"Sound Thinking" by Joe Lambert — The Vinyl Evolution Part 1: To Cut or Not to Cut?

January 30th, 2012 by Trenton

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As you may already know, vinyl records have made a big comeback in the last several years.

Fanfarlo’s upcoming 12″ “Rooms Filled With Light” is one of the recent albums that Joe Lambert cut to vinyl.

This past year, sales of vinyl records were up 40%, and likely to exceed 300,000 units for the first time since 2005 when vinyl sales were close to 900,000 units annually.

In 2008, 1.88 million vinyl albums were purchased, more than in any other year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking LP sales in 1991. That’s a lot of records! Especially considering that many people are shocked when I tell them we still cut vinyl records.

Who Is Releasing Vinyl?

In the early 2000’s I worked at Trutone Mastering and learned the art of cutting vinyl from owner-engineer Carl Rowatti who has been cutting records for over 30 years.

Most of those records we cut at the time were dance records. The DJ’s still liked playing records, so the quickest way to get your song played in front of 2,000 people in a club on Friday night was to get a reference acetate (dub plate) cut, take it directly to the club, and hand it to the DJ.

Then one day I walked into Carl’s room, and he was cutting this weird record that just sounded like a 1k test tone. I asked what it was and he told me it was called Serato Scratch, that (along with software) allows you to basically control your digital sound files via your turntable.

So it was a combination of a constant tone on one channel (about 1K) and time code on the other channel that allowed the software to work. The time code would reference any given point on the music being played and I believe the steady tone (about 1k) would allow for pitch change and scratching. I looked at him and said “you know this is the end of us cutting records right?”

Wrong! Although it was the end of us cutting a lot of dance records, soon after that I started noticing our rock and indie clients asking for vinyl.

I asked some of my clients why they were doing this: They told me that they sold more vinyl at their shows than CD’s, the profit margin on the sales was much better, and they just loved hearing and having their records on vinyl. Now, a few years later, the majority of rock records I do for labels are released both digitally and on vinyl. Most self-funded artists would like to release on vinyl as well but it often depends on if they are touring enough to recoup the investment.

Who’s Buying Vinyl?

The young iPod generation is really the driving force behind the resurgence.

I think part of the reason is the nostalgia [retro] trend that has 10-year-old kids walking around in Ramones and The Who T-shirts. Another part of it is it’s just more fun to buy this big cool record that shows off the artwork (with liner notes you can actually read ) — I know when I was a kid I would listen to my records with my friends for hours, and we would have conversations just about the great artwork that so many records have.

It also forces you to actually make an effort to listen to it in a controlled space. If the only other experience you’ve had listing to music is on your ear buds or computer speakers, it’s highly likely that the stereo you’re listening to the record on sounds much better.

Of course the record labels like the fact that it’s the one thing you can’t make a copy of. There are still a number of die-hards who have never given up on their collection, and are adamant that this is the best listening experience you can get.

Next Time…We’ll talk about the different choices available to you, if in fact you choose to do vinyl for your next project.

Now go listen to a great record!

Joe

Joe Lambert is owner and chief engineer of Joe Lambert Mastering (JLM) in Brooklyn, NY.