Going to press my first scratch wax!

Watch your levels, don't try to make all your sounds as loud as possible, the vinyl mastering engineer will do that for you. Try not to peak above -10dB

no there is no free mastering engineer.. we have to do this ourselfs. mastering costs 28 euros a track
someone told me once that mastering for vinyl is different than it is for cd standard. Does anyone know more about this?

Too much bass makes your records skip. I could never use some of my records cause of this...

seriously? thats interesting!

These links are not about cutting dub plates as you´re going to do, though it is still the same principles as the physical conditions are the same. Among others you´ll find why to much uncontrolled bass messes up the grooves.
Production of vinyl is more sensitive and the chance that your material comes back sounding not quite the same as you´re CD-R master is always there. So be careful and precise. It helps to read and learn what parameters are most critical, even though you can´t correct and prepare your masters like a professional mastering engineer would, you could at least make them a little more "safe" by yourself.

Basic guides on what to think about in preparing your masters:
http://www.urpressing.com/advice.html
http://www.recordtech.com/prodsounds.htm

Vinyl production lingo:
http://www.urpressing.com/language.htm

Basic guide on whats happening from premaster to finished record:
http://www.aardvarkmastering.com/proceed.htm

The physical limitations of a record and the relationship loudness / times:
http://www.aardvarkmastering.com/cutspec.htm

Anal information for those really in need to know everything:
http://www.aardvarkmastering.com/riaa.htm

Dos wrote:Watch your levels, don't try to make all your sounds as loud as possible, the vinyl mastering engineer will do that for you. Try not to peak above -10dB

Drumtrack, as stated above, the mastering engineer will max out the levels on the transfer to record. There´s a bit confusion as in vinyl production there´s two mastering processes, first the one we usually call mastering: a guy gives a final touch to eq and dynamics, making it sound better and optimizes the material for the media it shall be duplicated upon.
The second mastering process is actualy cutting the grooves into the laquer (or vinyl in your case), the inverted process of playing a record. Some guy with a big machine writes the grooves with a stylus.

These two are both, generally called mastering. In need of seperating the two I call the first "premastering" if there´s a chance of confusion. It´s the premastering they charge 28 EUR for.
In the mastering process they make sure to keep your levels as high as possible in the transfer to laquer (or vinyl), in part to make you happy with a banging record but most of all to rise the music material as high above the surface noise floor as possible.

And disregard the advice of keeping your peaks below -10 dB. As you said Dos, the engineer will keep the levels right. I really don´t understand why you should sacrifice audio quality when the engineer anyway keeps levels in check? My advice is to keep the peak level as high as possible, but don´t over compress / maximise.

thanks, ryssen for the info. really helpfull stuff

ryssen wrote:These links are not about cutting dub plates as you´re going to do, ]

I hope he's not cutting scratch samples to a dubplate that wouldn't make much sense would it?

Aster wrote:I hope he's not cutting scratch samples to a dubplate that wouldn't make much sense would it?

Well, not by an orthodox definition, the guys his dealing with http://www.vinylcuts.be/ is cutting directly to vinyl, thus making them more durable and scratch friendly.
I used the dub plate term as it´s one off cuts and not pressed, even though it´s not cut on acetate.

erkl wrote:dude why the F are u gonna use AHH's when u can get them on every damn scratch 12" out there, use your own custom shiznat so u have a reason to pay for your own pressing

for years battle records have seem to been using the same damn samples, if u have one u have them all....

thats what i was thinkings.

Maybe press up some quotes that you could use for a chorus or something. Like dj premier style.

yeah.. i have like hmmm .... 20 hours of speeches here on my comp and on vhs.. i have plenty stuff to press but i want those commercial scratch sound on the record too, you know... as clean as possible. is that so weird??

boz one said it best ,caAN U GUYS STOP SCRATCHIN AHHH FRESH be original , it's cool that you want too press your own scratch vinyl but theres more sounds out there that havent been used for that price man i w ould have busted ass and got osme reall good stuff to put on there so you can make a name for your self, people will pick it up and say theres the same sounds on here, i ahve been planing to get one of those together for a few years i'm still gettin my samples to gether mostly off original records thats whats taken me , plus the fact that i aint money to press, but shoot thats a good deal man,

for some women samples get a porno flick and sample of that, if you got CEP man that will boost your shyt up with the normalize functionthen eq it quick and easy i got some ill shyt that hasnt been out yet.

what you using for loops,? your own or sample loops?

you going to sell this ? how many you pressin? let me know i'll buy one of you.

good luck man.

ive been saving samples for years... i just want 1 fresh and 1 aaah on the record!!!! get it???? ................

ede, look at www.vinylcuts.be. there is an english version of the site too. and i think them dudes ship accross the whole wide world. if they dont, check www.vinylcuts.de, maybe they do

anyway, thanks for the tips and i guess i just sample an aah & fresh from one of my own records and apply some noise and click/pop reduction to make it clean

oh and for the record, i like to scratch with the fresh and aaaah, oooh, ah & ooow.... and ... yeah!
is it so hard to give me some tips instead of knowing it better? Erkl and alike??

have you checked out one of those records in person? looks similar to one of those vestax vinyl machine. i dont know if these things will be durable enough for long term scratching.

peezie wrote:have you checked out one of those records in person? looks similar to one of those vestax vinyl machine. i dont know if these things will be durable enough for long term scratching.

yeah i was going to ask the same thing . those links dont work for some reason. ,
but i know a test press goes for like 35-40 bucks and you get like maybe 100 plays out of it max , but who knows with scratchin.
have done a search on the crate diggers forum i put up some links for vinyl kuttin there or may the off topic some one on here was going to kutt some vinyl on a vestax kutter i cant remebr the name of the thread but search there was somnme good info on there. RTI and i cant remeber the other label but these are the labels thats dirtstyle uses so you know it's good.