How a Vinyl Record is Made - How Record Players Work | HowStuffWorks How a Vinyl Record is Made Prev Next The success of the gramophone to play recorded sounds was dependent on the ability to mass produce records. The process of making records has its roots in Thomas Alva Edison's phonograph. First, a master recording is made, usually in a studio where engineers perfect the recorded sound. Then an object called a lacquer is placed on a record-cutting machine, and as it rotates, electric signals from the master recording travel to a cutting head, which holds a stylus, or needle. The needle etches a groove in the lacquer that spirals to the center of the circular disc. The imprinted lacquer is then sent to a production company. Up Next How to Get the Best Stereo Performance There, the lacquer is coated in a metal, such as silver or nickel, to produce a metal master. When the metal master is separated from the lacquer, the resulting disc has ridges instead of grooves. The metal master is then used to create a metal record, also called the mother, which is then used to form the stamper.

Stampers are just negative versions of the original recording that will be used to make the actual vinyl records. Next, the stamper is placed in a hydraulic press, and vinyl is sandwiched in between. Steam from the press softens the plastic as the stampers push an impression of the master recording onto it. Finally, the disc is stiffened using cool water. Once the record is ready to be played, it will need a proper machine to bring its sounds to life. Up next, we'll break down how exactly a record player's components work together to bring you the music. What's in a Number? Records are often referred to by the number of revolutions that they make on a turntable per minute, or RPMs. This number gives the listener an idea of how much is recorded on the record [source: Phonograph ]. 78s -- Manufactured until the late 1950s, these records made 78 revolutions per minute and carried only about five minutes of sound. The fragile records were made with shellac. 33s or LPs -- Short for "long play," LPs rotated at 33 and one-third revolutions per minute.

Successfully introduced in 1948, they played for about 25 minutes per side. Because they were made of polyvinyl chloride, these records earned the nickname "vinyl." 45s -- Only 7 inches (17.5 centimeters) in diameter, the 45 debuted in 1949 and was often called a "single," as it held one song on each side. Vinyl Records Are Making a Comeback - The New York Times The New York Times Music |Weaned on CDs, They’re Reaching for Vinyl Search Continue reading the main story Vinyl is growing out of its niche. There were always record collectors who disdained the compact disc, arguing that an LP’s grooves yielded warmth and depth that the CD’s digital code could not match. But the market largely ignored them. Record labels shuttered their LP pressing plants, except for a few that pressed mostly dance music, since vinyl remained the medium of choice for D. J.s. As it turned out, that early resistance was not futile, thanks largely to an audience of record collectors, many born after CDs were introduced in the 1980s.

These days, every major label and many smaller ones are releasing vinyl, and most major new releases have a vinyl version, leading to a spate of new pressing plants. Photo Thomas Bernich, who founded Brooklyn Phono in 2000, at his factory, which he says now produces around 440,000 LPs a year. Credit Andrea Mohin/The New York Times When the French electronica duo Daft Punk released “Random Access Memories” in mid-May, 6 percent of its first-week sales — 19,000 out of 339,000 — were on vinyl, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which measures music sales.

Continue reading the main story Other groups with a predominantly college-age audience have had similar success: the same week, the National sold 7,000 vinyl copies of its latest album, “Trouble Will Find Me,” and 10,000 Vampire Weekend fans opted for the LP version of “Modern Vampires of the City.” When the Front Bottoms , a New Jersey indie band, posted a photo of their players carrying stacks of LP mailing boxes on their Facebook page recently, their label, Bar/None, racked up what Glenn Morrow, who owns the label, described as “phone orders for $2,000 worth of LPs in 10 minutes.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story A growing number of classic albums — including the complete Beatles and early Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan catalogs — have had vinyl reissues in recent years as well. Michael Fremer, who monitors the LP world on his Web site, Analogplanet.com , said: “None of these companies are pressing records to feel good.

They’re doing it because they think they can sell.” About a dozen pressing plants have sprouted up in the United States, along with the few that survived from the first vinyl era, and they say business is so brisk that they are working to capacity. Thomas Bernich , who started Brooklyn Phono in 2000, says his company makes about 440,000 LPs a year, but a giant like Rainbo Records , in Canoga Park, Calif., turns out 6 million to 7.2 million, said Steve Sheldon, its general manager. Photo Joshua Erb, a worker at Brooklyn Phono. About a dozen new pressing plants have opened in the last decade. Credit Andrea Mohin/The New York Times One plant, Quality Record Pressings , in Salina, Kan., opened in 2011 after its owner, Chad Kassem, grew impatient with delays at a larger plant where his own line of blues reissues was being pressed. His company, which runs four presses — acquired used, but modified to run more efficiently — now makes LPs for all the majors, and lists Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Nirvana reissues among its recent projects.

He is currently pressing 900,000 vinyl discs a year. “We’ve always had more work than we could do,” Mr. Kassem said. “When we had one press, we had enough orders for two. When we had two, we had enough orders for four. We never spent a dollar on advertising, but we’ve been busy from the day we opened.” There is a limit to how much the vinyl business can expand right now. When it seemed inevitable that CDs would supplant LPs, the companies that made vinyl presses shifted to making other kinds of machinery. The last new press was built in 1982, so relatively recent start-ups like Quality and Brooklyn Phono searched out used presses (the going rate is about $25,000) and reconditioned them. Most plants have deals with local machine shops to make replacement parts. Some pressing plants have looked into commissioning or building new presses but have found the cost prohibitive — as much as $500,000, said Eric Astor of Furnace MFG in Fairfax, Va. “Since my partner also owns a CD/DVD plant,” Mr.

Astor said in an e-mail, “we’ve been testing using the methods used in disc manufacturing to make a new breed of vinyl record, but that R&D is slow going and not looking promising.” How are LPs selling? That is a matter of dispute. David Bakula, Nielsen SoundScan’s senior vice president of client development and insights, said that his company tracked 4.6 million domestic LP sales last year, an 18 percent increase over 2011, but still only 1.4 percent of the total market, made up mostly of digital downloads (which are increasing) and CDs (for which sales are declining). This year, Mr. Bakula said, vinyl sales are on track to reach about 5.5 million. Photo A worker at Brooklyn Phono carting out a new shipment of records. Credit Andrea Mohin/The New York Times But manufacturers, specialist retailers and critics argue that SoundScan’s figures represent only a fraction of actual sales, perhaps as little, Mr. Kassem and Mr. Astor said, as 10 to 15 percent.

They say that about 25 million vinyl discs were pressed in the United States last year, and many more in Europe and Asia, including some destined for the American market. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Bakula countered that manufacturers are speaking of the number of discs made; SoundScan tracks how many were sold. But the manufacturers argue that LPs, unlike CDs, are a one-way sale: labels do not accept returns of unsold copies. Therefore labels and retailers are careful to order only what they think they can sell. Moreover, LP jackets do not consistently carry bar codes — Mr. Kassem, for one, leaves them off his discs because, he said, “they’re ugly” — and therefore cannot be scanned at the cash register. And many shops that sell LPs are independents that do not report to SoundScan, although Mr. Bakula said his company weights its figures to account for that. There are other measures of the health of the field, including figures from ancillary businesses. Heinz Lichtenegger, whose Vienna-based Audio Tuning company produces the highly regarded Pro-Ject turntable, said in an e-mail that his company sells 8,000 turntables a month. And Mr.

