Start Cutting?

[skarecrow15]

Hey fellas,

I've been occasionally browsing and accessing the forums here and i really want to get involved

I have an Otari MTR90 MkII 2" 24 Track recorder and I'm trying to learn how to cut dies from analog sources. I don't particularly agree with people cutting vinyl from digital source - I lose sleep at night...

How can I get started, what do I need to learn how to cut vinyl. I'm looking for the gear which will give me the 'best bang for my buck'.

How can I go about this?

[Aussie0zborn]

Hello and welcome! Cut dies? Umm,,, yeah the terminlogy here is a little different but you have come to the right place.

The 24 track recorder wont be necessary for cutting records but great for multi-track recording before mixing down to a stereo master tape.

You need a lathe to start cutting records. Look at the various topics here and decide what level you want to start at... you would look at the Vinylium "Kingston" Cuttter, the Souri "Vinylrecorder" or a professional lathe such as Neumann or Scully which would allow you to cut masters for production purposes.

[concretecowboy71]

Well, cutting from digital sources is the norm right now and what is bringing in the money that allows people to buy and maintain these special machines.

If you want to cut from tape you need a high quality 2 track master deck (i.e. Studer) that you can split the signal for a delay line or find a deck that was made for master cutting. The experienced members here would know all about those machines.

If you want to get into cutting as a business, you will probably have to cut digital, the market for tape cutting will certainly be smaller.

In term of cost...probably more buck than bang, depending on what you want to do (cut dubs or masters?)

Good luck, you are in the right place and don't lose too much sleep. I will happily cut all day long from digital so you won't have to!

[opcode66]

As pointed out, very few people cut from tape anymore. Reasons being that few studios record to tape anymore. So, no multitrack tape masters to make stereo submasters to make vinyl master from.

If your music starts as digital, it would not be wise to record to tape and then to disc. You can use analog warmth plugins to process digital and give it a tape sound. Or, you can run your digital through analog outboard gear to warm it up before entering the disc mastering chain. The analog amps for a cutterhead will actually add some warmth all on their own.

Having a nice tape machine is cool. But, if you want to get serious about cutting that is really not the important part. You need a good lathe body, a nice cutterhead, good amps, cutting stylii and blank discs at minimum.

If you want to use this tape machine with a standard pitch cutter then what you have is what you need. If you want to use the tape machine with a variable pitched system (the grooves are spaced farther for louder material and closer for softer material) then you will need to setup another playback head on the machine and possibly a tape loop. That will allow you to play the tape and have two stereo outs. One in realtime. The other delayed. The delayed line goes to the cutterhead. The realtime line goes to the pitch computer. It gets signal ahead of the cutterhead so it know what the music will be like one revolution of the record ahead of time and can adjust the groove spacing appropriately.

Good luck and keep asking questions here!

[agfamatic]

if you do all the recording and mastering work in the analog way you have to be prepeard that it will be a lot more work then doing it digitaly and you will need a good two track tape recorder for editing and as a recording sorce for the record lathe. you will also need a splicing block for tape editng. so it will be a bit harder then doing it digitaly but it would be a very intresting project. and im sure it would propobly sound great.

[Max]

Hello and welcome Scarecrow15!
I think the most efficient way to get an idea of the dimensions of Your plan is watching and assisting people who are already in the cutting process. Try to find a cutting studio situated close to You and ask them if You may have a look or two at their work. Sort of a practicum should be in advance of spending money for material You don´t know how to use it and whether it is useful for Your demands at all.
Where do You live?
Max

[bancho]

@opcode66
why exactly it wouldn't be wise to record to tape and then to disc?

[skarecrow15]

Hey guys and thanks for the support!

I have experience with digital recording, mostly on apogee gear running logic but let me explain what im doing.

Me and a few mates are launching a record label combining all elements of the record production process; recording, producing, and distribution.

mostly for fun

we'll be recording all the bands directly onto reel to reel (atm i'm running an otari mtr90 due to the lower maintenance levels compared to your studers). I'm looking into an A80 at the moment though for the vinyl cutting and i've already a splice block and tape so im ready to rock and roll.

ideally i'd like to focus the distro side of things on vinyl, analog vinyl that is. im in sydney, aus and there aren't too many labs around here cutting from analog... which is sad...

so I was planning on cutting the vinyl myself. I wanted to know where on earth i'd start and with what kind of gear would allow me to cut a master i could send off to a pressing lab. there is a vinyl pressing company near me but they're only cutting from digital... they all are.

so my idea is to bring back the analog side of things and recording onto analog so im not short of material.

where does a silly person such as i begin?

