How Does Music Get on Vinyl?

Okay, I'm going to try my best to explain this. It's a question we got often on tours, and some people ask over email. I'm not a scientist, nor do I pretend to understand all the nuances that go into this process, but you want to know, so here's the best explanation I can give: how does music get onto vinyl? Seems simple, right? Maybe not.

First, before music can be made physical, it has to go through the mastering process. Music has to be mastered for streaming, and mastered differently for vinyl. Mastering happens after your music is mixed, and the simplest way to put it is that it's the final polish before your music is ready to be listened to.

The next step is called lathe cutting, and it's used to imprint the mastered audio onto a lacquer plate. Grooves are cut directly onto the disc with a diamond stylus (yes, it's actually made with a diamond).

Next, a silver solution is sprayed onto the disc to make it stronger. This step matters because these plates get put under immense pressure, between 1500 and 2000 PSI, for what could be 1000 presses. The discs start wearing out once you hit that 1000-record mark, so if an order is larger than that, you have to get more plates made.

Once the lacquer plates are ready, they get installed into the vinyl press. Records are made using PVC pellets. The pellets go into what's called the hopper - basically a big silver basket that holds them, and filters them down into what’s called the extruder. In the extruder, the pellets get heated to around 300 degrees and come out shaped like a puck. That puck gets pulled out and placed into the press, between the lacquer plates, where it's squished for roughly 30-40 seconds. Once that's done, the record comes out, the edges are trimmed on a trim table, and from there it's a playable record. Because it reached temps close to 300 degrees, we let it cool for about 12 hours before doing a quality control check and packaging it up.

There you have it! A brief description of how music gets onto vinyl records.

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https://www.comsol.com/blogs/the-history-and-science-behind-vinyl-records