New year, new records, new inspiration!
Just before Christmas we got a new tool in our toolbox – TDR SimuLathe REF from Tokyo Dawn Labs. This is an amazing plugin that solves the old problem of knowing how a master will sound on vinyl without actually cutting a vinyl master.
Vinyl record sales are booming right now and we deliver lots of masters for vinyl cutting. But we don’t cut the actual vinyl masters ourselves, so there has always been some amount of guessing and hoping involved when delivering masters to the cutting engineer. This is a situation that most mastering engineers find themselves in.
TDR SimuLathe very accurately replicates the way sound will be translated onto vinyl, enabling us to instantly hear and observe precisely what to expect, without needing to wait for test pressings or feedback from the cutting engineer. This removes pretty much all of the guesswork at our end and lets us create better masters that we know will perform well on vinyl. It is a real game-changer and we have been able to fully incorporate it into our workflow.
Looking back at the last decade or so there have been so many technical advancements when it comes to making recorded music sound better. During this time the quality of in-the-box processing improved to the point where we simply stopped using our analog equipment. Nowadays we have a workflow that wouldn’t even be possible to recreate using analog tools without losing both audio quality and processing options.
Our way of doing mastering has evolved into something that uses both traditional tools and methods as well as cutting-edge stuff that blows our and our clients minds on a daily basis. There are ways to improve the sound of music now that we could only dream about 10-15 years ago! We are very excited to live in the era when all of this development is happening and plugins like TDR SimuLathe are definitely part of this excitement.
Our promise for 2023 is to continue to push the frontier for modern audio mastering and to make music sound even better!
💚 Sofia & Thomas
