Direct-to-Vinyl Recording Makes a Comeback (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on Monday March 25, 2013 @07:30AM from the round-and-round-the-little-stylus-goes dept.

For many decades, gramophone records (the black vinyl discs in Grandma's attic) were made by cutting grooves directly into an acetate disc, then making a mold from that "master" and "pressing records." Nowadays, of course, we use digital recording software on our computers or even on our mobile phones. Vinyl? Strictly for fogies and maybe a few audiophiles who think analog recordings have a depth and warmth that CDs and MP3s lack. Naturally, SXSW is a haven for these folks, and among them Tim Lord found Wesley Wolfe and two German compatriots from vinylrecording.com, busily demonstrating their vinyl recording system, which is sort of the gramophone record equivalent of print on demand. Lots of background music in the video makes the voices a bit hard to hear; some might prefer the transcription -- although those who do will lose out on watching the vinyl recording machine in action. Either way. Or both. Up to you.

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Back to bad times by Airon · 2013-03-25 07:55 · Score: 5, Interesting

As a professional recording, editing and mixing engineer, all I can say is NO THANK YOU.
For those who place a premium on scratchy, error-prone, expensive, one-time and short recordings this might be neat. There are lots of reasons we started using tape in the late 40s and early 50s in the music recording industry, and loads of reasons we're recording digitally now.
Quality, speed, cost. A direct-to-disc recording system ain't it on any of those fronts.