I'm confused how "Aardvark Record Mastering", which charges $80.00 a side for mastering, doesn't master??

I've got only good things to say about Mus-I-Col in Columbus, Ohio.
http://www.musicolrecording.com/index.html

I've had a few things pressed there, and several folks I know have pressed records with them, and every experience was top notch. They've been in business for over 40 years and pressed a good number of excellent soul recordings.





I've never used them for full package pressing, so I can't speak on their work in that regard.

Aardvark's mastering is nothing more than making a copy of an already existent thing, that is, they're making a lacquer out of your music source (CD, tape, DAT, etc.). They are cutting straight from the source, there's no real EQ or mastering going on in terms of dB's and various levels (engineer dorks help an inept man out here. i'm no techno geek). They're simply setting the appropriate levels on the lathe for your music to transfer onto a lacquer a cut without distortion and shit.

This is NOT the same thing as mastering, or what is also known as "pre-mastering." This process makes your music louder or quieter (is that a word?). You can compress things in mastering, brighten them up etc. This process of pre-mastering is essential to making the end product: an LP, CD, 7" or tape. Aardvark does not do this.

If you have an unmastered recording and want to hear, on vinyl, the same unmastered version you have on tape, hire Aardvark...or hire someone to do premastering and then hire Aardvark. I've heard too many stories of folks that thought there record was getting "mastered" at Aardvark when it was just simply put on vinyl...big difference.

Listent to the many Shellac boots that exist out there. Some are mastered and sound pretty good. Others aren't and don't sound as good.

Golden does both for you in the mastering process b/c they don't see mastering as two separate steps anymore. You're paying high dollar for both services in one package. The reason why Aardvark is so cheap is b/c the guy shits out 25-lacquers a day. He just sets the lathe and it goes. My concern is around quality control and what he calls mastering.

Does that makes sense?

just thought i'd add a little note to this thread to back up what abcgroupdocumentation said about gz vinyl in the czech republic.

i run a small label based in the uk, which releases just split singles and i used gz exclusively for a few years to press 33rpm 7"s for me using the dmm process. i always dealt with them direct and had test pressings made - on two occasions i had to get a second set of tps done as the first set had issues, caused by their production methods.

i was generally ok with them though - they always did a good job in the end and they were a lot cheaper than the few remaining plants based in the uk however about a year ago they increased their prices so dramatically for limited editions that i stopped pressing vinyl altogether. i also never had them print anything for me, ever.

i now release split 3" cds instead, which is sad as i started awkward silence as a vinyl label but if there's good honest folks out in america who can press your stuff for you on vinyl at a reasonable price i say support them otherwise you'll lose them.

many uk labels (including big ones) use gz for vinyl and cds. when i started with them they were quite a secret but now they are well-known and so have taken advantage by hiking up their prices to concentrate on large orders, which is a shame.

i guess i'm saying "avoid".

john
www.awkwardsilencerecordings.com

EH - I guess that makes sense. The Aardvark guy, though, has done some tweaking with my stuff - maybe my stuff needs to be tweaked more than normal, I dunno, but I have no complaints. But no way am I going to use Golden if there's a digital step in the process.....why blow all the money on tape/vinyl if I'm going to have digi-voodoo in the process? That's just silly. Who masters the stuff, like the last Burma record or Low LPs where it's all AAA??

haha! the 100K dollar question Max!!! You let me know when you find one who's 100% digital. Golden'll even tell you that this is a myth in the US. Everyone uses digital processing at some point...Low and Burma and the like. If Golden masters it, then there's digital in the mix. This is no great surprise to engineers and the like, but it often comes as a surprise to "analog purists" who don't realize that DMM is the only form of analog purity that exists...it's just not existent in the US anymore...

But...I'd like to say too that it's not as cut and dry as you make it. It's not as if this digi-voodoo is bad. Listen to your Low, Burma, Sonic Youth, and Drag City records...most of these are done by Golden. Remember too, if they're pressed on CD, the vinyl's being mastered from the CD. It's just the way it is.

Well then I'll keep on using Aardvark - taking what you say into account, he'll just take a source tape and put it on a lacquer. If it's working, why "fix it"?

Hrm, I just found this interview with Weston (and the rest of Burma) about the whole process...seems it WAS a true AAA record. He points out the only digital voodoo was done for the CD only, not the vinyl.

Mastering: At Sterling, the mastering EQ and limiting was analog. When available, I prefer to use a 2" multitrack machine and to mix down to a 1/2" stereo master. The only time things went digital is at the mastering lab, after Ted Jensen did analog EQ and limiting, the analog signal went through the hot-shot A/D converters at Sterling for the CD and SACD production. We even sequenced in analog with splicing blocks and tape. In fact, the LP version is an AAA production. Analog multitrack. Analog stereo master. All-analog mastering transfer. I’m not scared of digital, but analog is an extremely mature format, sounds great, and has excellent archival stability. Why change? SACD sounds pretty amazing, as far as digital goes. But, unfortunately, I think Sony just dumped it.

http://www.eqmag.com/story.asp?sectionc ... ycode=9388

M_a_x wrote:But no way am I going to use Golden if there's a digital step in the process.....why blow all the money on tape/vinyl if I'm going to have digi-voodoo in the process?

Because he has excellent transfer equipment (ATR playback machine, Weiss transfer console, SADIE workstation), decades of experience, and he's wonderful to work with. On top of that, he does it for peanuts.

If you're using Aardvark over Golden because of Golden's "digi-voodoo", I think you should investigate Aardvark's setup a little further.

mb

Again - ehhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I really don't want to use Aardvark for anything approaching hi-fi, which my 12" will be. (I LIKE Aardvark, but those 'no mastering' comments have given me pause). There's a lot of Golden-love on this thread but I don't see the point if he's just gonna digitize everything halfway through. Weston's spiel shows that if you want you can master a record truly analog in the States, but that sounds like a custom job and he was there every step of the way - which leads to (haha) my original post here, which was "how is recordpressing.com" - so they use those Czech people that make crappy covers? I'll just use Dorado press for the covers, get them to make the records and they'll be true analog records.