Vinyl printing at CD baby

[sedge]

Hi, We were looking at Vinyl printing for a personal project and found that CDbaby.com do Vinyl printing as well as the CD. They Take $4 and we set the initial price. We send them the masters and the artwork and they do all the making reactively on orders taken. That sounds top at first!

Has anyone used them for Vinyls or CD's? What is the print and burn quality like?
And/or if you know of any other outlets that do this reactive type of making/shipping would be great to hear about too

Many thanks if your able to share experience

Rob

[mazz]

Cd baby is owned by discmakers, so whatever is offered by cd baby is most likely going to be manufactured by discmakers anyway. My wife used discmakers for her CDs and they were easy to work with. The quality was very good on all counts.

I have no experience with vinyl and I don't know if dm does it in house. Go to discmakers' website, I'm sure the info is there.

Good luck!

[sedge]

ahh cool Mazz, thanks!

http://www.discmakers.com/ ? I could not find any reference to them doing Vinyl but yeah for CD looks good!

Thanks

[orest]

Well, not to brag in anyway, I know a lot about vinyl records (being only 31 years old..).

I mainly listen to vinyl at home, because of the analog sound. Vinyl is not compressed the same way as a CD is.
There's no 1001111000 and no digital bits.

But, if you use a digital master, it will only sound as good as that digital master. To get the full analog sound you need to record it in an analog studio. But, if you're after the "big case" that's another thing

And, the pressings made in USA and England are the best sounding vinyl records ever made. These Dutch, German, made in EU crap are not good because of the quantity and the use of crap plastic/oil material.

After a while my ears start to bleed in the studio and listening to MP3's/CD's (even if I own a tube CD player).

I think being a composer includes having a great High-Fidelity at home. So you can enjoy listening to great music, not only make it.

I think it sounds like a great choice! Making vinyl records as well. I think any reliable company in US will do a great job!

[sedge]

Thanks Alexander!

Yeah we are doing a mix of analogue and digital , though most live takes. I think the masters will in fact be digital though (we are having that done by PC ( i think ), but no hi's lows to be chopped, um have to suckj and see that one! .

CDBaby are in in Portland by the looks of it.

Yeah, we love Vinyl, for those reasons you say, don't know if better or warmer (i think so), or just love the experience could be, at first we didn't think it was going to be cost effective to get a batch done (just for like you say us vinyl lovers and just having it), then we found CdBaby will do it on demand (per sale). We just send them the masters and the Artwork and a bit of set up cost! Any visitors wanting the physical can choose CD or Vinyl ! Neat huh

[ochaim]

If CD Baby is offering such an "as needed" vinyl service, it is definitely not made the traditional way.

In a previous life, I pressed up a record and the stamps themselves (the part that imprints the grooves into the vinyl) are in the range of $200-300 for each side.

What CD Baby is most likely doing is the same way they used to do reference acetates (white label, test pressing). Vestax came out with such a device that was available commercially, but it didn't stick around very long at all. it's been discontinued for some time. Not sure CD Baby would be using this specifically, but chances are it's something similar.

http://www.vestax.com/v/products/detail.php?cate_id=183

Hope that helps..

owen.

[sedge]

Thanks Owen, makes sense that.

Because of the time needed to make a template to press from ?

There is a set up fee for allowing the sale of Vinyl ( on demand) could it be used to set up such press (doing it proper) ?

(but that is only like $40)

um Good stuff! thanks for pointing out something I had no idea about

.. something I should email them about, asking what the process is

Thanks!

[mazz]

Well, not to brag in anyway, I know a lot about vinyl records (being only 31 years old..).

I mainly listen to vinyl at home, because of the analog sound. Vinyl is not compressed the same way as a CD is.
There's no 1001111000 and no digital bits.

But, if you use a digital master, it will only sound as good as that digital master. To get the full analog sound you need to record it in an analog studio. But, if you're after the "big case" that's another thing

And, the pressings made in USA and England are the best sounding vinyl records ever made. These Dutch, German, made in EU crap are not good because of the quantity and the use of crap plastic/oil material.

After a while my ears start to bleed in the studio and listening to MP3's/CD's (even if I own a tube CD player).

I think being a composer includes having a great High-Fidelity at home. So you can enjoy listening to great music, not only make it.

I think it sounds like a great choice! Making vinyl records as well. I think any reliable company in US will do a great job!

I haven't heard a vinyl record in a long time, but I grew up in the era of vinyl and that's all I ever listened to, because that was all there was (except for casettes, which we listened to in the car and usually made our own compilations from records). What I do know about vinyl is that it isn't necessarily compressed the same way a CD is, but the process of compression is absolutely used in vinyl mastering because vinyl is a mechanical medium and thus inextricably tied to the laws of physics. Namely: too much bass on a master, and the needle will jump out of the grooves, and if the music is too loud, you'll be more limited on how much music you can put on a side, because the grooves get wider the louder the music is, it's a dynamic process to cut a record master. Also an excess of high frequencies, particularly sibilance, is problematic for a disc cutting lathe to handle as well. None of these issues arise in CD mastering, other issues do, but not particularly these. Too much bass eats up headroom in a digital mix, but unless you are playing the music incredibly loud and your cd player is close enough to be affected by the vibrations, you won't make your cd player "skip" the way you could make a record do if you had the music too loud!

Vinyl actually has a smaller dynamic range than digital, particularly due to the actual physical characteristics of the cutting and playback systems, but most people don't take full advantage of the full dynamic range of digital.

If you are going to vinyl, make sure your mastering engineer understands how to make a master for vinyl. There is an EQ curve called the RIAA curve, that basically attenuates the highs and lows of the master as it is being sent to the lathe, and then the opposite curve is applied on playback inside the preamp of the listener's system.

Trivia: Some early CDs were accidentally made from the RIAA equalized master tapes instead of the unequalized masters, thus adding fuel to the fire of "CDs don't sound as good as vinyl" debate when CDs first came out.

Good luck!

Mazz

[sedge]

For this project must admit, it is just for us - really - big sleeve and geekyness !!

I wasn't aware of vinly mastering considerations until just recently, you have just said some more Mazz thanks.
Some stereo bass and the odd out of phase ms moment will jump a needle. eeek

all recorded at the same room/mic setup, so I'm feeling 90% that there is not too much eq/mix/balance diff track to track to deal with, It's a collection of live acoustic songs from 7 friends / singer songwriters round here, it is looking like all bass below 300 is set to mono and phase is checked ms by ms ( it was wide stereo mic recorded).

Good tips Mazz on the mastering, yeah spot on!

[sedge]

but most people don't take full advantage of the full dynamic range of digital.

must have scan read that , love to know more.
You mean about getting more tone out of the tones? like some mastering/eq mastery ?