da goose
DaGooseMusic.nl
ok.. tijdje geleden heb ik een artikle gemaakt over vinyl en hoe het gemaakt werd.
Ik post hem hier maar even, is wel engels....
Vinyl is dead.
That’s what people said after the release of a perfect medium called Compact Disc, no more noise, perfect digital sound, scratches won’t matter, you won’t hear ‘m and don’t forget all the other point’s we all heard of.
For some time it seemed that vinyl was indeed starving but DJ’s and hifi freaks didn’t want to let go of vinyl and in 2002 the vinyl business is still booming and certainly not dead.
Last year 70 million vinyl records where pressed in just Europe, time to take a closer look at the worlds biggest vinyl pressing plant which happens to be in Haarlem Holland and find out how alive vinyl is.
10:30 in the morning on a rainy Thursday, we enter the building and we arrive in an office like any ordinary office and if we didn’t know better this could’ve be the wrong building.
Taking a closer look you’ll soon find out that this is indeed the office of a vinyl pressing plant, label copies, record sleeves, turntables, everything you’ll expect to find in a factory that produces vinyl records but in a very ordened professional way, vinyl is serious business.
We start of with some coffee and sat down at the table with Ton Vermeulen, the managing director of Record Industry.
In Europe there are several pressing plants and together they made like 70 million records in 2001, a big part of this enormous amount of records is pressed by Record Industry.
In the year 2000 RI pressed 4.6 Million records and due to the fast growing business and the shutdown of UK’s biggest plant EMI 7.6 Million records where pressed in 2001 and expected in 2002 is about the same amount of records, simply because of the capacity of the machines.
28 pressing machines running 16 hours a day are producing 150 vinyl’s an hour which makes a total of 25.000 / 40.000 records a day.
Making this amount of records makes you think of a large factory which Record Industry indeed is, time to take a look at all the machines needed and all the processes taking place for a vinyl record.
From master to finished product.
One of the big misunderstandings about vinyl is that every single record is cut directly into vinyl, no way, it takes a lot more then just a cutting needle and a 12 inch pizza.
Before a record is cut everything is double checked, does the master contain the right tracks, is the A-side really the A-side, is the sound quality good enough, all aspects are checked before the master even enters the cutting room.
At record industry 3 Neumann cutting tables do the business, 2 ‘regular’ lacquer cutters and 1 DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) table to cut directly into metal to skip one of the many processes.
To tell everything about the production process takes to much time but I’ll try to write it down briefly and understandable.
The sound of the master is optimized with several EQ’s and processors before it can be cut into the lacquer which actually is a 14 inch aluminum plate with an acetate layer which is going to hold the grooves.
The cutter head cuts the groove into the acetate layer with a temperature of 160°C to 200°C (helium cooled) and the coils that make the “needle” move are driven by a large amplifier.
This is easier said then done, it takes a lot of experience from the cutting engineer, a small mistake can ruin the expensive lacquer or worse, the cutter head.
Once the lacquer is cut it needs a catalogue number to quickly recognize it and continue the process, this is done by punching a code into the end groove of the lacquer (Record Industry pressings can be recognized by a code that looks something like this 08 43671 20 1A1 PSSST 041)
After this is done the lacquer needs a silver (protective) layer, this is done with a chemical process.
After this, the father plate is being made by adding a nickel layer which later can be removed from the lacquer and is actually the record mirrored.
This father plate gets another layer (the mother plate) which is going to be used to make the pressing plates which is used to press the actual vinyl record.
About 1100 records can be pressed with one set of pressing plates but many plates can be made with one set of mother plates.
The mother plates and sometimes the pressing plates are stored in a large archive for re-pressings after a record is sold out and a customer wants more copies.
After seeing the whole vinyl master process we enter the room with the 28 pressing machines, the smell of vinyl reaches our noses and we see nothing but big machines, sleeves, load’s of records and of course people checking the machines, a real factory.
A lot of people think that the labels are glued to the record but in fact it’s pressed into the record, it’s hardly impossible to press a record without a label, without it the vinyl sticks to the pressing plates and the record gets messed up.
The most common weight for a record is 125 gram but there are also a lot of records pressed at 180 gram (that’s why DJ’s mostly have someone to carry their records for them)
The liquid “bread” of vinyl together with 2 labels are fully automatically set into the pressing machine and then the machine presses the record and holds it pressed together for a few seconds.
