Lynn
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Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
Craig Anderton piqued my curiosity in another thread about the difference in mixing for vinyl compared to mixing for CD. I know vinyl is making a comeback, so I'm curious as to how many people here mix for vinyl these days. And, for those who do mix for vinyl, how do you test your mixes? I appreciate all who reply.
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sharke
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/06/30 20:04:10
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I don't know anything about it except a vague notion that it's advisable to have your bass frequencies centered.
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Splat 
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/06/30 20:27:16
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... and compress it a lot more.
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gswitz
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/06/30 20:36:46
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I know nothing.
Craig Anderton and others have talked about how different tracks on Vinyl have different fidelity. The tracks on the outside of the platter have more clear data. It makes sense if you think about it. The outer ring rotates faster. The speed of the disk doesn't change based on where the needle is on the platter.
I remember this moron who owned a new age label who thought there was something spiritual about the 7th track on a CD (1st track on the B-side). Haha.
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Anderton
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/01 00:14:34
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You can't really discuss mixing for vinyl without mastering for vinyl, because a lot of the success of the mastering depends on the mixing. But there are several "rules"...
Always remember that mixing or mastering for vinyl has to accommodate the process of dragging a rock through yards of plastic to reproduce sound. And people think digital audio is unnatural...
There are physical limits to how well a stylus can follow a groove. Too loud a track will literally cause the needle to jump out of the groove.
The longer the side, the lower the level. This is why 12" singles were good for dance - you could have it louder than if you had a bunch of songs crammed into the same amount of space.
It was best to divide up the music so the length of the two sides was as close as possible.
The inner grooves distort more, although this also has to do with turntables. You'd often put your softest songs last on a side for this reason.
Vinyl has a hard time handling low frequencies. Kick and bass should always be mixed to center. The stylus doesn't know what to do if there are different, big excursions on opposite sides of the groove (assuming stereo, of course)
Few people today realize how drastically the pre-emphasis and de-emphasis curves affect the recording. On playback, the RIAA curve boosts the low frequencies by +20dB and cuts high frequencies by -20dB. That's a lot of highs going into the cutter when mastering during the pre-emphasis part. So you don't want to make things too bright, but because those frequencies are going to be amplified big-time. Most mastering cuts off frequencies below 40-50Hz and above 10-16kHz for this reason.
Vinyl has a limited dynamic range. If you want to stay above the noise and below distortion, some judicious limiting and compression is helpful.
If you're going to put out a vinyl release, you HAVE to use a pro mastering engineer who has experience with vinyl and with cutting lathes. You HAVE to get an acetate for approval to make sure things ended up okay. And if you're going to do the mix, the process is fraught with peril. Most mastering engineers can process a mix to be vinyl-friendly, but it helps a whole lot if the mix is vinyl-friendly in the first place.
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Larry Jones
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/01 02:03:24
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Anderton
You can't really discuss mixing for vinyl without mastering for vinyl, because a lot of the success of the mastering depends on the mixing. But there are several "rules"...
*********EDIT*************
If you're going to put out a vinyl release, you HAVE to use a pro mastering engineer who has experience with vinyl and with cutting lathes. You HAVE to get an acetate for approval to make sure things ended up okay. And if you're going to do the mix, the process is fraught with peril. Most mastering engineers can process a mix to be vinyl-friendly, but it helps a whole lot if the mix is vinyl-friendly in the first place.
I had forgotten all that specialized stuff about mixing for vinyl, and good riddance as far as I'm concerned. But the last thing Craig says about using a professional mastering engineer if you're going to vinyl is right on. This is one area where you really need someone who's done it before, and in the Old Days I never tried to bypass that guy. These days, though, I can't think of any audio reason why you'd want to make a vinyl record.
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soens
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/01 05:48:10
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gswitz
The outer ring rotates faster. The speed of the disk doesn't change based on where the needle is on the platter.