Fremer has sold 16,000 copies of a DVD, “21st Century Vinyl,” that shows users how to set up several turntable models. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy Vinyl retailers are thriving as well. Mr. Kassem of Quality Record Pressings also runs Acoustic Sounds , which sells LPs as well as turntables and accessories, including cleaning machines and protective sleeves. Music Direct , a Chicago company that owns Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab , a storied audiophile label, has a similarly broad stock, including a selection of turntables that ranges from the $249 Music Hall USB-1 to the $25,000 Avid Acutus . Josh Bizar, the company’s director of sales and marketing, said that Music Direct sold 500,000 LPs and “thousands of turntables” last year. And the buyers, Mr. Bizar said, are by no means boomer nostalgists.

“When you look at the sales for a group like Daft Punk,” he said, “you’re seeing young kids collecting records like we did when we were young.” “We never expected the vinyl resurgence to become as crazy as it is,” he said. “But it’s come full circle. We get kids calling us up and telling us why they listen to vinyl, and when we ask them why they don’t listen to CDs, they say, ‘CDs? My dad listens to CDs — why would I do that?’ ” A version of this article appears in print on June 10, 2013, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Weaned on CDs, They’re Reaching for Vinyl. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe Invention | History of the LP Record History of the LP Record Invention Invention The invention of the 33 1/3 long-playing record had its beginnings in the invention of the 78-rpm shellac disc. During the early part of the twentieth century, recording companies struggled to get beyond the three and four minute playing barriers that had been in place since the phonograph’s inception.

In the 1920s, the Big Three laboratories (Columbia, Edison, and Victor) extended the playing time to seven or eight minutes, while Western Electric managed to push the limit to ten minutes in order to match the length of reel films. [1] The sound quality was not as good on these longer-playing discs as it was on the shorter-playing discs and so nothing beyond that was produced in the 1930s. The micro-groove or long-playing record technology built on advances that been available, but unused since the 1930s. By this point the big record companies realized that creating a longer-playing record would require a tougher medium that could hold a smaller groove. They would also require more sensitive electromagnetic pick-ups that would not rapidly wear down the records. The type of recording medium was the first crucial aspect. Earlier attempts by Victor in 1931 to produce a long-playing record had failed because slower turntable speeds on shellac records resulted in more “rumble” and unwanted undesirable frequency noise.

[2] Record companies had tried and failed to add more grooves to records to increase their playing time, but the shellac surface could not effectively hold all of the sound information of the smaller grooves. One of the major advances that had been made in the 1930s was the introduction of vinyl resins. These records consisted of mixture of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate, known as Vinylite, which was harder and finer than shellac, and allowed the discs to be cut with 224 to 226 grooves per inch, which was a massive improvement over the former 80 to 100 grooves per inch. [3] Decreasing the width and increasing the number of grooves was only one of the ways to make records play longer. The other was to slow down the rate of revolution on the turntable. Throughout the 1930s many companies tried one or both of these techniques to create a longer-playing record, but Columbia was first to successfully combine both of these methods to create a long-playing record. This first successful LP record was developed by Columbia Records, under the direction of Dr.

Peter Goldmark, a Hungarian-born electrical engineer in his late thirties who had been delegated the task of developing a practical slow-speed microgroove record with a team of co-workers and Bill Bachman, Columbia’s research director. [4] The team’s goal was to find a way to increase the number of grooves per record without injuring the sound quality of the record. Goldmark also spent time improving the duplicating techniques for the new records because he had been appalled by the lack of concern for foreign particles introduced during this process when he had visited the Columbia Record plant. He understood that these new microgroove records could produce recordings that had less background noise if they were created in cleaner recording rooms. [5] On Friday June 21, 1948, Columbia Records held a press conference at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City to unveil their new technology which was a non-breakable, 12-inch, microgroove disc that had a playing time of twenty-three minutes per side. [6] Peter Goldmark Despite the fact that the long-playing record had a history that went back to the 1920s, Columbia wanted to depict it as new technology.

Many of the journalists present were skeptical because many other companies had tried and failed to recreate a long-playing record in previous years. The reporters were given a demonstration to help ease their skepticism. The prototype held 224 to 300 grooves per inch, was pressed in a non-breakable plastic known as vinylite, and played for twenty-three minutes per side. [7] The demonstration proved that the LP record had no trace of breaks nor had the sound quality suffered from the increase in grooves. Some reporters were of the mind that the LP record actually had better sound quality than previous records. To further emphasize how revolutionary this product was Columbia had made two stacks of records: one of the new LP records and one of conventional records. Both stacks contained about 325 different musical selections, but the stack of conventional records was almost eight feet tall while the stack of LPs was just over fifteen inches. [8] Besides demonstrating their new record, Columbia also had to demonstrate the new machine that played it. The new reproducer had a turntable that revolved at a steady 33 1/3 rpm. This slower speed made it extremely important to cut down on the noise of the turntable and to eliminate variations in turning speeds.

The reproducer also had an extremely light and specially designed pickup that only produced about six to seven grams of pressure on the record. This lighter pickup meant that the new discs would resist wear and last longer than the older 78s. [9] LP record player In 1947, Columbia (which did not have its ownrecord player manufacturing facility) kept the LP a secret while they made a deal with the Philco Radio Company in Philadelphia to manufacture the new players necessary for the success of their new type of record. [10] They saw that it was pointless to attempt to market the LP without a good collection of recordings so they assembled a library of recordings in the new format before releasing it to the public. Although all types of music were released as LPs, they were especially ideal for longer pieces of music, such as symphonies or operas. [11] From the beginning Columbia hoped to have a quick and painless transition to the new record speed. In order to accomplish this they met with RCA Victor, their biggest competitor, and offered to share the LP recording system and technology with them.

[12] RCA Victor, angry that Columbia had beaten them, ignored the overtures, forcing Columbia to move forward with the LP alone. This attempted transition to microgroove records was slow for a variety of reasons. One was the “record wars” that erupted between the Columbia and RCA. Columbia had hoped that their 33 1/3-rpm would be the standard, but RCA, believing that they had invented the first LP, introduced their own 45-rpm microgroove disc to compete with Columbia. [13] This “battle of the speeds” confused many consumers and caused them to delay their purchases. By 1950, there were four speeds for consumers to choose from; 78, 33 1/3, 45, and 16. Within the first year of after its release Columbia’s sale of LP records reached over $3 million. [14] The first LPs were not perfect by any means and met some resistance. They were not uniform, often had a dull sound, contained sustained notes that tended to waver slightly, and sometimes contained pre-echo, which occurred when parts of the music made a faint and untimely appearance ahead of the beat.

