The Mastering Show #107 - Mastering for 1-Off Vinyl (and short runs)

More and more people are choosing to get vinyl copies of their music made one at a time, rather than having hundreds of copies pressed at once. Or in very small batches, or allowing fans to order copies on demand.

So how does this work, and what does it mean ? How do you get the best quality results, and minimise the risk of getting something back that you're not happy with ?

Mastering for vinyl is a whole different ball-game, as I discussed in detail with Scott Hull in Episode 94. So in this show, Joe Caithness and I dig into the topic in detail, discussing:

• What is a "lathe cut" or "dubplate"
• How are they made, and how are they different to traditionally pressed vinyl ?
• Do you always need to have your music mastered by a dedicated vinyl cutting engineer ?
• How do you get the specs for the audio you should supply ? And
• Why this can be trickier than it sounds
• Do you really need to mono the bass on vinyl ? And what about phase ?

Links and more episodes here:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-107

Mentioned in this episode:

Mastering

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Tools

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Leapwing

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