ Precision Mechanical Engineering, Analog Disk Mastering ~~~
Agnew Analog Reference Instruments: http://www.agnewanalog.com

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