New Reference Recording vinyl!

[ironbut]

If you guys haven't heard, RR is getting back into releasing lp's.

Paul Stubblebine and Prof Johnson have been toiling away behind the scenes to put this together for a couple of years now and the first 2 releases will be next month (Sept 2011).

Here's the press release;

TWO NEW RELEASES September 2, 2011 SAN FRANCISCO – For many years, RR has been searching the world over for the best possible vinyl mastering, plating and pressing facilities so we could re-enter the LP market. We now have a production chain that will allow us to produce LPs to meet our high standards and satisfy our demanding customers, who have been waiting for these LPs for a long time!

Assembling the Team

Disc mastering is done at half-speed to insure maximum accuracy. The lathe system has custom electronics by Nelson Pass. The simple signal path contains no compression, equalization or unnecessary circuitry. RR Chief Engineer and Technical Director, “Prof.” Keith Johnson consulted on the design of the system and helped with the rebuilding of the lathe and electronics, which is owned and operated by long-time mastering expert Paul Stubblebine. “Prof.” Johnson has pronounced it equal to the challenge of our master tapes!

Once we achieved successful results in disc mastering, we faced the difficult task of choosing the best plating and pressing facility to manufacture our discs. Fortunately, the new Quality Record Pressings plant in Salina, Kansas was coming on line, and we feel that waiting for this plant to open was well worth it. Chad Kassem assembled a crack team of experts to design and run his new plant, employing many unique techniques and features that clearly set QRP apart from all other pressing plants. We believe the 200-gram deluxe vinyl pressings from QRP are truly exceptional.

Multiple Configurations for New Reference Mastercuts

Depending on program lengths, some new releases will be cut at 45 rpm, some at 33-1/3 rpm. Some will be single discs, some double. All will feature deluxe gate-fold jackets crafted by Stoughton Printing .

An unusual feature of new RR masterings is what we call the “FDS finish”: the end of each side will have a 30-second band of silent grooves before the “pull-away.” No one today uses a record changer, and the silent grooves allow time to lift the arm before the always-somewhat-noisy tie-off. (Some 1950s vintage Capitol Full Dimensional Sound pressings sported this feature.) RR founder, J. Tamblyn (Tam) Henderson deserves special recognition for identifying the value of this unique production feature and reintroducing it with the new Mastercuts.

[mikeymad]

kewl.. thx

[ironbut]

OOps,.. forgot to post a link to the RR blog that has some pretty pictures of the lathe. Paul's had this for a loooong time and he's been cutting lacquers regularly since he pulled it out of storage about 3 or 4 years ago. I'll see if I can find out what tweaks Keith made to make it more compatible with his master tapes (or at least what the issues were).

http://referencerecordings.blogspot.com/2010/07/lp-report-featuring-paul-stubblebine.html

[zippy2001]

Nice, I can't wait to hear one of these reference vinyl recordings. I'm sure it will be outstanding.

[Wmcmanus]

Great news, this! I especially like the fact that they're hooking up with Chad and his gang in Salina. Wise move, because they're really going to raise the bar. It's been a huge investment, but one that should scale well when more folks like RR begin to utilize their facilities.

Edited August 28, 2011 by Wmcmanus

[ironbut]

Here's what Paul had to say about the tweaks that he and Keith applied to his lathe;

"As most people know, Keith captures a lot of dynamic range in his recordings . This requires extreme dynamic range performance from every part of the chain. Generally we were finding and eliminating residual noise contributions that were already below what anyone could hear in most recordings--or on most pressings.

A cutting system is quite a bit more complicated than you might suspect. Besides the analog signal chain from the source through the processing to power amp outputs, there is a feedback signal generated from the cutter head, a turntable motor, groove spacing control circuitry, groove depth control circuitry, and suction for chip pickup and workholding. They are all connected together, so it took some effort to make sure all the grounding was optimized, then some more tricky stuff to make sure they weren't talking to each other in ways that weren't intended.

The Pass electronics were already designed for half speed cutting, so we didn't have much to do in that department. Primarily it was about lowering the noise floor."

Edited August 28, 2011 by ironbut

[robm321]

Good news indeed!

[Voltron]

Awesomeness! Can we call this the Vinyl Project?

Edited August 28, 2011 by Voltron

[ironbut]

You can call it "Foot and Mouth Disease" if you want!

Anything to make you happy Al.

I think it's official name is The Reference Mastercuts Series.

(maybe if Keith or Paul is at RMAF we can have them add an "n" between the "u" and the "t' on our copies!)

Edited August 28, 2011 by ironbut