Mastering Levels For Vinyl

Vinyl has its own character and vinyl listeners expect it to sound analog.

Mastering levels for vinyl.

Also if you are planning to release the material on vinyl this can be very vinyl un friendly and for the most part uncorrectable in the mastering stage. Vinyl masters will probably use a higher resolution file format for example 24 bit and perhaps 48 or even 96 khz sampling rate but if the cd has already been mastered these will probably be available from the original mastering engineer for little or no extra cost. Os x 10 8 or higher. The sequencing difference is that delivery from mastering for digital is either individual wav files for download or a single ddpi file for cd replication whereas for vinyl the delivery is generally two wav files one for each side of the record.

The way to achieve this is to master analog by same people who will cut your record. 64 bit au vst 2 3 or aax host. Attaining the right levels during mastering isn t simply a case of plugging in a compressor or limiter and squashing the signal until there are no dynamics left. There s really no need to because overall volume boosts are done in mastering not mixing.

Windows 7 8 or 10. 32 bit or 64 bit vst 2 3 or 64 bit aax host. Levels is available in vst vst3 audio unit and aax formats 64 bit and 32 bit. Only they know what can really fit on record.

That special sound. In the simplest terms mastering is the process of taking the final mixes whether it s for a full length album or a single and adjusting levels eq and dynamic range to create the final master for the intended medium vinyl cd digital download streaming cassette etc. You can t get that vinyl sound if you just use the same mastering eq and levels that you used for a digital release. It consists of a mono stereo image up to 150hz a tamed high end and if needed a track listing that is consistent with the frequency limitations of record cutting.

There are a few plugins that aren t actual limiters that prevent peak levels louder than 0 dbfs to pass through which by doing so is likely painting your mastering engineer into a corner. Mastering for vinyl is the process of creating a separate master that can be cut into a vinyl record without added unwanted distortion. Since the resurgence of vinyl in the mid 2000s vinyl sales have shown no signs of slowing down but with its return comes a new set of challenges for the aging medium new genres with increasingly complex production styles the major paradigm shift from analog to digital production and evolving audio mastering standards just to name a few. For vinyl the optimum source is 24 bit dynamic and limited either extremely lightly or not at all.