[opcode66]

@opcode66
why exactly it wouldn't be wise to record to tape and then to disc?

What's the point? You would be loosing sound quality and integrity making the tape transfer. It really wouldn't add that much as far as warmth is concerned. If he had a studio and he recorded masters to high quality 16 tracks using analog processing and an analog sound board and then transfered the master to a stereo sub master tape then I would see a point.

But, simply transfering from a comuter to a two track tape is not going to add the same wamth. I would wager that you would get a better result running the digital signal to a D/A and then into the cutter than you would adding the extra step of transfering to tape.

[concretecowboy71]

where does a silly person such as i begin?

With a bunch of money! Figure around 25-30K (US dollars).

Start looking for Nuemann and Scully lathes. I don't know how many Scullys made it down your way, your fellow countrymen with years of experience would know that.

Those are really the only systems capable of cutting master discs.

The other thing I would suggest is making friends with those other guys cutting down your way. The is no substitute for personal support.

Buy a lathe that works... even though mine was restored, it is 40 years old and things go wrong.

Hope this helps...pick up the phone, call some people and be polite. Seems silly and basic, but it works.

[Aussie0zborn]

Good concept. I was at Zenith Records in Melbourne last week and they have a 1/4" tape machine in the mastering studio. As it doesnt have the preview head, analog tapes would be cut through the digital delay line.

There are no cutting rooms in Sydney so Zenith Records in Melbourne is the only commercial disc cutting facility in Australia.

[skarecrow15]

Ahh thanks guys so much

We'll it'd be great to get my hands on a nice lathe, but never the less whats a good lathe to learn the art on before spending $30k on something i'll break?

Can I cut straight to vinyl and play it on a turntable at home or is the process a tad more complex?

Also whats the deal with a 'preview head' and 'advanced head cutting' ?

Thanks so much for the support!

[fraggle]

Hi mate,
have a look on this forum here are many people with the same questions.
Many of them have been answered already.
cheers

[opcode66]

Check out Vinylrecorder.com and vinylium.ch. They are both mid-range modern made cutting devices that fit on top of a Techniqs 1210 turntable.

Both systems can cut into Polycarbonate (PC or Lexan or Plastic). People call these blanks by different names but it's all the same stuff. Polycarb discs are essentially the same as pressed vinyl. So, the answer to your question is yes.

Vinylrecorder is about $6K and Vinylium is $10K. Please refer to the copious amount of debate on this site as to pros/cons of each system. Just so you know, this is a well discussed topic on the forum.

Both systems would give you a wonderful introduction to cutting and would be an excellent way to prime yourself for a $30K system.

To answer you question regarding what a preview head is.... With modern lathes comes a system for varying the space between the grooves on a record. Older mechanical lathes used feedscrews with threads that were discretetely spaced. The cutterhead would be attached to a sled that traveled across the feedscrew as it turned. Thus, grooves would be produced on the record with the same amount of space inbetween. This is referred to as a fixed pitch system (pitch = lines per inch or LPI). To give you an idea, 400 LPI would be packing the grooves very tightly. 80 LPI would be extremely loose.

The volume at which music is transcribed onto a disc will produce a deeper or more shallow groove. Deeper grooves take up more lateral space on the disc. Sounds odd but it is true. The cutting stylus is sort of triangularly shaped. So, the deeper the stylus is driven due to higher volumes, the wider the corresponding cut groove will be. Thus, in areas of the music where the volume is louder the groove will be wider and thus potentially closer to the groove next to it. In older systems, if the LPI is set to high for the audio material being cut, you could potentially create what is called an overcut where the groove being cut actually overlaps the groove cut on the prior rotation. That is a big problem and should always be avoided. Modern music and modern expectations are for very loud and very compressed music. Thus, fixed pitched systems can not accomodate those expectations. You must balance volume with lenght of source material and determine a safe LPI to use for cutting.

The other problem with fixed pitch systems is that they tend to waste space on a disc. If there are lulls or breaks in the music and thus decreased volume levels then the grooves being cut on the disc do not need to be spaced so far apart. However, when the music gets loud again, the grooves need to be spaced appropriately. And, in some cases, to avoid overcuts, the grooves need to be spaced more than the initial LPI that you determined.

