Perfect groove and stylus velocity warning

[marvingain]

Hello everyone!

I've been producing club music for around 15 years, and lately I've been trying out mastering my own music for digital releases. I've always left the vinyl mastering of my own music to the pros, but as the latest update of Perfect Groove is out and free, I'm trying to learn more about the cutting process. My goal is to create productions/masters that cuts well to vinyl, without the need to adjust the frequency response before cutting. Mainly, what I don't want is to have a lot of treble cut out of my productions by acceleration limiters or filters when the track is cut to vinyl - I want to try and fix this directly in my productions.

I'm managing to pass the tests in Perfect Groove, except for the "Stylus Velocity warning" which is currently set to 10 cm/s. I'm aware that both lowering the gain of the cut, and also lowering the treble, will decrease the stylus velocity, and I can get it down to 10 cm/s by using a very low cutting gain. However when leveling the club track so it fits like it normally should on a 33 (max 15 min) or 45 (max 11 min), the "stylus velocity" warning goes off, even at VERY conservative amounts of treble.

Now I've might not be understanding this correctly, but when reading the specifications for the Neumann VX74 cutting head I can see that the maximum velocity at 10kHz is 16 cm/s without cooling and 28,5 cm/s with cooling. Allowing bursts of 10ms at 105 cm/s. With these numbers in mind, 10 cm/s seems like a very conservative setting? So my question is, can I get away with around 20 cm/s for a normal cut, or will I get needle jumps on playback?

Any input here would be very helpful! I know this can be a "leave it to the pros" matter but then I wouldn't learn much about treble cutting either

[dubcutter89]

Allowing bursts of 10ms at 105 cm/s. With these numbers in mind, 10 cm/s seems like a very conservative setting?

There is a difference between the velocity a cutterhead can cut (in theory and according to a specification sheet from 50 yrears ago at absolut frightening limits just below destruction), and what the stylus (cutting and playback) can cut & trace without huuuuuge amounts of distortion!

Also the numbers are subject to turntable rotational speed as well as the radius position on disk, which makes it a little more hard to say what is ok and what not (+ subjective tolerance for distortion)
Then the volume of your digital file has no fixed correlation to the level on disk, unless you instruct the cutting engineer very precisely what to do AND the engineer can reproduce this information AND is also willing to do so...

So this standard setting maybe is good starting point. Unless you have a lathe and can run multiple testcuts or have a lot experience...
Maybe your masters for digital are just not 100% compatible with this physical medium..

Lukas

[marvingain]

Maybe your masters for digital are just not 100% compatible with this physical medium..

Hi Lukas, big thanks for your feedback! This is probably true and that's why I'm trying to improve my skills.
However, my music has been cut to vinyl many times before, and there is indeed some loss in the high end, however not nearly as much as when I stay below the 10 cm/s limit of Perfect Groove. That's what got me wondering if the limit in the software is set very conservative.

[dubcutter89]

As said the number maybe is not at the very limit of what is possible, but also there is no simple "number" what works flawless and whatever beyond will distort or destroy the cutter.
Also I have been to many cutting rooms where they had - sorry to say that - no clue how to translate a given dBFS digital to cm/s on disk... but they had a good feeling how to use their equipment and what they do and how to make records sound good!

That's the beauty of cutting records

[marvingain]

Hehe yeah I guess the only way to really know is to make the cut

[trailerparkjesus]

I know I cut masters according to what I feel is safe for my system while following the golden rule "do no harm" to the original source. As we know with vinyl... there will always be some sacrifice of phase, bass, level, or treble somewhere. You setting up the master this way is ideal for us and the tool is very useful but in the end you are at the mercy of many more variables than that interface shows. Just treat pain areas accordingly with mild fixes, their are a ton of masters I receive where they went over board with corrective eq/summing/compression etc and I could have retained more detail for them. Make sure to send notes with the master of things you hope to retain, it's important for us to know priorities of the mixing engineer (you might know this already being a producer)

[trailerparkjesus]

Also, check out the Basic Disc Mastering... there is an article in there that explains maximum groove velocities in depth that will help you wrap your head around this topic.

[marvingain]

Also, check out the Basic Disc Mastering... there is an article in there that explains maximum groove velocities in depth that will help you wrap your head around this topic.

All very useful information in the replies above, thank you for that! Then I guess I can always expect the result to vary a bit depending on the cutter and equipment used.
Also, is this the book you are referring to? https://archive.org/details/BasicDiscMasteringLarryBoden600dpi/page/n19/mode/2up
Didn't know about that one before, so that's very helpful, thanks!

[trailerparkjesus]

Also, check out the Basic Disc Mastering... there is an article in there that explains maximum groove velocities in depth that will help you wrap your head around this topic.

All very useful information in the replies above, thank you for that! Then I guess I can always expect the result to vary a bit depending on the cutter and equipment used.
Also, is this the book you are referring to? https://archive.org/details/BasicDiscMasteringLarryBoden600dpi/page/n19/mode/2up
Didn't know about that one before, so that's very helpful, thanks!

Yup but that's the old one. Look for the second edition. The article is from a stylus manufacturer, forgot what one... tons of good stuff in there to geek out on.