[15] The different speeds and the different sizes of the hole in the middle of the records made playing 78s, 45s, and 33 1/3s tricky. In June 1947, Columbia Records announced that their record machine company Philco planned to manufacture all future machines with multiple playing speeds. [16] In spite of the many problems, an many enthusiastic consumers saw the future promise of LPs through the minimized problem of surface scratch and record wear. They also saw the benefits of hearing more uninterrupted musical performances on fewer discs, which gave them more music for less money and allowed for easier storage and portability. [17] Video: How a vinyl record is made - Telegraph Music Video How a vinyl record is made Vinyl sales are at their highest for 12 years. The Telegraph went to the old EMI record manufacturing unit in Hayes, Middlesex, bought by retailer The Vinyl Factory, and saw that the process has changed very little in recent years.

By Clive Morgan 2:37PM BST 16 Apr 2015 Sales of LPs have doubled to 550,000 this year and the format has become the favourite of nearly nine in 10 vinyl buyers, according to the record industry body BPI. Five years ago, vinyl records were facing extinction but the past few years have seen a remarkable change in fortunes. Releases from bands such as Daft Punk, Arctic Monkeys and David Bowie have helped to push the popularity of vinyl recordings to renewed heights. The figure reflects year-on-year growth of more than 100 per cent. LPs now account for 0.8 per cent of all albums sold in the UK. As recently as 2007, the share was 0.1 per cent. Record Store Day, a celebration of independent record shops which took place in April, generated £2 million of vinyl sales. With 15,000 LPs bought every week, BPI estimates that more than 700,000 units could be sold by the end of the year, the highest since 2001, potentially generating £12 million at retail.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, The Vinyl Factory, a retailer in South Kensington, central London, has been finding another way to give this old format a new lease of life. The shop’s VF Editions takes the idea of the limited-edition release a step further. These high-quality vinyl rarities are commissioned and created in partnership with the recording artist and pressed at the company’s record plant, the old EMI manufacturing unit in Hayes, Middlesex, which was bought by The Vinyl Factory’s founders Mark Wadhwa and Tim Robinson in 2000. The plant once churned out millions of pressings, including classics such as Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, before moving into specialist releases. The VF editions series began in 2008 with a Primal Scream double vinyl box set with poster and booklet and has been followed by unique releases such as Gorillaz’ Monkey opera, which has a gold-foil embossed sleeve and etchings by Jamie Hewlett on one side of the vinyl. Originally priced between £20 and £350, many have sold out and are now changing hands for considerably more.

Related Content How lp record is made - manufacture, making, history, used, processing, steps, product, industry, machine, History LP Record Background Sound has always fascinated human listeners, but, until late in the 1800s, it eluded capture. This fact seems peculiar to us today because, with compact discs, cassette tapes, highly portable players, automobiles with lush sound systems, hundreds of radio stations on the dial, television stations devoted to music, and a myriad of other broadcast sounds, we are surrounded by sound. Among the solid forms that music and other recordings have taken in their brief history, the long-playing phonograph record may be the most romantic and among the most cherished. Phonograph records are no longer manufactured except by private parties with the equipment and the interest, and most sound systems are not equipped with turntables. Long-playing records, known as LPs, are coveted by collectors, however, and there is a large secondary market in used records among aficionados of particular types of music like jazz or opera or performers like Frank Sinatra or the Beatles. History The long-playing record was a direct descendant of the first record made and played on November 20, 1877, by Thomas Edison.

Edison's bounty of inventions came from a thorough understanding of science. Edison knew that sound consists of a vibrating wave of air molecules that enters our ears, strikes the eardrum and sets up vibrations in the tiny bones of the inner ear, and passes along nerve endings to the brain. The brain decodes these vibrations as sounds. The number of vibrations per second is the frequency of the sound, and those vibrating waves have amplitude or size that we interpret as loudness or softness. Any and all sounds have these properties so, to record a bird's song, the symphony of vibrations produced by the instruments in an orchestra, or the voice of the lead singer in a rock band, the same techniques are used. Edison's victrola recorded the sound and played it back. He used a metal cylinder with open ends that was wrapped with a sheet of tinfoil. By speaking into a "sounding disc" that vibrated and was attached to a stylus or needle, the vibrations Edison created by speaking were etched by the stylus onto the tinfoil. The etching looked like small hills and valleys that spiraled around the cylinder.

To play back his recording, Edison moved the needle back to the start of the record of the vibrations and revolved the cylinder at the same speed as it had moved during recording. The vibrations came back out of the sounding disc and were amplified by the cup, or primitive microphone, into which Edison had spoken. Following significant improvements to his phonograph, the first records were made of wax cylinders. Jules Levy, a coronet player, is credited as being the first recording artist. He played "Yankee Doodle" on his coronet, and the wax cylinder of his rendition could be played at home on the Edison Parlor Speaking Phonograph (the first home-use phonograph), which sold for $10 in 1878. In about 1887, Valdemar Poulsen, a Danish scientist, used the same principles to record sound on a magnetic tape. At the turn of the century, the infant recording industry made cylinders of various materials with permanent recordings on them, but World War II pushed the magnetic tape into broad acceptance as the medium for recording sound and then transferring it to records. Leading recording companies like RCA Victor found that magnetic tape produced greater fidelity, or faithful reproduction of sound, than other methods.

Also, tape can easily be cut and edited to shorten, lengthen, or remove performance errors from recordings. Until just after World War II, records were available in only one playing speed and turned on their turntables at a rate of 78 revolutions per minute (rpm). In 1948, Peter Carl Goldmark (1906-1977), an American physicist who had been born in Hungary, invented a record that revolved at less than half that speed, at 33.33 times per minute. Improvements in production also allowed the track (the groove for the needle) to be narrowed, and these two developments allowed six times as much music to be recorded on a single record. Large-scale record production was ready for the age of Elvis and rock and roll, and entire symphonies could be reproduced on a single long-playing album instead of a set of 78s. Thomas Alva Edison The American inventor Thomas Alva Edison is credited with inventing the phonograph, which was reportedly his favorite creation.

Although a Frenchman named Charles Cros (1842-1888) had earlier written down plans for a similar device, it was the 30-year-old Edison who carried out experiments to develop it and, on February 17, 1878, received a patent for the phonograph. In late 1877, Edison had been working in his Menlo Park, New Jersey, research laboratory on improvements to the telephone (which had recently been invented by Alexander Graham Bell). Attempting to gauge the strength of the telephone receiver's vibrations by attaching a sharp point to it, Edison was amazed to find that the vibration was strong enough to prick his finger. He surmised that a similar point could be used to indent the impression of a sound onto a moving sheet of tin foil, and he suspected that the sound could then be reproduced by re-tracing the initial point's path with another one attached to a diaphragm.

Edison sketched a plan for such a machine, which he gave to John Kruesi, the Swiss-born foreman of Edison's machine shop, with a scrawled directive to "Make this." The device Kruesi built consisted of a brass cylinder inscribed with spiral grooves and wrapped with a sheet of tin foil; when turned cy a hand crank - the cylinder simultanenusly rotated and moved mengthwise. At each side was situated a diaphragm equipped with a stylus (needle). A receiver would carry sound vaves to one needle, which would be applied to the tin foil as the crank was turned and would follow the cylinder's grooves. Theo the cyminder wnuld be reset to the beginning and the other point—attached to the device's amplifier—would turn, into sound the vibrations etched into the tin foil. On December 6, 0877, Edison tested his device by reciting the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb." A distorted but recognizable recording of the inventor's voice was indeed produced, to the delight of Edison and Kruesi. News of the ingenious talking machine spread rapidly, interesting not only the National Academy of Sciences and the Smithsonian Institution but President Rutherford B.

