At one point, Ron McMaster, Capitol Studios’ renowned vinyl mastering engineer, was thinking about retiring because he wasn’t busy enough. Now, at last, he’s really and truly retiring… because he’s ...

YOU CAN SAY vinyl is back; you can say vinyl never left. What's certain is that record collectors and bands alike continue to have an undying, perhaps unconditional love for the format. Having one's ...

Demand for vinyl albums is growing, and the pressure on manufacturers to keep up is growing with it. Engineers with the tools and experience necessary to put music on wax are increasingly harder to ...

“It’s that perfect combination: Great artist. Great music. Great production. Great mixing. Great mastering. Voilà!” says award-winning mastering engineer Emily Lazar, whose work is often the last step ...

The scariest day of Pete Lyman’s life was the morning the movers came for his 1978 Scully LS-76 vinyl-cutting lathe. It’s one of two rare machines at Lyman’s company, Infrasonic Sound, which cut the ...

So is Trutone Mastering Labs, a vinyl record-cutting studio born 50 years ago in a North Jersey basement. When co-founders Carl and Adrianna Rowatti moved to Orangeburg, New York, the studio moved ...

Says Ron McMaster, who retires on July 12, of making records: "The fact that it’s still strong blows my mind." There’s a theory dubbed “nominative determinism,” a fancy name to describe people who ...

Günter Loibl thinks vinyl needs an update. Two years ago he filed a patent for a new way to make records, using lasers (rather than a traditional cutting lathe) to pack the grooves tighter and add 30 ...

Mastering is the key process to the final sound of a recording. It’s where the mixed master from the recording session is technically fine tuned (through equalization adjustments, sound compression, ...