To have enough power to drive the presses there are two enormous high pressure steam compressors about the size of a submarine, impressive.
The left over vinyl at the sides is being cut off by a knife (the cut of vinyl is being recycled) and the record is automatically slipped into a sleeve.
After a couple of hours horizontal storage the record is ready for sleeving, this is also done fully automatic and after seeing it for a couple of times know I’m still impressed by the machinery that fully automatic handles the records and the sleeves, it’s hard to explain, you have to see it, just as the whole process by the way.
After the records are sleeved they end up in boxes on a pallet and are send out to the customers.
As said, it’s pretty impressive to see how your music is coming in as a master CD/DAT and ends up as a record in beautiful sleeve.
Seeing the whole process makes you have a lot of respect to vinyl, I recommend it to any vinyl lover tough I don’t think pressing plants like it when every vinyl lover shows up at the door to see how vinyl is being made, there are a lot of vinyl freaks out there you know?
Funny detail, at the time I was walking around Record Industry I found a just finished pallet of one of my own records (Real People feat. Fadoua – Do ya), pretty cool to see, seeing the actual pressing would have been even better, but hey, you can’t have everything.
Jeffrey
Some facts about vinyl, turntables and pressing records
Colored vinyl is not real vinyl, there are only 2 plants who make ‘m and it’s not the same quality as a black record because the material is a lot softer.
Adding the nickel layer in the process makes use of 250 Ampere (at home your fuses are 16 Ampere)
A locked groove record is always 133,33 BPM (4 X 33,33 RPM) or 180 BPM on 45 RPM
The original Technics SL1200 was released in the early 70ties and the SL1200mk2 was released in 1978 and besides the SL1200 you also have the SL1000 until the SL2000.
The first cutter head by Neumann was produced in 1933 and the last one in 1990, no new Neumann cutter heads are being produced now.
It’s possible to have your own cutting machine, vestax and Kingston both have designed a “customer” cutting machine tough pretty expensive.
Not just dance music is available on vinyl but also a lot of punk and artists like Julio Iglesias, Marco Borsato and James Brown.
voor foto's klik HIER
Ik post hem hier maar even, is wel engels....
Vinyl is dead.
That’s what people said after the release of a perfect medium called Compact Disc, no more noise, perfect digital sound, scratches won’t matter, you won’t hear ‘m and don’t forget all the other point’s we all heard of.
For some time it seemed that vinyl was indeed starving but DJ’s and hifi freaks didn’t want to let go of vinyl and in 2002 the vinyl business is still booming and certainly not dead.
Last year 70 million vinyl records where pressed in just Europe, time to take a closer look at the worlds biggest vinyl pressing plant which happens to be in Haarlem Holland and find out how alive vinyl is.
10:30 in the morning on a rainy Thursday, we enter the building and we arrive in an office like any ordinary office and if we didn’t know better this could’ve be the wrong building.
Taking a closer look you’ll soon find out that this is indeed the office of a vinyl pressing plant, label copies, record sleeves, turntables, everything you’ll expect to find in a factory that produces vinyl records but in a very ordened professional way, vinyl is serious business.
We start of with some coffee and sat down at the table with Ton Vermeulen, the managing director of Record Industry.
In Europe there are several pressing plants and together they made like 70 million records in 2001, a big part of this enormous amount of records is pressed by Record Industry.
In the year 2000 RI pressed 4.6 Million records and due to the fast growing business and the shutdown of UK’s biggest plant EMI 7.6 Million records where pressed in 2001 and expected in 2002 is about the same amount of records, simply because of the capacity of the machines.
28 pressing machines running 16 hours a day are producing 150 vinyl’s an hour which makes a total of 25.000 / 40.000 records a day.
Making this amount of records makes you think of a large factory which Record Industry indeed is, time to take a look at all the machines needed and all the processes taking place for a vinyl record.
From master to finished product.
One of the big misunderstandings about vinyl is that every single record is cut directly into vinyl, no way, it takes a lot more then just a cutting needle and a 12 inch pizza.
Before a record is cut everything is double checked, does the master contain the right tracks, is the A-side really the A-side, is the sound quality good enough, all aspects are checked before the master even enters the cutting room.