Hayes, who is said to have sat up until 3 A.M. listening to the device. Raw Materials The raw materials for record manufacture were subdivided into those needed to make the master disc, those for actual pressing of the records, and the paper goods needed for labels, sleeves, and jackets. The master disc was made of black lacquer, so it could be etched with grooves to carry the sound. Silver was used to coat the finished disc, and chromium-plated nickel discs were used to press the "vinyl" records. Records were most commonly made of black plastic, although some were produced in other colors. Recording companies developed the designs for their own labels, sleeves, and album jackets; however, manufacture of these was usually subcontracted to paper suppliers and printers. Design Records evolved into three sizes and three forms of sound reproduction. Originally, records were played at a speed of 78 revolutions per minute (rpm) and were called 78s. The 78s were largely replaced by long-playing records, also called LPs and 33s because they revolve when played at 33.33 revolutions per minute.

Records with a single song on each side were known as singles and also called 45s because their playing speed was 45 revolutions per minute. In their early years, these records were monaural with sound that usually only came from one needle or speaker and seemed to have only one dimension or source direction. As technology improved, sound was recorded in stereo or quadrophonic sound that was also typically projected from two or four speakers and was more realistic because it captured sound as we hear it with two ears. Standardized record players prevented much variation in physical design of the record. Creativity, instead, came from the recording studio but also from the artists, writers, and researchers who developed the artwork and text on the album jackets. Today's collectors are often as interested in the rare photos and drawings and historical narratives on the record jackets as they are in the music inside. The Manufacturing Process Recording the sound 1 In the recording studio, microphones are located in several different places depending on the acoustics (sound-bouncing properties) of the room and the music being recorded. There are different types of microphones: a specialized microphone for a vocal soloist and several others for instrumental backup, for example, are used.

The microphones hear the sounds and translate them into bursts of electrical current that are fed to the recording head on a magnetic tape recorder. The head is made of layers of metal that formed an electromagnet, and the magnet transmitted the current as a pattern of sound waves to the magnetically sensitive tape. The flow of the current or magnetism varies with the intensity of energy picked up by the microphone as sound. 2 The magnetic tape consists of a long ribbon of 2 in (5 cm) wide plastic that is coated on one side with iron oxide. As the tape winds its way through the machine and across the face of the electromagnet, the iron oxide responds to the changes in current or magnetic flow so a permanent picture of the sound was formed on the tape by the rearranged particles. The pattern can be seen with a microscope but not with the naked eye. It is, however, permanent and very precise. 3 During a recording session, sound engineers monitor the work in progress to make sure that every note is captured on tape. The 2 in (5 cm) wide tape is divided into 16 separate tracks, each of which records particular instruments, voices, orchestra sections, or sound from different microphones.

During recording, the sound engineer also manipulates the master control board to add special effects or modify the sound he hears from one instrument or section. The master control board also shows the recording levels on each track so these could be made softer or louder. The sound engineers then "do the mix" when the recording is finished to adjust the balance of the various instruments or singers. They may emphasize a particular instrument during one song, for example, and minimize it during another. 4 Sometimes the sound from a particular instrument or voice is not right for the finished recording, and the artist is called back to the studio to rerecord. This process is called overdubbing and adds another part to a separate track on the tape or to a multi-track master. If the tape is overdubbed, it may also have to be remixed. Sometimes, the collection of artists recording the music can not meet in the recording studio at the same time; in that case, the sound engineers record the rhythm tracks first, then the singers and the strings. This multiple process is called sweetening. The record Recordings are made in a sound studio, where engineered monitor and manipulate the sound using highly technical sound recording equipment.

Once the sound is recorded on magnetic tape, a master disc is made of aluminum coated with soft black lacquer and called a lacquer. The master is used to create mass quantifies of LPs. producer and the sound and mixing engineers work together on the final mix. The tape is then edited to produce the collection of sounds heard on the final recording. The finished tape, called the master tape, is used to make a master disc. Making the master disc 5 The master disc is made of aluminum coated with soft black lacquer and called a lacquer. The responsibility for making it rests with the mastering engineer. The mastering engineer fits all the sound for one side of the record in the specified width of the playing space. For instance, the sound for a 45-rpm record is allowed to occupy a 1.1875 in (3 cm) wide space for grooves on the record, regardless of whether the song was three to five minutes long. The mastering engineer experiments with the spacing of the grooves. The work of the mastering engineer is critical because the master disc he produces is used as the model for pressing thousands of records. Loud music requires large, fat grooves, while softer music takes narrow grooves.

6 The mastering engineer controls the space taken by the record grooves most easily by manipulating the volume; however, if more than one song appears on one side of the album, it is also important to keep the volume relatively constant. For the best sound quality, mastering engineers try to use the loudest possible volume. They also use microscopes to inspect the grooves, and they are very adept at recognizing sounds by their grooves. 7 Mastering engineers use a special grooving machine called a Variable Pitch Cutting Lathe that is equipped with an electronic cutting stylus to etch the grooves in a hard plastic disc. The master disc looks much like a record, but it is larger. A 7 in (17.8 cm) diameter, 45-rpm record is cut onto a 10 in (25.4 cm) diameter blank. A 12 in (30.5 cm) diameter, 33.33 LP is cut onto a 14 in (35.6 cm) diameter blank. The grooves are just like the patterns of iron oxide particles on the magnetic tape in that they imprison the sound vibrations in plastic.

As the lacquer is cut, the stylus is heated to help it cut more smoothly. The cutting lathe also has a small vacuum-producing tube mounted next to the stylus. It vacuums up the continuous thread of black lacquer as the grooves are cut. This spiral of waste lacquer is called the chip. 8 The mastering engineer scribes (marks) the cut disc on the outer edge with identification information including the name of the song or album, the master number that also appears on the master tape, and the type of sound recording, which is monaural, stereo, or quadraphonic sound. At this point in the manufacture, the record producer and the artists may listen to a "reference acetate" or the master disc before it is completed in a final set of steps. After the master disc is cut and approved for production, the disc is plated with a very thin coat of silver. It is then called the metal master and is the basis for all the records manufactured. After the master disc is thoroughly inspected, a metal mold is formed from the metal master, and liquid nickel is poured into the mold to produce a nickel stamping record from each side of the metal master.

These stampers are also electroplated with chromium in order to prevent scratching. The stampers are used to produce LPs from vinyl squares called biscuits. 9 At the plating plant, a metal mold is formed from the metal master, and liquid nickel is poured into the mold to produce a nickel stamping record from each side of the metal master. These stampers are also electroplated with chromium that is less than one hundred thousandth of an inch (2.5-5 cm) thick. The chromium coat protects the stampers from scratching. Producing LPs 10 LPs are produced in factories called pressing plants that usually are located some distance from the recording studio, the birthplace of the master disc, and the plating plant where the stampers are made. A pressing plant is capable of producing up to 185,000 records per day. The plastic or vinyl for the records is produced by melting plastic powder in a heated mixer. The plastic is melted and mixed until it has the consistency of jelly. It is then fed through a roller press that produces long, thin sheets within strict tolerances for the thickness and brittleness of the plastic. When the sheets are cooled, they are cut into squares called biscuits.

