Our vinyl partner, elasticStage will transfer your content onto vinyl as faithfully as possible, preserving the sound of your uploaded files without making creative or unnecessary changes.

Vinyl, as a format, has physical limitations that are not present for CD or streaming formats and therefore, some considerations should be taken into account when preparing your music for vinyl. While we do not offer a dedicated vinyl mastering service, here are some tips to get the most out of your record: 

Track Layout

The physical limitations of vinyl are most audible towards the centre of the disc, typically experienced as loss of treble and an increase in distortion. Some commonly used practices to mitigate this include:

• Placing songs with more treble at the beginning of a side, and quieter tracks towards the end of a side.
• Applying a de-esser to reduce excessive high frequencies, for example, reducing sibilance and aggressive cymbals.

Playback Compatibility

Different turntables and playback cartridges can have different characteristics. Some common practices to optimize playback compatibility include:

• Filtering out content above and below the human audible spectrum.
• Converting bass content to mono.
• Avoiding long periods of negative phase correlation.
• Avoiding sudden changes in amplitude such as clicks and pops, for example noises from bad edit points or dropouts.

Loudness

All vinyl products are limited by space constraints, leading to a trade-off between duration, bass and loudness. We have a default maximum playback level at which we produce our vinyl, but in order to work within these constraints the playback level will decrease if more space is needed. Longer or bass-heavy content takes up more space per side, while quiet or shorter content takes up less space. At present, we maintain the loudness level relationship between all tracks per side to preserve the intended listening experience.

Once you have everything set up, we strongly recommend purchasing a personal copy of your vinyl, especially if you’re new to producing content for this format. If you encounter any issues, we recommend reviewing this FAQ to ensure you’ve made the relevant audio adjustments.