Mastering For Vinyl Vs Digital

Vinyl s volume is dependent on the length of its sides and depth of its grooves which means an album mastered specifically for the format may have more room to breathe than its strained digital.

Mastering for vinyl vs digital.

When mastering for vinyl they make sure certain frequencies of the overall album weren t too high or harsh. For example they can t make the vocals louder or the drums quieter. Varying degrees of distortion. 3 005 posts since may 18 2005.

It will store and reproduce anything in it s bandwidth. If the client s budget permits having a separate digital cutting master that bypasses the limiter has added benefits in the vinyl world where the loudness wars aren t as pervasive. Skipping needles during playback. You can have sibilance at 0dbfs on digital that would either kill the recording head or distort like crazy on vinyl.

Don t worry about bass. Depending on the master some of or all of these issues can occur when using a digital master for the vinyl cutting process. The sequencing difference is that delivery from mastering for digital is either individual wav files for download or a single ddpi file for cd replication whereas for vinyl the delivery is generally two wav files one for each side of the record. The transients in your music would benefit from the headroom of the format.

Pre digital the final mix was delivered on actual tape to which the mastering engineer applied final touches to make the recording pop and shine. Vinyl is a lossy format and it has serious level dependent frequency limitations that get progressively worse towards the center of the disc. If the client s budget permits having a separate digital cutting master that bypasses the limiter has added benefits in the vinyl world where the loudness wars aren t as pervasive. Although many artists have elected to use their digital masters for the vinyl cutting process the results are often mixed in terms of quality.