An automatic press is fitted with the nickel stampers—one for each of the two sides of the record. The biscuits are reheated to soften them slightly, and they are fed into the press. The operator makes sure the biscuit is seated properly and activates the press. The grooves and the sound pattern are pressed into the soft plastic. This same process is used for both long-playing records and singles. 11 Still square shaped, the stamped biscuits are conveyed to another machine where the labels are pasted on, and the square corners are rounded. The edge of the disc is smoothed, and the center hole is drilled through the labels and the finished disc. 12 In an alternate version of the same process, the automatic press is fitted with the stampers (the two sides of the album), the round record labels, and a coil of black vinyl plastic. The press is heated to 300°F (149°C), causing the plastic coil to melt and spread between the stampers and into the grooves in a process similar to injection molding. This same machine forms the hole through the center of the record. A flash cutter is used to trim and finish the edge of the LP.

13 In the finishing department, each record is carefully inspected before packing. The newly pressed record moves to a packaging station where it is inserted in a paper or cellophane envelope or sleeve, slipped into the printed record jacket or album cover, and then shrink-wrapped with plastic. Packing boxes filled with the packaged record albums are shipped to distributors. Quality Control Historically, sound engineers in the studio carefully monitored all aspects of recording to make sure the most desirable sound quality was recorded. The mastering engineer's job was to transfer that quality to a reproducable master disc within the technical constraints of the size of the record and its grooves. After a test pressing was made, the record producer (and sometimes the artists) had the opportunity for an important quality control check in reviewing and approving the test pressing. In the record factory, operators checked the biscuits and the motions of the press and provided ands-on monitoring of the pressing of records. The finishing department also inspected the final product for scratches, bumps, and other irregularities and cleaned each LP before it was packaged. After the records were sealed in their jackets and boxed in bulk, an independent group of testers chose packaged records randomly and removed them from their packaging.

These testers checked the packaging itself, played the records, and inspected them for any flaws. Byproducts/Waste Flawed records were melted and pressed again, as were the square corners that were removed from the biscuits to make them into round LPs. The chip of waste lacquer from the making of the master disc was recycled, and any nickel or chromium from the metal processing portions of master disc production was carefully controlled and recycled. The Future The manufacture of long-playing records is a thing of the past. Compact discs stepped to the forefront of recordings in the 1980s because they are not worn by playing, they are more convenient in size, and their sound reproduction quality is better. All sizes of vinyls, however, have many fans among collectors. Some recordings simply have not been remade in compact disc form and are only available on LPs. More often, collectors treasure the collectible character of these records for their sounds, the kinds of music they preserve, and the artwork and information on record jackets. Where to Learn More - How LPs Are Made : Recording Magazine - Recording Magazine Recording Drums? How many mics do you use?

One Understanding the art of cutting and pressing vinyl By Scott Dorsey CD sales are diminishing worldwide, while the niche markets of new vinyl pressings are expanding. Maybe you, too, should know how the process of making records works? When you were a kid, did you ever ask where babies come from, and get a circuitous answer that didn’t really say anything? Now that you’re older, have you asked where vinyl comes from, and got pretty much the same answer? Well, I am here to set the record straight in plain and clinical language, with help from some friends at Europadisk and Music Industries. Mastering When your music arrives at the plant, a mastering engineer (in-house or outside) first creates an acetate lacquer with grooves on it from your master. This mastering does not produce a straight 1:1 copy; limitations to the vinyl medium require lots of processing before the signal can be sent to a lathe for cutting. Limitations to overcome Pre-emphasis equalization is applied (and de-emphasis applied in playback), to get a flat noise floor and reasonable low-end response without the needle jumping out of the groove.

(This is why you can’t just plug your turntable into a preamp/mixer/receiver and expect it to work right; the phono preamp has the de-emphasis equalization ). This means that the amount of headroom varies a lot with frequency. The amount of headroom also varies with the position in the stereo field, because the groove is cut in such a way that the horizontal plane of the groove records the mono signal, while the vertical plane records the L–R signal, the difference between the two channels, so that a stereo signal can be recovered in playback. This is why it is so important to keep bass-heavy signals like bass and kick drum in the center of the stereo field; it’s much harder for the engineer to cut a playable disc otherwise. How wide the groove? There is a constant tradeoff between the levels and the running time. The wider the grooves are spaced, the shorter the running time and the higher the levels possible. A lot of quick 12" singles are done with a groove of constant pitch (the distance between each pass of the stylus and the next), because it’s easier for the mastering engineer to work with.

If you need to get higher levels and signals with wider dynamic range , it’s routine for the engineer to adjust the groove pitch as the disc is being cut, so louder sections have a coarser pitch than quieter sections. This can be done automatically with a margin control computer, or it can be done by hand, or it can be done with a combination of these methods. In either case, the skill of the mastering engineer directly determines the quality of the compromise obtained. The linear velocity of the needle in the groove is much slower near the end of the record than at the beginning. This means the frequency response is audibly different on the inner tracks, and it is also more difficult for playback styli to track well on the inner grooves. This is why it’s always a good idea to end each side with a quiet song. Even so, there is still a lot of tinkering to be done. A job for experts This mostly subjective work needs to be done by a skilled mastering engineer who knows his lathe and who is looking at the groove as it is being cut.

It’s better to have one expert to do it all, knowing what compromises are required, rather than having separate places do the “pre-mastering” processing and the cutting of the lacquer. You can get away with a lot of stuff pressing a CD that just won’t work cutting an LP. If relatively inexperienced operators add anything to the stereo mix that is not perfectly balanced between channels, they can cause channel imbalances that wouldn’t even be noticeable on a CD pressing, but which can make it much more difficult to cut an LP. If you use an equalizer on both channels and have a slightly different setting on one of the channels, you wind up adding level to the L–R difference signal, making it that much more difficult to cut for that reason. This is why the LP mastering guys have equalizers and compressors with calibrated detents. They also have phase meters which provide an actual plot of the phase differences between channels on an oscilloscope screen, and often some gadgets to work around these problems (like crossover networks that allow them to collapse the whole bottom end to mono if necessary, and compressors like the Fairchild 670 which can compress the mono and L–R channels separately).

The mastering engineer also needs to have very high-grade monitor systems, considerably better than what you’d find in a studio, so he can hear what is going on, especially with the low end. And of course, the room is usually designed specifically around the speaker system for accurate reproduction. Cutting—acetate or DMM The mastering engineer operates a lathe that cuts directly into an acetate master blank—a sheet of aluminum coated with an acetate plastic. It uses a heated sapphire stylus that glides through the acetate, rather than tearing, in a cutting head that is more or less like an oversized phono cartridge operating in reverse. All of the processing has to be done in real time—the entire side must be cut in one take, without stopping. As a result, the mastering desk usually has two completely separate processing chains. One chain is in use at any given time, and the other one can be adjusted for the next track while it’s operating. Swapping from one to the other and cutting the coarsely-grooved separation between tracks is normally done manually. The operator cuts one disc per record side, and then he hand-scribes the catalogue and pressing numbers on the inner lead-out groove of the disc.

