electrical wrote on Fri, 17 June 2005 03:09 |
The cut sounds like it was done as well as anyone could expect. Bravo.
Was the full DMM process used (Deutsche Grammophon-licensed plating and pressing, fresh chemistry, etc.), or was it a copper cut with standard processing?
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All the copper master blanks we use are electro-plated in house in our own plating dept which is on the floor below our mastering studio. This allows us extremely tight quality control for this vital stage. afaik we're the only ones making DMM blanks in North America as we supply the only other user of DMM in North America that I am aware of. I believe there are 2 sources in Europe for DMM blanks though.
Plating is certainly a very vital part of the record making process - however in this case I can't comment on how it was done as Europadisk was only contracted to do the mastering. RCA had us ship the DMM masters directly to the pressing plant that does all their work so I don't know the details of how the stampers were made. I certainly don't see any reason why anyone would want to do 3-step process (i.e. master->father->mother->stamper) instead of just plating the stamper directly off of the DMM master (which is how Europadisk does all of our own plating) as one of the main advantages of using DMM is that it allows you to completely avoid two steps of plating that can potentially induce more surface noise or ticks and pops.
I have no idea what "fresh chemistry" is but I think it's important to note that to date the chemical process for electro-plating copper DMM blanks has undergone 3 major changes since the process was originally speced out by Teldec in 1982. Some of these changes were necessitated by being forced to substitute one additive that was being discontinued by a manufacturer with another - however some of the changes have also occured because they allowed some significant refinements.
One huge improvement that Europadisk was a vital part of in developing is much greater stability of the blank prior to it being passivated - in fact the blanks we make no longer need refrigeration prior to cutting yet still exhibit a lower noise floor than the ones made with the original formula.
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I've never had the full DMM treatment, but I get things cut into copper whenever possible, and I particularly appreciate the lack of groove distortion. Your reduction of land space is effective on copper, but probably would not fare as well in lacquer -- am I right?
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Well - since most of the sides were fairly short in length and I wasn't required to cut at the "hot" levels demanded for dance cuts these days - I certainly didn't have to go to extremes in order to keep the used side space down to well under 74%. Since I really didn't set things to "kiss" (where one groove just barely touches another) the settings I had would have probably been fine with a laqcuer master that was also using a decent pitch computer.
on a side note:
The VMS-8x pitch computers have 3 optional "land economy" settings that you can kick that allow you to get higher cutting levels even for extremely long sides . Essentially these settings tell the pitch computer to take more "risks" by making the changes at progressively quicker rates. With the "A" setting you can still get pretty hot levels to just "kiss" - but as you increase the land economy to the "B" & "C" settings the risk of an overcut increases unless the dynamic range is fairly low.
I know that Don Grossinger (who as anyone who has heard the Smile releases on vinyl knows already is The Man as far cutting LP's goes) actually cut something like well over a 40 minute side of classical guitar on DMM once through a well performed manipulation of these options (which probably should get him in the Guiness Book of World Records as he was actually able to finesse it so that the master plated scuff free!).
With this release I didn't have to bother using land economy though - I just kept it set to the tightest level I could easily put it to without having any grooves "kissing". For pressings of short sides oriented towards DJ's though I very often add additional land because I've found that many clients in this niche like to have the grooves evenly spaced across 80-95% of available space. In their case the demands of the scratcher/turntabilist or the buyer that judges the record by aesthetic expectations (i,e, feels uncomfortable purchasing a record that looks like it only has half the amount of grooves they think "should" be on there) wins out over concerns of keeping the last track on the side the highest fidelity possible.
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With the sides cut at 45rpm, do you need to make any allowances for depth as differentiated from 33 rpm?
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There really isn't any differentiation in depth allowances that I am aware of as being necessary between 33 and 45. Where depth becomes a bigger concern and needs occasional intervention would be for dealing with things such as areas where the phase isn't correlated, or for things like passages of high amplitude that are just all midrange, or for dealing with long sides cut at an average low level but that have a wide dynamic range that might be prone to scuffing when plated. Otherwise the depth computer on the VMS-84 is pretty darned good and usually I don't need to interfere with it's normal functioning.
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Did you need to use an elliptical equalizer or VAL, for example?
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Bob Ludwig made a very specific request to me not to use any EE whatsoever on this release - I think he just doesn't like the way they make things sound. For most of the release this didn't pose a problem at all - but there were a few spots where because the phase wasn't that well correlated that I had to kick in a VAL occasionally. One of these problem spots I unfortunately discovered in a very non-scientific way - i.e. on the first attempt at cutting the side the chip tube started dragging for a couple seconds ruining the copper. The Neumann VAB-84 we have I believe is the last VAL they manufactured and is a pretty remarkably transparent processor. I set it just to the minimal threshold needed per side for "safety and trackability".
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I've often wondered if cutters which were critically damped for 33rpm would "ring" slightly when used at 45rpm. I had been told that when cutting into copper, the stylus had more difficulty cutting the groove at low frequencies, and this required slightly different "tuning," whatever that is, for flat response. I often wondered if that might be one of the reasons the low end sounds slightly more extended at 45. Have you noticed anything you could measure in this regard?
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Hmmm... interesting question - but this isn't an area I've explored at all. Most of the sides I cut at 45 are for dance tracks cut with very hot levels. Besides a general small improvement in overall freq response for both the lows and highs I can get a bit more level before things start breaking up by going to 45.
One other tidbit I forgot to mention in the previous post: the diamond stylus we used for this release had less than 11 hours of cutting time on it (out of a potential of 200). The fresh stylus (no relation to fresh chemistry) can make a nice difference sometimes.
Best regards,
Steve Berson