So, a system was created to allow for what is called variable groove pitching. It is a "computer" that measures the peak volume level (generally) every quarter revolution of the disc. So, four times per revolution the speed of the feedscrew is adjusted. This way overcuts are avoided by increasing the speed of the feedscrew. Also, space on the disc can be maximized by decreasing the speed of the feedscrew. The only way to achieve this is if the audio can be interpreted ahead of time. So, you need two audio signals. One is the material played back in real time. It would be connected to the pitch computer. The other audio signal is delayed by a discrete amount determined by the speed you are cutting at (16.5 or 33.3 or 45 or 78 ). The amount of the delay is equal to the time it takes for the disc to make one complete revolution.

So, in older cutting rooms with a tape machine, you would add a preview head. The preview head would be set a fixed distance away from the normal playback head. The distance would depend on the inches per second that you were playing the tape back at. As long as it created a delay that was equal in time to what the pitch computer on your lathe required (again determined by the speed at which you are cutting). This delay usually required spacing the preview head and also adding some points around which tape would loop. The preview head sent signal to the pitch computer. The normal playback head on the tape machine would send delayed signal to the cutterhead on the lathe.

When cutting under this scenario, we avoid overcuts and maximize usable disc space. Hope this helps.

[concretecowboy71]

..yeah..what he said. Good info on the delay head.

The only thing I would add is that not all pitch systems use the same delay time.

Neumann run at 1.1 seconds for a 33rpm record. I don't think that is one revolution and I think people have told me Zumas run a half a rev.

Could be wrong on this...don't know.

Anybody?

[subkontrabob]

Neumann run at 1.1 seconds for a 33rpm record. I don't think that is one revolution and I think people have told me Zumas run a half a rev.

Anybody?

rpm = revolutions per minute, so: 60 seconds / 33 revolutions = 1,8 seconds

[opcode66]

Neumann run at 1.1 seconds for a 33rpm record. I don't think that is one revolution and I think people have told me Zumas run a half a rev.

Anybody?

rpm = revolutions per minute, so: 60 seconds / 33 revolutions = 1,8 seconds

Yep, that's the correct math.... And, as far as i understand it, one full revolution's worth of time is required for all pitch systems. Otherwise, why bother...

You need to be able to space the groove that is being formed properly from the last groove laid down. The only way to do this is to work one full revolution at a time. Otherwise, you wouldn't be inspecting and compensating all of the potential points where overcuts need to be avoided or land needs to be saved.

[subkontrabob]

@skarecrow15:

check out the "reference archive" and "circuits, schematics and manuals" sections for books and old manuals. Some of them contain lots of insightful stuff.

Check out Oliver Reads "The recording and reproduction of Sound" and John Sunier's "The Story of stereo", both are freely available for download, and contain chapters about disk recording.

I don't have a cutting lathe of my own, but I have cut a few sides. Cutting is not magic. You just need to do your homework VERY well (read EVERYTHING you can find), some people to get advice from (you've found them already), obviously the cutting gear, and some common sense.
Best way is of course to find a beardy old lathe troll and buy him lots of beer, then he'll maybe tell you all his secrets

I have only cut lacquers and can't say anything about cutting polycarb.

my own highly subjective opinion:
I wouldn't spend the money on a vinylrecorder or vinylium system. If you want to experiment, get a cheap old portable lathe (rek o kut or something). I would aim directly for a pro lathe.


cheers,

Bob

[opcode66]

@skarecrow15:
Check out Oliver Reads "The recording and reproduction of Sound" and John Sunier's "The Story of stereo", both are freely available for download, and contain chapters about disk recording.

If you want to know about the science of cutting or understand the progression of disc mastering technology I highly suggest spending the $40 to buy the anthology from the AES (Audio Engineering Society) called DISK RECORDING VOL.1: GROOVE GEOMETRY AND THE RECORDING PROCESS.

It is a tough read. I don't suggest trying to read it from cover to cover. Rather read the sections of interest and then keep going back to it. Some sections I need to read several times before it all sinks in. Very intellectual stuff. Reminds me of college math and physics books. But, if you can understand disc recording at its lowest levels you'll be able to handle a pro lathe if and when you ever get one.

http://www.aes.org/publications/anthologies/

Welcome to your new obsession!