How is vinyl record

After the recording finishes, the mastering engineer will assess the cut for any issues before scratching a serial number and often their signature into the inner edge of the disc.

Image shared under the creative commons by JacoTen. The process begins by washing the master disc before spraying it with tin chloride and liquid silver.

Any silver that does not stick is washed away. A duller metal is added to the silver side, which stiffens the disc ready for the electroplating process. Electroplating simply involves immersing the silver-plated disc into a liquid tank of dissolved nickel.

When immersed, the nickel is fused to the silver surface by an electrical charge. With the nickel set into the grooves, the disc is removed from the electroplating tank and the metal layer is removed from the original lacquer disc.

And there you have it; the removed metal layer is our stamper that will be used to press shiny new vinyl records. To finish the stamper, the manufacturer uses an optical centering punch to make a hole in the exact center before progressing to trimming off any excess metal. The labels must be created first, as they will fuse to the record as part of the pressing process.

Labels are produced in square stacks, which are first punched in the center and trimmed into circles. To press vinyl records, the manufacturer first pours Polyvinyl Chloride pellets into a hopper, which feeds the material into an extruder that condenses them into a small puck shape referred to as a biscuit. The machines hold these vinyl biscuits in place as the labels are placed above and below.

The biscuit and labels are then moved to the press where tons of pressure is applied at very high temperatures to melt and mold the biscuit into a new vinyl record. Once cool, the excess vinyl is ready for a final trim. Vinyl record players are electromagnetic devices that change sound vibrations into electrical signals.

When a record spins, it creates sound vibrations that get converted into electrical signals. These signals are fed into electronic amplifiers. Electric amps vibrate and feed the resulting sound into speakers, which amplify it and make it louder. Record players still use the whole needle and groove methodology that a phonograph used, although record players today are much more high tech. So how do they work exactly? The needle, or stylus of a record player is one of several parts that make up a transducer.

A transducer is what changes mechanical energy into electrical energy and changes electrical energy into mechanical energy.

The whole system contains a stylus, magnets, coils, cantilever, and a body within a cartridge. The mechanical energy from the sound waves is converted into electrical energy, which is then sent into the amplifier and out to the speakers. When a vinyl record is made, a needle is used to create grooves in the vinyl that is basically recorded information of the desired sound or music.

A needle or stylus is also used to read the information contained in the grooves, playing it back so that we can hear the recorded information. On the left side of the groove and on the right side are channels of audio information that makeup stereo sound. Fun factoid; once upon a time, records were made of rubber. Now, they are vinyl.

Another fun factoid; the little grooves in a record would be roughly meters long if you were to unwind it into a straight line. A master copy of a record is made using a stylus to cut grooves into a round disk. The master copy is ridged instead of grooved. The stamp is pressed into steam-softened vinyl, using a hydraulic press. The vinyl disc is cooled with water and viola… a finished vinyl record is born.

Or, if your amplifier is a line-level device, as many are, a dedicated phono stage. What exactly does a phono stage do? The physical limitations of vinyl mean that the original signal has to be altered before it can be recorded — low frequencies are reduced in level and the highs are boosted.

Every phono stage has the reverse response built into it — one that boosts bass and flattens treble to exactly the right degree. The result should be a tonally even presentation. A phono stage is also an amplifier. So rather than the witchcraft we always sort-of suspected it must be, getting a sound from a vinyl disc turns out to be nothing more than fiendishly clever.

It's worth bearing in mind the ingenuity at play when you next carefully place the tip of your stylus into the groove of a LP — but don't dwell on it for all that long.

After all, there's music to be listened to. An electric current introduced to the solution activates the bath and attracts individual nickel molecules to the electrically conductive, silvered lacquer.

While the father could be used to press records, best practices call for it to be saved as a backup master, as plates wear out during the pressing process. Carefully separating the father plate during the galvanic process The father is therefore separated from the lacquer and a positive nickel cast is made from this platter.

To do this, the father is returned to the electroforming bath and a second nickel plate is grown on to it. The entire process is completed for each side of a record. The above method of creating a stamper is referred to as a three-step plating process. Alternatively, manufacturers can use a two-step process, where the father, the first nickel plate created, is used as the stamper.

The three-step process outlined above, however, is industry best practice, as it reserves the father plate as a backup in the likely case that the mother degrades while making stampers.

A mother plate can only be used to produce a limited number of stampers. Once the mother is too worn, the backup father plate is used to make more mothers, which in turn make more stampers. A two-step plating process cuts corners, leaving manufacturers without an easy way to create additional mothers. That means when the mother wears out or is damaged, a new lacquer must be cut and the plating and electroforming processes must start from scratch, an expensive and unnecessary delay.

Each stamper can produce between and records before degrading, so a number of stampers are made at this stage, depending on the size of the pressing run. Additionally, sanding ensures that each stamper is the exact same thickness as its B-side companion. The sanded stamper is then loaded into a center punch machine that uses a microscope to align its grooves and punch a spindle hole in its exact center.

Lastly, the stamper is put onto a forming press, a machine that fashions the flat plate into a shape the pressing machine can hold during the actual pressing process. Sanded, centered and shaped, the stamper is ready to enter the vinyl record press. Before the retail copies of the record are pressed, the plant produces a handful of test pressings.

More work occurs while the pressing plant is waiting for the customers to approve their test pressings.