A beautiful surprise this morning … The pressing plant (Record Industry in the Netherlands – through soundperformance.fr ) has sent the test pressing for the Des larmes mélangées de poussière EP, and they sound so good … it’s a relief since we can now say to them to manufacture the final product (which will be beautifully white).

As a reminder and maybe as help to other people going through the vinyl making process I will quote Jason Ward (Mastering engineer for this record) who gave a few very good ieces of advice to follow when listening to test pressings:

Here is a quick idea of what is good/bad or otherwise with the test pressings.

1) Most times they will be a little bit noisier than the final pressings are going to turn out, this is just because they don’t take as much time to get the temperatures perfected with the presses as they will on a full pressing run. As long as this noise is random and not the EXACT same thing on each pressing, it can generally be ignored.
2) The outside of the disc will sometimes be a bit noisier with some spots where the grooves did not fill completely. This is usually another temperature-related issue. As the vinyl material is pressed and heated, it sometimes does not fill in the most far out grooves completely. These sounds will usually be concentrated at one spot in the rotation of the disc, but should at least be very slightly different from disc to disc.
3) Overall, it should sound pretty exactly like the digital versions. It can be hard to compare them exactly if you do not have a way to match the volume levels precisely, as the one that quieter (usually the turntable) will tend to sound more dark or “weaker,” but if you keep this in mind, you can make a decent comparison. Towards the inside grooves of a 10″ the high frequencies will not be as present as they are on the outside, this is just the way it goes for any record that is cut towards the inner groove area at 33 rpm, but it should still sound quite nice overall.

Many thanks to him and to Andrew who’s the administrative side of the studio.

You can check the Chicago Mastering Studio website here : www.chicagomasteringservice.com it has loads of other very good writings on vinyl and the mastering process in general. They also, as if it was not clear, very competent and nice people to work with.

I probably will write more about the whole recording/mastering/manufacturing process this EP went through. Making a vinyl is a long process but when you finally get the record you really think it was well worth it ( when everything goes fine that is ).