At record industry 3 Neumann cutting tables do the business, 2 ‘regular’ lacquer cutters and 1 DMM (Direct Metal Mastering) table to cut directly into metal to skip one of the many processes.
To tell everything about the production process takes to much time but I’ll try to write it down briefly and understandable.
The sound of the master is optimized with several EQ’s and processors before it can be cut into the lacquer which actually is a 14 inch aluminum plate with an acetate layer which is going to hold the grooves.
The cutter head cuts the groove into the acetate layer with a temperature of 160°C to 200°C (helium cooled) and the coils that make the “needle” move are driven by a large amplifier.
This is easier said then done, it takes a lot of experience from the cutting engineer, a small mistake can ruin the expensive lacquer or worse, the cutter head.
Once the lacquer is cut it needs a catalogue number to quickly recognize it and continue the process, this is done by punching a code into the end groove of the lacquer (Record Industry pressings can be recognized by a code that looks something like this 08 43671 20 1A1 PSSST 041)
After this is done the lacquer needs a silver (protective) layer, this is done with a chemical process.
After this, the father plate is being made by adding a nickel layer which later can be removed from the lacquer and is actually the record mirrored.
This father plate gets another layer (the mother plate) which is going to be used to make the pressing plates which is used to press the actual vinyl record.
About 1100 records can be pressed with one set of pressing plates but many plates can be made with one set of mother plates.
The mother plates and sometimes the pressing plates are stored in a large archive for re-pressings after a record is sold out and a customer wants more copies.
After seeing the whole vinyl master process we enter the room with the 28 pressing machines, the smell of vinyl reaches our noses and we see nothing but big machines, sleeves, load’s of records and of course people checking the machines, a real factory.
A lot of people think that the labels are glued to the record but in fact it’s pressed into the record, it’s hardly impossible to press a record without a label, without it the vinyl sticks to the pressing plates and the record gets messed up.
The most common weight for a record is 125 gram but there are also a lot of records pressed at 180 gram (that’s why DJ’s mostly have someone to carry their records for them)
The liquid “bread” of vinyl together with 2 labels are fully automatically set into the pressing machine and then the machine presses the record and holds it pressed together for a few seconds.
To have enough power to drive the presses there are two enormous high pressure steam compressors about the size of a submarine, impressive.
The left over vinyl at the sides is being cut off by a knife (the cut of vinyl is being recycled) and the record is automatically slipped into a sleeve.
After a couple of hours horizontal storage the record is ready for sleeving, this is also done fully automatic and after seeing it for a couple of times know I’m still impressed by the machinery that fully automatic handles the records and the sleeves, it’s hard to explain, you have to see it, just as the whole process by the way.
After the records are sleeved they end up in boxes on a pallet and are send out to the customers.
As said, it’s pretty impressive to see how your music is coming in as a master CD/DAT and ends up as a record in beautiful sleeve.
Seeing the whole process makes you have a lot of respect to vinyl, I recommend it to any vinyl lover tough I don’t think pressing plants like it when every vinyl lover shows up at the door to see how vinyl is being made, there are a lot of vinyl freaks out there you know?
Funny detail, at the time I was walking around Record Industry I found a just finished pallet of one of my own records (Real People feat. Fadoua – Do ya), pretty cool to see, seeing the actual pressing would have been even better, but hey, you can’t have everything.
Jeffrey
Some facts about vinyl, turntables and pressing records
Colored vinyl is not real vinyl, there are only 2 plants who make ‘m and it’s not the same quality as a black record because the material is a lot softer.
Adding the nickel layer in the process makes use of 250 Ampere (at home your fuses are 16 Ampere)
A locked groove record is always 133,33 BPM (4 X 33,33 RPM) or 180 BPM on 45 RPM
The original Technics SL1200 was released in the early 70ties and the SL1200mk2 was released in 1978 and besides the SL1200 you also have the SL1000 until the SL2000.
The first cutter head by Neumann was produced in 1933 and the last one in 1990, no new Neumann cutter heads are being produced now.
It’s possible to have your own cutting machine, vestax and Kingston both have designed a “customer” cutting machine tough pretty expensive.
Not just dance music is available on vinyl but also a lot of punk and artists like Julio Iglesias, Marco Borsato and James Brown.
voor foto's klik HIER