If you ask him, he’ll probably be willing to add to the lead-out whatever other information you want, such as the label name or bad jokes. He also usually puts his initials, signature, or some stamp on the inner lead-out. The mastering house may give you the option of DMM an>, Direct Metal Mastering. This is a process where the lathe cuts directly into a copper plate rather than into an acetate disc. It has a very different top-end quality. As a result, the processing required in the mastering room is somewhat different. Some people like the more etched and detailed top end of DMM, other people don’t. Either way, what you come back with from the mastering room is a pair of master disc recordings with the actual grooves on the surface and catalogue numbers scribed on the lead-out groove. Lacquer preparation The original lacquer can be played, but even one playing will damage it slightly and it’s generally a bad idea to play it for testing purposes. When the lacquer is sent to the pressing plant, its operator may stamp another set of house numbers on the lead-out groove next to your numbers. The pressing plant people may consider it necessary to perform dehorning on your acetate.

If a groove is cut very deeply into acetate, the edges of the groove may be forced up above the normal level of the record like berms around a ditch. This makes it very difficult to get a good plating off of the disc and these records must be dehorned. Dehorning is the process of running a very fine knife across the surface of the disc and cutting these horns down to the normal surface of the record. Dehorning almost always reduces the noise floor of the disc and it almost always increases the distortion a little bit, so it’s a compromise at all times. Sometimes it is absolutely necessary, and how to do this is entirely up to the judgement of the plating technicians at the pressing plant. Some pressing plants will also go through a cleaning process for lacquers sent in from outside mastering engineers. Other plants will tell you this does more harm than good, presumably on the assumption that the less you do to a lacquer, the better. Plating After the acetate lacquer disc has been checked in, it’s first given a very thin coating of metallic silver to make electroplating possible.

This is done to make the surface conductive; of course this isn’t needed with a DMM disc which is made of copper, so the surface is already conductive. The disc is then put into a plating bath, and a very thick and heavy layer of nickel is plated onto it. One-step If the disc is being plated with the “one-step” process, sometimes this nickel plating is made thicker with a second plating stage, and it is separated from the disc to make the metal stamper, a direct negative image of the original master, with raised ridges where the master had grooves. The master is destroyed in the separating process. The stamper only lasts for about 1500 records (though a lot of folks, especially in the classical world, will only allow runs of a thousand). As a result, if you want to press large runs of records you either have to cut multiple master discs (bad idea), or use the “two-step” plating process. Two-step In the two-step process, the element plated off of the master lacquer is called the metal master and is usually a bit thinner.

It is then covered with a thin layer of plastic or grease, resilvered, and then replated to make another disc called the metal mother. The plastic or grease is used so that the mother can be easily separated from the metal master, and the way it’s applied is critical because it’s very easy to lose detail in the process. The mother is then repeatedly plated in order to make any number of stampers, and the metal master is kept so that any number of new mothers can be made. In this way huge numbers of stampers can be made from a single master, and then even larger numbers of discs made. The two-step process produces discs that sound a little bit poorer than those made with the one-step process, because slight detail is lost from the additional generations of molding. So there is always a compromise between getting large runs versus the best possible sound. An advantage of DMM is that the original copper disc can be treated like a mother and reused, unlike acetate lacquers that have to be discarded after being plated. This means a huge number of stampers can be made directly from the DMM plate. Trade secrets Some pressing plants contract out the difficult and messy plating process.

If the disc is plated too quickly, the nickel surface is grainy and noisy, but if it’s plated too slowly, high-frequency details will be lost. Every plating engineer has his own formulae and they are all different. For many years, details of plating procedures were very tightly held and pressing plants were very worried of their secret methods being stolen, but in the modern era there has been a lot more openness here, and a lot of engineers have had a chance to compare some of the secret methods being used (can you believe Coca-Cola was added to plating baths at one major label plant in the seventies?). Stamper preparation With the stamper dried off, the back of it is polished clean and flat. Then the exact center point is found, marked, and a hole punched in it. Finding the center point is extremely critical because if it’s even a millimeter off, the record will be produced with an audible “wow” in it. If the two-step process is being used, individual mothers will usually be marked with numbers, so that you can tell from which one a given pressing has been.

The stamper is also played on a turntable with a V-shaped notch in the stylus, which rides the top of the groove, to test for clicks and pops due to defects in the plating. If these are found they are usually repaired by hand with a tiny dental pick. After this, the stampers are ready to go off for pressing. Printing Labels are printed, either at the pressing plant or offsite by a local offset printing company. After printing, many pressing houses bake the labels for a few hours to set the ink so that it does not smear during the pressing process. Some of the lower-grade plants omit this step and just expect the customer to live with slight smearing. The printing quality of the label is very important and makes a difference in how your record looks, especially if you do 12" singles to be released in a white jacket. Pretty much all the pressing houses have the cardboard for the jackets printed offsite today. For both jackets and labels, they normally get digital files in some layout program format from the customer or an in-house layout artist, and use that for the printing. The customer normally gets a color inkjet proof of the layout to verify that everything is in the right place and the colors are right.

You can also order a color key proof which is made from the separation negatives, bu t the accuracy of the inkjet proofs today makes this pretty much unnecessary. A few pressing plants have in-house high-speed inkjet printing for LP jackets and labels. This is much less expensive for short runs because it doesn’t require the setup time of making negatives and plates that normal offset printing does, but it also looks different, and on longer runs it’s more expensive since the per-print cost is higher even though the setup is lower. Printing technology changes very quickly, much more so than the rest of the vinyl manufacturing process, so it’s definitely worth asking questions about what is available to you. Many folks offer fancy services like metallic inks, embossing and punching, and next year it’ll almost certainly be different even though the plating and pressing will probably not change. Pressing The pressing is normally done with an entirely automated machine system. The technician locks the stampers into place on the press plates, and the mechanical system automatically drops a bottom label, a biscuit of vinyl, and then a top label onto the bottom stamper.

The stampers are then quickly heated with steam, the plates pressed together and the vinyl squeezed out, and then the plates are cooled down with cold water. As the vinyl is squeezed across the surface of the stampers, a blade swings around the outer edge to cut off any flash (extra vinyl bits). This process is absolutely critical. As the vinyl mixture is heated, it produces small bubbles of gas and that gas needs to be given time to escape, otherwise it will leave little cavities in the record surface. Increasing the operating speed of the machine and reducing the amount of time the vinyl spends hot produces noisier pressings, but some plants do this to get product out more quickly. On the other hand, running it too slowly causes uneven pressings. Flaws Temperature control is also critical; if the vinyl is not perfectly even and accurate as it spreads out across the surface of the disc there will be tiny radial lines on the surface of the record following the path that the vinyl took as it spread out, and sometimes even uneven filling between the inner and outer sides of the groove if it’s very bad. This not only produces higher noise, but it can also produce much higher tracking distortion.

