Mastering Levels For Vinyl

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.

Mastering levels for vinyl.

Windows 7 8 or 10. Mastering for vinyl is the process of creating a separate master that can be cut into a vinyl record without added unwanted distortion. And most of the time going over level means instant distortion on the track. The mixing levels for each instrument should never go over 0 level and your mixing levels on your main stereo out should never go over 0 level.

It s about finding the right balance between dynamics and loudness while comparing the track with others on the album or ep you are working on as well as other tracks in a similar. 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. 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. 64 bit au vst 2 3 or aax host.

Os x 10 8 or higher. The way to achieve this is to master analog by same people who will cut your record. Levels is available in vst vst3 audio unit and aax formats 64 bit and 32 bit. 32 bit or 64 bit vst 2 3 or 64 bit aax host.

There s really no need to because overall volume boosts are done in mastering not mixing. Vinyl has its own character and vinyl listeners expect it to sound analog. 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. For vinyl the optimum source is 24 bit dynamic and limited either extremely lightly or not at all.

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. 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. Only they know what can really fit on record.