Interesting. These 2 comments almost sound contradictory. It all depends on the mode of measurement. If you measure by distance traveled, then the outer track travels faster than the inner track because it has to travel farther in the same amount of time to make each revolution. If you measure by revolutions, the outer track travels the same speed as the inner track, but covers more ground. Interestingly, the outer track should have higher resolution because it can contain more detail, data or information per second than the inner track. However, because it's a physical medium relying on friction to produce sound, the outer track will create more unwanted noise because there's more surface material being manipulated per second. Those of you living near the equator are traveling about 1000 miles per hour while someone standing at one of the poles would take a whole day to simply turn 360 deg. in one place. Ecuadorians are literally living in the fast lane. When you consider the fact that the earth goes around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour, our solar system whirls around the center of our galaxy at 490,000 miles per hour, and our galaxy is rushing towards a structure called the Great Attractor (a region of space roughly 150 million light-years away) at a speed of nearly 1,000 kilometers per second...... it's no wonder I'm always late for work! 
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Anderton
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/01 18:14:07
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I'm pretty sure the inner groove distortion is more a function of the turntable arm. That's why some companies produced linear tracking turntables where the stylus was exactly perpendicular to the record at all times.
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soens
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/02 03:35:50
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That and the fact that the center hole is never perfectly center causing the disk to wobble as it rotates ensuring that the needle will never be perfectly aligned in the grove no matter where it rests.... not unlike our planet which also suffers (?) from rotational wobble and the ever shifting locations of the poles. Linear TTs were mostly hype, I think, followed by "vertical" turntables....  And if you really want to do away with grove wear and needle misalignment:  http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2011/11/lasers-get-groovy.cfm
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Splat
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/02 06:37:40
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Those lazer turntables often get advertised as having 'CD Quality sound'. Hmmmmmm...
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bitflipper
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/02 10:26:11
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I'm not old enough to remember that stuff.
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Anderton
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/02 11:10:06
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bitflipper
I'm not old enough to remember that stuff.
I'm pretty sure anyone who's old enough to have mastered for vinyl is not nostalgic for it. 
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wogg
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/02 11:18:49
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I would speculate this:
Vinyl recordings were not as loudness compressed as CD's have become. Don't squish the crap out of the recording and leave lots of headroom. More dynamic range is good.
Definitely center the low frequencies, which you should be doing anyway. The biggest offenders are probably synths with L/R delays and what not.
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Lynn
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/02 12:24:44
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Anderton
You can't really discuss mixing for vinyl without mastering for vinyl, because a lot of the success of the mastering depends on the mixing. But there are several "rules"...
Always remember that mixing or mastering for vinyl has to accommodate the process of dragging a rock through yards of plastic to reproduce sound. And people think digital audio is unnatural...
There are physical limits to how well a stylus can follow a groove. Too loud a track will literally cause the needle to jump out of the groove.
The longer the side, the lower the level. This is why 12" singles were good for dance - you could have it louder than if you had a bunch of songs crammed into the same amount of space.
It was best to divide up the music so the length of the two sides was as close as possible.
The inner grooves distort more, although this also has to do with turntables. You'd often put your softest songs last on a side for this reason.
Vinyl has a hard time handling low frequencies. Kick and bass should always be mixed to center. The stylus doesn't know what to do if there are different, big excursions on opposite sides of the groove (assuming stereo, of course)
Few people today realize how drastically the pre-emphasis and de-emphasis curves affect the recording. On playback, the RIAA curve boosts the low frequencies by +20dB and cuts high frequencies by -20dB. That's a lot of highs going into the cutter when mastering during the pre-emphasis part. So you don't want to make things too bright, but because those frequencies are going to be amplified big-time. Most mastering cuts off frequencies below 40-50Hz and above 10-16kHz for this reason.
Vinyl has a limited dynamic range. If you want to stay above the noise and below distortion, some judicious limiting and compression is helpful.
