Spring Studio

Vinyl Mastering

THE ANCIENT ART OF CUTTING ACETATES

I have cut over 5000 different LP’s onto acetate in the last 20 years. Pop, Dance, Thrash, Metal, Pop, Hip hop, Noise – you name it. Names spring to mind in droves – INXS, Hilltop Hoods, Jet, Silverchair, Powderfinger I could go on and on. The point is, if you went to the expense of having your music pressed on vinyl in Australia – which is cheaper and at least as good as Europe not least because of the freight and duty charges – then its likely I will have cut your LP or single.

Having said that, in the last two years we have had better equipment at Zenith that we used to have at Corduroy. This is partly due to advancement in technology, and partly the attitude of management. More and more people are presenting projects as 24 bit .wav files which is great. If anything needs tweaking I can do that in Nuendo, embed the changes and so the process is completely reproducible. I can even email you mp3s of the changes for prior approval!

DIRECT TO DISC RECORDING

In the last few years I also did Direct to Disc recordings for the likes of The White Stripes, Dirt Bombs, and Sonic Youth and many others which were a gas. Imagine finishing an album in an hour! No remixes – pure honesty. Like the old days.

While this facility is currently unavailable, there is talk of re-establishing this process at a new location.

Watch this space for more details.

AN AFFORDABLE SOLUTION

It would be nice if every master for pressing really was a Master. The amount of time, waste of vinyl and energy involved in trying to cut and press something done ‘by your mate who has a studio’ or ‘at home’ is phenomenal. Very often I have to ring up a client and discuss the onsite re-mastering of their album or single. This is not fair to anyone.

Those who know my work now often prefer to give me a listen in my own studio and trust the process of doing a very quick and cheap check of their product before lodging it for cutting.

It’s quite clear that at the factory we are NOT OBLIGED to go the extra mile and worry about the sound of people’s music. That is supposed to be done by the artist. However, because we really like to get it right for you we usually ask before cutting something really weird.

Some people must mix with ancient speakers and cotton wool in their ears. Either that or it’s the drugs.

So if you want to get a top result, run it by me. For an album, it won’t cost more than about

A$300 unless it needs remixing completely, in which case I wont touch it and you can do that.

For a single I try to keep the cost down to under $100.

If it’s well mastered it won’t cost anything.

OK?