> Thats how they used to do it. Yes, and on some it worked great. The lasers
> are the "modern way" of creating it.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
Every single person who presses records, that I know about anyway, use a lathe
that physically cuts the grooves into the lacquer using a needle connected to
an amplifier. There is a "new" method of pressing called Direct Metal
Mastering, but that just cuts the grooves into a copper plate instead of a
lacquer - thus saving one step in the plating process, and theoretically losing
less high end, but at the cost of being able to press fewer records from a
single master. But DMM uses the same lathes as the lacquer process does.
They used to cut records directly from a microphone ("direct-to-disc"), but
they stopped doing that in the 1950's when they invented magnetic tape.
Here are some videos that show how records are made:
How Vinyl Records Are Made PART 1 OF 2 (from the Discovery Channel's "How It's
Made")
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUGRRUecBik
How Vinyl Records Are Made PART 2 OF 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IReDh9ec_rk
How vinyl records Are made (interview with Ron Murphy, RIP)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDmBx4R-Gas
How a record is made (inside The Cutting Suite, London - this one is kinda
dumb, I included it to show that they use an regular lathe as well)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihNrtCac9Fs
Tour of United Record Pressing plant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43n5bVXAqzo
Command Performance (1942)
http://www.archive.org/details/CommandP1942
See also this thread:
http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/archive/index.php/t-44239.html
One thing to consider: The idea that vinyl is more of a "pure" sound than CD
shows how little anyone knows about audio. The physical properties of vinyl
definitely color the sound; in order to compensate for this, all audio mastered
for vinyl must go through a rather extreme equalization process (called the
RIAA Curve):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization
In addition, both the upper frequency limit and dynamic range of vinyl are
lower than can be achieved on a CD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_recording#LP_versus_CD
My favorite "vinylphiles" are those dorks who believe that it vinyl sounds
better than CD's when you rip them to 192K MP3. (And don't get me started on
cassettes...)
Now, you may say that records produced on vinyl "just sound better" than
records produced on CD. And you're right - they often do. But this isn't the
fault of the medium; it's the fault of the producers, recording engineers, and
mastering engineers. Simply put, making a good-sounding record requires years
of experience, and those who were actually good at it are too used to their
analog tools to learn digital, so those who do it digitally are constantly
having to re-invent the wheel.
And that's assuming modern artists are interested at all. The future of music
resides in bedroom musicians. How many of them want to pay $2000 just to have
someone master their mixes, when they can do a crappy job with their LADSPA
plugins (or cracked VST's) for free?
I know I don't.
-Karlheinz
_______________________
http://www.khznoise.com
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