Another benefit of this is the increased amount of land between the grooves, which helps to cut down on the groove malformation that produces pre-echo. Think of a lacquer as a plastic substance just…
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When we went back to AcousTech, we cut three lacquers of side B with no delay. Why three? Stan examined the first cut of side B and determined that the spread could be wider. If the two sides of a disc have widely differing grooved areas, the record tends to dish. Not everybody pays attention to this kind of detail—but Stan Ricker does. He spread the groove more and evened up the sides.
The silvered lacquer can now be put in a plating bath, where, over the next 14 hours, it will grow a master—a metallic negative that is then used to produce the mother, which is a positive, a direct copy of the lacquer (footnote 2). Stampers—negative images of the mother and, of course, of the final records produced from them—are struck from the mother in a similar manner. This is known as "three-step" plating, which is used when many thousands of pressings are required, or if it is important to preserve the master. (Dance records and other "disposable" projects frequently employ a two-step…
Almost a month after our first attempt, JA and I made our way back to Camarillo to try again. This time it took us only a few minutes to set up. We arrived at 10am and were cutting side A before 11. This time, the first note was on the tape. "It took me four hours to restore the 20-bit master from the Exabyte archive tapes," John mused, "just five seconds to redo the problem edit, and another two hours to remake each master. With an analog master tape, we could have fixed the problem in five minutes total!" Stan was dubious about our first attempt—A3—and insisted on cutting an extra back-up…
The Vinyl Experience: Michael Fremer
So which version of a digitally recorded solo piano recital do you think would sound better? The vinyl LP version cut from the full 20-bit resolution master? Or the CD edition dithered down to 16 bits?
So which version of a digitally recorded solo piano recital do you think would sound better? The vinyl LP version cut from the full 20-bit resolution master? Or the CD edition dithered down to 16 bits?
I hear you: "Solo piano on vinyl? Are you kidding?" No. If an occasional pop or click is enough to scare you away, I guess live music is out of the question, too. After all, what's worse? An occasional tick? A bit of "pre-echo"? Or the rich, reverberant decay of smoker's cough? Like the occasional pops and clicks on a side of vinyl, a few hackers…
Summing Up: John Atkinson
While it is possible to squeeze 30 minutes onto an LP side, generally both dynamic range and low-frequency extension have to be sacrificed. As we did not want to equalize, limit, or compress the piano sound in any way for the Sonata LP, we had to omit four of the Liszt piano works that are on the CD: the two La lugubre gondola pieces and the two Années de Pelèrinage, First Year: Switzerland pieces, Vallée d'Obermann (S.160/6) and Orage (S.160/5). But the program on the LP works well, the tender lyricism of Liebestraum proving an effective counter to the…
While it is possible to squeeze 30 minutes onto an LP side, generally both dynamic range and low-frequency extension have to be sacrificed. As we did not want to equalize, limit, or compress the piano sound in any way for the Sonata LP, we had to omit four of the Liszt piano works that are on the CD: the two La lugubre gondola pieces and the two Années de Pelèrinage, First Year: Switzerland pieces, Vallée d'Obermann (S.160/6) and Orage (S.160/5). But the program on the LP works well, the tender lyricism of Liebestraum proving an effective counter to the…
Sidebar 1: Stan Ricker talks about cutting Sonata
There's no such thing as a run-of-the-mill disc-cutting job—they're all custom jobs. You have to sit down and figure out how you're going to best accommodate the music into the limited amount of real estate you have on a record.
If we had been using any lesser pressing facility, I would have used the "expander/echo" control—that's an anti-groove-echo control on the lathe that inserts more space between pianissimo and forte passages on the disc—but I've had to give that up when cutting records destined to be 150-180gm pressings. It…
Sidebar 2: 20-bits vs 16-bits
Our Sonata CD is a very good recording, I feel, with terrific dynamics and a great sense of the actual Steinway D I heard during the recording sessions I was privileged to be a part of. It doesn't, however, capture the hall in which the sessions took place as well as the master tape does, and it also has a sense of congestion and unwanted brightness that aren't on the master tape, particularly during high-level passages. The master tape is effortless—the sound just happens, without trying hard, ineffably.
That's what I hear from every good master…
Sidebar 3: Sonata (STPH008-1)
Piano Works by Franz Liszt Robert Silverman: Steinway D piano
SIDE 1 (21:31)
Franz Liszt: Piano Sonata in b (S.178)
Lento assai—Allegro Energico 13:08
Andante Sostenuto 8:23
SIDE 2 (17:20)
Franz Liszt: Piano Sonata in b (S.178)
Allegro Energico 11:40
Franz Liszt: Liebestraum (S.541) 5:21
Sidebar 4: What, When, and How
The works on Sonata were recorded with 20-bit resolution at the First United Methodist Church, Albuquerque, New Mexico, November 2-5, 1993. They were edited at 20-bit resolution in March 1996 using a Sonic Solutions Sonic Power Station v2.26 Digital Audio Workstation running on a Macintosh Quadra 650 computer. The final LP lacquers were cut on December 5, 1996 at AcousTech, Camarillo, California.
Pianism extraordinaire: Robert Silverman
Production: Robert Silverman & John Atkinson
LP Mastering: Stan Ricker
Recording: John Atkinson…
Sometimes you have to wonder why big corporations gobble up small speaker companies. Most such firms are built by individualist entrepreneurs chasing an elusive dream—an up-close and personal thing that is the antithesis of the corporate mentality. That's why speaker companies are so often named after the founder.
The company builds a solid reputation and is then bought out, and for a while, momentum carries the day. But then, unless whomever is brought onboard to engineer new designs can carry the dream forward with products that are innovative yet maintain the franchise's distinctive…