Hot Tip: Do Not Cheap Out on Mastering
A lot of what makes a vinyl record sound good isn’t the PVC or the mixing - it’s the mastering.The vinyl grooves is a tiny path the stylus has to follow, so the audio has to be shaped to fit it. Too much bass can make the needle skip. The highs can turn into distortion, and as the record spins toward the center, the groove moves more slowly and detail starts to suffer. A good vinyl master takes care of all of this, and it takes some real finesse to get it right. I’m an advocate for DIY, I’m a musician who has had to figure out so many things out to get my music out there, and whenever possible I like to do things myself. Mastering tough, this is where I leave it to the pros especially with vinyl. That thing is physical baby. It’ll stick around to haunt you if it’s not done right.
A digital file can be re-exported in seconds, but after a lacquer is cut and pressing begins, every mistake is in every copy. At Hellbender, we won’t let audio mistakes go through. If we hear a mistake that came from the mastering we will let you know before any pressing happens. We even have an in-house mastering engineer, so we can fix things for you if need be. This is a service we offer from the start if you don’t have a mastering artist already. All of this is just to say that we’re an exception to that, other plants might print hundreds of records for you with bad mastering. This blog isn’t supposed to be marketing for us, but just a way to inform. Mastering is so important when it comes to vinyl, and you don’t want to risk thousands of dollars for records that have audio defects. A vinyl mastering engineer knows how loud a side can be, how much runtime it can handle, and how the process from lacquer to stamper to finished record will affect the sound. They also know that a master built for streaming, with heavy compression and aggressive limiting, often translates poorly to vinyl. The result tends to sound thin, harsh, or fatiguing. Mastering for streaming vs. mastering for vinyl are two different things, so make sure you specially get vinyl mastering done.
That’s why it’s worth bringing in someone who does this for a living. Even skilled producers and mixers benefit from fresh ears, a treated room, and experience with the quirks of the format. A mastering engineer will catch problems you’ve stopped hearing and make decisions you may not have known needed making. If you’re pressing a record, mastering is one of the better places to spend money, since it determines how every copy will sound.