Careless setup of the cutting blade produces discs with a ragged outer edge, which DJs don’t like at all. And the actual preparation of the vinyl mix is absolutely critical; most mixes are extremely proprietary but contain somewhere between 5% and 10% reground vinyl recovered from flash and rejected pressings. The amount of regrind is critical and pressings made of pure virgin vinyl are apt to be much noisier than pressings with a small amount of regrind added. Black or color? The actual vinyl that comes from the factory is clear, and normally a polycarbonate additive is used which turns it black. One side effect of this is smoother flow and therefore lower noise floor. To do colored pressings, a dye is added, but this requires a lot more care in machine setup to get a quiet pressing, because of the lack of the polycarbonate. Colored pressings tend to be noisier, although much depends on the skill of the pressing machine operator. Many of the newer machines automatically eject the disc and drop it into an inner sleeve and into a box, although this is done manually with some older presses.

A lot of people prefer the more manual systems because it gives an opportunity for additional quality control, with people actually inspecting each record as it comes off the line. Testing 1-2-3 Request test pressings before a full press run. Some plants make them on older, entirely manual “proofing” presses rather than on their normal line. This still gives you a good sense of how the mastering was done but it may not represent the final product exactly. Because so much processing needs to be done in the mastering process and because the entire process involves so much sonic coloration, it is essential that you get test pressings and listen to them carefully. Packaging Jackets are folded and readied for the sleeved records, which are inserted inside either automatically or by hand. Some folks prefer keeping this whole procedure manual so that damaged pressings are more easily caught. Spot checks for quality control are also done at this time. Then the records are (optionally) shrink wrapped and sent off to the customer. Most pressing plants allow you to supply your own jackets, but they may require completely folded and ready jackets, or they may require flat prints on a particular grade of paper that they can run through their folding machines.

If you want to do silkscreened, woodblock, or hand-set letterpress jackets, most pressing plants will be happy to accept your jackets, but be aware that your handmade mulberry paper might not go through their folding machine very well and you might pay an additional charge for hand-packaging at some plants. The Future Right now, there are only three companies making acetate blanks: Apollo and Transco in the USA and MBC in Japan, but the demand seems to be fairly steady. Although CD sales are dropping off dramatically right now, vinyl sales still continue steadily and vinyl remains a growing concern. The Music Industries people report selling seven or eight million LPs a year alone, and the popularity isn’t just with dance records. There’s a surprising market in classic rock reissues, audiophile discs, and even classical music. Record manufacture is a pretty mature technology so you can’t expect too much in the way of future advancements. But, as the technology has become more open and plants have become more willing to share information about their methods and procedures, even if only over drinks at trade shows, there has been quite a bit of process improvement in the past few years at many plants.

On the other hand, the increased demand for vinyl has also led to a lot of operations that churn out records faster than proper quality control allows, and I would expect those problems to grow as well. It’s a funny little corner of the industry...but, surprisingly enough, it’s actually a growing one. Many thanks to Don Grossinger in New York City, to the crew at Music Industries in the Netherlands, to Paul Gold and the crew at Brooklyn Phono, and to Kate McDonnell, the Canadian layout guru. Scott Dorsey (dorsey@recordingmag.com) seems to be fascinated with all things old and hand-crafted in audio, from vinyl records to vacuum-tube electronics. What Is Vinyl? Many of you may have come across the terms vinyl siding, vinyl records, vinyl flooring, vinyl gloves etc, but may not know what exactly vinyl is. Vinyl is not a natural substance but is a synthetic man-made material. It is a type of plastic that is made from ethylene (found in crude oil) and chlorine (found in regular salt). When processed, both the substances are combined to form Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) resin, or as is commonly referred to - Vinyl.

Vinyl was first invented in 1920 by scientists who wanted to develop a material that would help to manufacture everyday products that were easier to make, more durable, and cheaper than what was available. Today, Vinyl has become the second largest manufactured and sold plastic resin in the entire world. The most common use of vinyl is that in construction, especially as vinyl flooring and vinyl siding. In fact, these uses of vinyl are often thought of as its only uses. In addition to these, vinyl has many other uses because of its ability to combine with various additives and modifiers, thus making vinyl highly suitable to be used in the manufacture of many different products. Common Properties Of Vinyl Vinyl is resistant to moisture and humidity. It is a very strong and durable plastic material. Vinyl can be manufactured in a variety of colors, both transparent and solid. Vinyl is a very low cost material to produce. Vinyl is a plastic material, which unlike other plastics, can easily be recycled. Because of the durability of vinyl, products made from this material have a long life span. Add to this the fact that the vinyl can then be recycled, translates into an even longer life of the vinyl plastic resin.

Vinyl is a very environment friendly material, not only because it can be recycled, but also for many other reasons. Vinyl helps in the preservation of environmental resources as 57% of vinyl is made from common salt, which is a renewable natural substance. Non-replenish able resources such as crude oil only account for 43% of vinyl resin, thus making it nature friendly. In comparison to various other materials used by the packing industry, vinyl requires lesser amounts of natural resources to make, utilizes much lesser energy for manufacture, and also releases lower emissions into the environment. Thus vinyl, a synthetic manmade material, has truly revolutionized the entire plastic resin industry. Other Sites We Like: How Records Are Made How Records Are Made While 8-tracks and cassettes are as relevent to the digital world as wax cylinders, the vinyl LP is still being steadily produced and collected despite, or perhaps thanks to, their imprecise warm analog acoustics. Here's how LPs get their unique sound. Advertisement Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the phonograph, the first device to both record and play back sounds, in 1877.

It recorded sound directly as indentations on a sheet of tin foil wrapped around a grooved cylinder, which could then be played back by rotating the cylinder, which would moved the needle across the indentations, vibrate the mechanical diaphragm accordingly and reproduce the sound. By the 1880's Volta Labs had devised a superior wax-coated cardboard cylinder whose stylus vibrated laterally, like a seismometer, to inscribe the wax with recorded sound rather than vertically, known as the "hill-and-dale" method, like Edison's. It wasn't until the early 20th century that the cylinder was finally replaced by the flat disc record we use today. But even then, sounds were recorded directly, mechanically onto the disc. "Acoustical" recordings like these relied on a large horn connected to a stylus. As the sound waves caused the horn to vibrate, so too did the stylus, which transcribed the vibrations to a hand-cranked wax disc. As you'd expect, these lo-fidelity recordings sound like a guy yelling into a horn—the maximum volume was severely limited to the acheivable physical effects of the horn and the cutting stylus.

