Last month, The Vinyl Factory were given unprecedented access to the mastering suites at London’s world-famous Abbey Road Studios to meet some of the best engineers in the business. The final stage of the production process before the masters are shipped off to the factory to be pressed, mastering is a fine art and its practitioners highly technical craftsmen. Responsible for some of the most important records in history, from The Beatles to Pink Floyd, there’s no better place to learn than Abbey Road.
Having explored the art of vinyl mastering in our short film earlier this year, their visit to Abbey Road was an opportunity to receive a one-on-one tutorial of what actually goes on when you cut music to disc for the first time. Veteran mastering engineer and the man behind the half-speed and direct to metal mastering which make Abbey Road unique, Miles Showell talks you through the process, from keeping the levels tight to spacing the grooves on the record.
