Scott Hull on Vinyl, Part One
My name is Scott Hull — I’m the owner of Masterdisk studios in NYC. I’ve been mastering records and cutting lacquers since the early 80s. In advance of Record Store Day 2013 I will bring you a series...
View ArticleScott Hull on Vinyl, Part Two
How do we listen to CDs and MP3s? We hear them in the car, while jogging, over computer speakers while we blog (as I am now, listening to yesterday’s mastering project, Dave Matthews), and from the...
View ArticleAsk the Engineer with Scott Hull: What Happened To My Vocal?
Today we’ve got a question from a reader about how her track was affected by mastering (at another facility). Scott Hull answers. Q: I had a song mastered and the vocals seemed to sound harsher, with a...
View ArticleWhat Does Your Music Say?
What does your music “say”? I find it interesting to allow the music to tell me what it needs. Here are a couple ways that I do that. I let the producer or artist describe their thoughts about their...
View ArticleScott Hull on Vinyl, Part Three
As disk cutting engineers we are always looking at sound. We have a microscope mounted on the record cutting lathe and we use this scope to determine the quality of the cut and to diagnose problems...
View ArticleScott Hull on Vinyl, Part Four
One of the most sought after vinyl-cutting systems in the world is the nearly indestructible VMS-70 and VMS-80 cutting systems built by Neumann. The VMS-82 was the last of these produced. I’m thankful...
View ArticleScott Hull on Vinyl, Part Five
What is the RIAA curve? The Recording Industry Association of America developed a standard playback equalization curve and required that all LP records and record players manufactured conform to this...
View ArticleScott Hull on Vinyl, Part Six
Could your turntable could be performing better? If you’ve been following along this blog since week one, you now have a pretty good picture of how music gets recorded onto vinyl. This seems like a...
View ArticleScott Hull on Vinyl, Part Seven
What’s the condition of your records? As consumers you know that the condition of the vinyl is very important in determining the quality of the playback. Tics and pops get much worse if the record...
View ArticleScott Hull on Vinyl, Part Nine
Scott chats with master cutting engineer, Tony Dawsey. This week I’d like you to hear from one of my master cutting engineers, Tony Dawsey. Tony, like myself, started mastering before there was digital...
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