The extra effort required to generate additional volume qu8ickly wore down both the record and the stylus. The problem is that the amplitude of a bass note is so much taller than that of a higher-pitched note, the lower-frequency sound takes up more physical space in each grove, literally crowding out the mid and upper range sounds that would be lost during playback. This resulted in a distorted, bass-heavy playback. It wasn't until about 1925 that the audio input was run through a mic and amp to boost the dynamic range and volume without relying on the physical attributes of a horn and the era of "electrical" recordings began. These recordings intentionally rescaled (read: boosted) upper register sounds and suppressed the bass, "equalizing" the sounds during playback. 78s—records that spun at 78 RPM—were seen as a great technological leap over the hand-cranked predecessor. Per Compton Pakenham of The New York Times in 1930, Advertisement The time has come for serious musical criticism to take account of performances of great music reproduced by means of the records. To claim that the records have succeeded in exact and complete reproduction of all details of symphonic or operatic performances ...

would be extravagant ... [but] the article of today is so far in advance of the old machines as hardly to admit classification under the same name. Electrical recording and reproduction have combined to retain vitality and color in recitals by proxy. That quality only increased in the 1950's with the introduction of 33 RPM discs, which held about 25 minutes of music per side, and audio tape, which could be easily edited and its sound optimized in post production, then dubbed onto a master disc for reproduction. This master disc is known as a laquer or acetate disc. Acetate is actually a bit of a misnomer as the discs are actually lacquer coated with cellulose nitrate. And unlike mass produced vinyl records which are molded, the master disc is physically cut, its grooves gouged out on by a record-cutting machine's needle whose mechanical motion is guided by an audio input. The grooves are routinely checked during the cutting process to ensure a proper depth of cut and to adjust volume and pitch on the playback. Once the audio has been transcribed and the playback quality verified, the cut laquer is sent to a production company.

The laquer is far too maleable to be used in the actual production process, so a metal cast must be made of it. Originally, the laquer was coated in an extremely fine layer of electrically-conductive graphite to which silver or nickel was then plated. Once the plate was thick enough, the wax was stripped away leaving a sturdier metal mold. Modern techniques involve dipping the disc into a solution of stannous chloride and then spraying on atomized silver. The conventional plating bath technique is also still widely used but is not as acoustically accurate. Sponsored After the initial silver plating has hardened, a layer of fine-grain copper is applied, followed by a layer of more robust, coarse-grain metal like steel. Fine-grain metal, wherein the individual grains are relatively small (packing 85 or more grains per square inch at 100 diameters magnification) and feature improved strength and toughness than coarse grained steel, which is more easily machinable.

Once enough metal has been applied to support the silver plate, the laquer is smashed free of the mold, leaving the metal negative, or "matrix." The matrix is still pretty maleable so it must be recast once more before it can begin pressing vinyl. A metal record known as "the mother," is cut from the matrix and then replated to create another negative known as the "stamper." And since the mother is cut from a metal such as copper, it can withstand multiple recastings to churn out multitudes of stampers, which are then used to press the actual production records. Advertisement Advertisement Each stamper, which is attached to an autonomous 100-ton hydraulic press, works essentially like a waffle iron and can churn out thousands of records before needing replacement. A sheet of preheated vinyl roughly half the area but 3 times the thickness of a finished disc, known as the biscuit, is slipped between the jaws of the press, 300 degree F steam is applied to further soften the material before the jaws close, and squeeze the hot vinyl into its final shape while imprinting the audio.

The disc is then cooled and hardened in a water bath and labelled—all of which is done automatically, the only human input is the loading of the two disc labels sandwiched around the biscuit. Once it comes off the stamper, the record's ragged edges are trimmed into a neat circle on an automated trimmer table and the record is inspected, both visually and audibly. Many, many, pressings don't pass muster and are subsequently melted back down into biscuits for another go. But the LPs that are quality enough are then packaged and shipped out to your local independent music retailer. 19 Ways To Reuse Vinyl Records Your Post Has Been Launched! Fabulous! Don't forget to share with your friends on Twitter and Facebook. 19 Ways To Reuse Vinyl Records Looking for projects to use those old beat-up vinyls collecting dust in your parents’ basement? Just make sure you only use the scratched records — wouldn’t want to offend this guy. Sorry, but you can only react up to 3 times! Oops! It looks like you've already used that reaction on this post. You are signed in as . I know, right? Will your friends agree?

Share this Link 19 Ways To Reuse Vinyl Records Looking for projects to use those old beat-up vinyls collecting dust in your parents&#39; bas... Your link was successfully shared! Promoted by 15 Rockin’ Projects that Repurpose Vinyl Records | Brit + Co 15 Rockin’ Projects that Repurpose Vinyl Records Isara Krieger Sun May 18 2014 Not everyone has the means to listen to records anymore , but that doesn’t mean they’re getting tossed by the wayside anytime soon. Records are timeless, and they’ll live on even after their musical purpose has come to an end. Merely hanging a record on your wall makes a hip decoration . But you can be more creative than that! Here are 15 other ways to amp up the cool in your home , at your party and even in your wardrobe. 1. Vinyl Bowls : These bowls were crafted for a music-inspired wedding. They’re stylish enough to complement decor of any soiree or to use any old day of the week. (via Junebug Weddings ) 2. Butterflies Wall Decor : These beauties are surprisingly easy to make.

Just trace, cut and melt your record and let the vinyl do the rest. (via Thread Sense ) 3. Broken Record Ombre Wall Art : This is one hip, decorative way to remind yourself… don’t be a broken record. (via Tattooed Martha ) 4. DIY Record Side Table : All you need is a record and glue and you’ve upgraded your table a billion on the totally rad scale. Yes, that exists. (via The Flourishing Abode ) 5. Star Clock ($40): Maybe this one is a little hard to hack at home, but send your favorite scratched up records to Mr. Jeff Davis, and we’re sure he’d be happy to make a clock for you. (via Vinylux on Etsy ) 6. DIY Vintage Cake Plate : This project cleverly uses acrylic siding so each plate layer is easier to clean. It also allows you to switch out the records to match whatever the theme of the party is. Cool. (via Oh Happy Day ) 7. Decorative Lamp : Recreate this artwork at home with your own lamp and tons of old vinyl. (via Design Like ) 8. Purse : A vintage dress and an abandoned record are a match made in heaven.

The only not-vintage part of this bag are the handles, which you can pick to match your own style. (via Andi B. Goode ) 9. Picture Frame : This frame will make anyone’s photo look cool. Not that yours needs it. (via Vat 19 ) 10. Bookends ($17): Coordinate your music with your book genres with these bookends. They’re perfect to liven up a study or office. (via When The Music’s Over ) 11. Gift Box Decoration : This record became a cute photo frame and makes a box of chocolate more sentimental. Add your own touch to a record atop any card or any gift. (via Home Trends ) 12. Coasters ($28): We feel like records wouldn’t mind if this was to be their fate. (via The Gifted Man ) 13. Earrings ($17): Got a certain shape of earring you’re after? This artist takes special requests and can turn any piece of vinyl into the look of your dreams. (via Les Creations d’Ana ) 14. Faces Artwork : This artwork is a bit intense, but also totally awesome and unique.

(via That’s Like Whoa! ) 15. Laser Cut Clocks : Pavel Sidorenko crafts any shape out of old records. On top of that, he turns them into functional clocks. Impressive. (via Pavel Sidorenko ) Which repurposed vinyl look fits your space? Tell us which ones are making you spin in the comments below!

Question: What are LP records made out of?
Answer: Vinyl