Anyone mixed for vinyl?

[Line666]

As title ^, I'm working on an album that I'm mixing and mastering for a band that are planning on doing a vinyl run - is there anything I should change compared to how I would mix a CD version? I get a test pressing but before it even gets to that stage I want to know where I should be headed.

We've already whittled the runtime down to 21/22 minutes a side already (which I heard was the outer end of the format before I have to start cutting frequency bandwidth?) but should I be more hesitant with the low end in general? I'm assuming things such as sub drops or anything that will bump/jolt the needle significantly will need to be taken out but not being a vinyl connoisseur I'm not sure in what regards a modern vinyl will hold out against it's digital counterpart, help me out please!

 

[Skaldir]

General rule is cut anything under 50 Hz and make everything under 300 Hz mono. But I don't know what the vinyl cutter does. If he applies it anyway.
Reduce sibilant sounds and songs on the outside of the vinyl sound better than the one on the inside

 

[crillemannen]

Only did one release to vinyl. Spoke with a few ppl that did some releases and they told me to just do the way i normally do it. The vinyl cutter should apply those changes anyways.

 

[greyskull]

Don't 'Master' it.

And by that I mean limit the piss out of it. Let the guy cutting it do that.
It will sound like shit on vinyl if it's smashed with massive limiting, sibilant vocals, and harsh cymbals are the usual give away.

Let the guy cutting do all that other stuff.

 

[Line666]

Cheers guys!

Don't 'Master' it.

And by that I mean limit the piss out of it. Let the guy cutting it do that.
It will sound like shit on vinyl if it's smashed with massive limiting, sibilant vocals, and harsh cymbals are the usual give away.

Let the guy cutting do all that other stuff.

So are we talking no limiting with maybe just a mild master bus comp or just gentle limiting overall?

 

[HANIAK]

Very interesting, as I am mixing for a vinyl too...

So rules of thumb to have in mind are:
- Keep the dynamics (don't limit/compress the master track as you'd do with the CD release)
- Mono everything bellow 300Hz
- Cut everything below 50Hz
- Avoid harsh frequencies and sibilance

Can anyone confirm this? Any other rules to have in mind?
Will I have to do two individual master sessions: one for the vinyl, another for the digital release?

 

[HANIAK]

Oh, and this might help http://www.totalsonic.net/vinyl.htm

 

[bryan_kilco]

This stuff is pretty interesting.

 

[cobhc]

Honest question here, why is cutting below 50hz needed? I've heard a lot of of reggae and drum and bass vinyls back in the day that definitely have content below 50hz.

 

[waltz mastering]

Honest question here, why is cutting below 50hz needed? I've heard a lot of of reggae and drum and bass vinyls back in the day that definitely have content below 50hz.

Excessive sub bass or a low end that isn't controlled well will cause the needle to mis-track or skip.

Rather than using any rule that says cut or high pass at 50Hz, it's better to make sure you have a tight/controlled sounding low end.

As mentioned, the cutting engineer will fine tune what's needed to make a proper loud cut if your mix sounds good and balanced, is relatively sibilant free and uses very conservative, if any use of brickwall limiting .. To help control the low end, the ME will often use an elliptical eq which basically uses a high pass filter to cut low end on the side channel in an M/S configuration while leaving the mid channel untouched.

 

[Deathell]

Mono everything below 300Hz = collapse everything below 300Hz to mono?
I heard a lot about this but never got to how to do it..
Do you put each track into a bus and use some kind of plugin to do this?

 

[AMS]

Hello Everyone,

I have just joined the forum.

A couple of weeks ago I mastered an album for a German metal band. They wanted to release the album both in CD and vinyl format, so I sent them two sets of masters. The vinyl masters were more dynamic (i.e. less loud) and had a slightly reduced high and low frequency content to avoid cutting problems. Although the band liked both sets of masters, they preferred the ones for CD release, as they matched their listening tastes more closely.

I think one of the difficulties with mixing for vinyl these days is that we are used to hearing a different kind of a sound to when vinyl was the default standard. Today's metal has significantly more low end content (and to some extent high end content) than it did in the 1980s. Part of the reason for the change is that the reproduction range of the digital medium is far more flexible than vinyl.