If you're going to put out a vinyl release, you HAVE to use a pro mastering engineer who has experience with vinyl and with cutting lathes. You HAVE to get an acetate for approval to make sure things ended up okay. And if you're going to do the mix, the process is fraught with peril. Most mastering engineers can process a mix to be vinyl-friendly, but it helps a whole lot if the mix is vinyl-friendly in the first place.
This is what I remember from the "golden age" of vinyl. Before the days of having compressors on every track and bus, we had to manipulate dynamic levels by hand just to get a usable level for tape. We used to think that a dynamic range of 70 plus db's was good enough to mask the noise floor while giving the master tape room to breathe. Now, we freak out if our dynamic range is less than 100 db's. I remember vinyl records having a wider range from loud to soft than we have today, although we have the capability for far more range. I'm glad that I don't have to mix or master for vinyl, anymore, but I suspect that within a very short time, technology will change the way we record and mix, yet again. I can hardly wait! LOL
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ampfixer
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/03 16:39:21
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Interesting discussion. I have never had to deal with recording for vinyl but I have a friend that' recorded 15 albums. I called him up to discuss this thread and he confirmed a couple of things and told me a couple things I didn't know.
When putting a record together I'm told that it had to be planned carefully to ensure that loud, or bass/drum heavy tracks did not end up as the last tracks on a given side of the record because it could cause trouble for people that made the pressing master. Getting all the tracks to flow together in the proper track location was a big part of the mastering process. I guess it's not an issue today. Sounds to me like mastering is easier now.
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Anderton
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/03 16:55:59
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Lynn
We used to think that a dynamic range of 70 plus db's was good enough to mask the noise floor while giving the master tape room to breathe. Now, we freak out if our dynamic range is less than 100 db's. I remember vinyl records having a wider range from loud to soft than we have today, although we have the capability for far more range. I'm glad that I don't have to mix or master for vinyl, anymore, but I suspect that within a very short time, technology will change the way we record and mix, yet again. I can hardly wait! LOL
One of the interesting differences between digital and analog recording is that as a general rule, digital distorts more as you decrease levels, while analog distorts more as you increase levels.
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Anderton
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/03 16:57:11
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ampfixer
When putting a record together I'm told that it had to be planned carefully to ensure that loud, or bass/drum heavy tracks did not end up as the last tracks on a given side of the record because it could cause trouble for people that made the pressing master. Getting all the tracks to flow together in the proper track location was a big part of the mastering process. I guess it's not an issue today. Sounds to me like mastering is easier now.
Yes, that's why I mentioned softer songs were often put last on a side. Mastering is indeed much easier now, but I think song order is still important...assuming anyone's still making albums and not just singles
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Ruben
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/03 17:23:47
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soens
That and the fact that the center hole is never perfectly center causing the disk to wobble as it rotates ensuring that the needle will never be perfectly aligned in the grove no matter where it rests.... Technically, with all late 20th century record pressings, a record's center hole is always near-perfectly centered. The center hole punch is machined to attach very securely to the record press with an extremely small tolerance. The wobble happens because the metal parts used to press the record grooves (which are separate from the center hole punch) can and do shift during the pressing of the vinyl, and while those metal parts also have a tight specification, some are made with less attention to detail than others, resulting in a vinyl record that can display wobble.
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Cactus Music
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/03 19:02:36
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What I remember , as a listener, is that albums that were pushing the time limit to the max ( 20min ??) per side had no bass content at all.
I was told that the reason was bass heavy tracks took up more space. So If a band insisted on a 20 min side the engineers had to cut the bass to make it fit.
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Anderton
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Re: Who mixes for vinyl, and what are the differences between mixing for vinyl and CD?
2014/07/03 19:16:19
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Cactus Music
What I remember , as a listener, is that albums that were pushing the time limit to the max ( 20min ??) per side had no bass content at all. And probably had lower levels, too.
I was told that the reason was bass heavy tracks took up more space. So If a band insisted on a 20 min side the engineers had to cut the bass to make it fit.
What makes sound with vinyl is a needle following a waveform excursion. Lower frequencies and higher levels meant a lot of motion for the stylus.
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