Accurate monitoring of cuts

[jjwharris]

Hey,

I've been working on and off trying to cut records over the last few years and one of the biggest obstacles I have found is trying to get a flat and reliable benchmark for the records I have cut.

At the moment I've been calibrating my playback turntable by EQing the white noise from a test record in Fabfilter to flat and using that as a comparison to the original input file. I'm still finding variances between turntables - This is to be expected but they sometimes seem wildly different. Is this the best way to be doing it or am I missing something? What are others using to monitor what they are cutting?

[Aussie0zborn]

You might need to specify what you're using - lathe, amps, cutterhead.

[jjwharris]

Hey, thanks for the reply, the cutting end is entirely custom/made myself eq'd with a daw and powered with a 500w power amp.

Playback is through a Stanton 150 + a generic riaa pre-amp and into a USB interface. I'm trying to figure out the best way to trust my playback really

[gold]

Do you have a cutterhead with electronic feedback? Can you set up a feedback monitor? You need to know what the cutterhead is doing before you can set up the playback. Comparing playback to the source file won't work because what's getting cut is different than the source file. If you don't have electronic feedback the best thing to do is to pick a cartridge which is known to be flat and hope for the best. I've never used a Stanton 150. A Stanton 681EEE was often used as a reference cartridge. The Shure M97E is another popular one these days. I use a Denon DL103. All are pretty flat frequency response wise.

[Greg Reierson]

Test with several carts and shoot for the best average. Don't worry about anything higher than about 15k. A test record like https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Analogue-Test-Lp/dp/B001GBA71Y will give you measurable results.