Bernie Grundman Opens New Vinyl Mastering Suite: CUT-2
The demand for lacquer disc cutting at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood has been so high the past couple of years that the facility has added CUT-2, a second cutting room added to the facility’s seven busy mastering studios.
Pictured in the new CUT-2 vinyl cutting room at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood are (L-R) mastering engineer Chris Bellman, CTO Beno May, and mastering engineers Scott Sedillo, Paul Grundman, Bernie Grundman, and Scott Stratton. Photo by David Goggin.
“Our primary cutting room is equipped to handle any full-service mastering job,” explains mastering engineer Scott Sedillo, “but a good portion of our cutting projects are for albums which have already been equalized and mastered and only require an expert, high fidelity transfer to lacquer. So this second room is streamlined for that purpose.”
“This new room is highly simplified, so that it’s more straightforward,” says Bernie Grundman. “It’s the result of all of our experimenting in the first room and is set up to be direct from the signal source right to the cutting system resulting in the closest to what the master sounds like on the disc.”
The Lathe: The new CUT-2 studio features a reconditioned Scully Lathe with BGM’s custom head suspension.The HAECO SC-2 stereo cutting head was rebuilt by Jacob Horowitz of History of Recorded Sound and is fitted with a diamond cutting tool. The lathe is supported by a pneumatic table for isolation and the Compudisk CD-20 system provides variable pitch and depth for maximizing groove geometry.
The Console: CUT-2 features an audiophile grade Preview/Program disk cutting console with only a single, discrete amplifier in the signal path. All analog filters and DeEssers are bypass-able with coin silver switches. There is no patch bay, with all connections direct. The center section provides metering and monitor controls. Tannoy SGM-10B speakers are driven by modified Yamaha P2002 power amplifiers. All electronics are powered by custom BGM power supplies.
Sidecar: The adjacent sidecar contains an in-house built digital audio workstation running WaveLab and ProTools. The Antelope Trinity word clock unit is resolved with a BGM custom 10MHz time base generator. Clients have the choice of Lavry DA-N5 or JCF Audio Latte D/A converters for audio playback.
Grundman attributes much of his success to CTO Beno May, with whom he originally worked at A&M Studios before both went independent at BGM. “Without Beno, we wouldn’t be where we are today. It’s the combination of Beno’s technical expertise and my mastering experience – I wouldn’t be able to get the sound and quality that I’m looking for without Beno’s imagination and ability to fabricate the unique tools that we use here.”
ABOUT BERNIE GRUNDMAN MASTERING
The name Bernie Grundman is synonymous with Mastering. His world-renowned facilities, responsible for a consistently large percentage of chart recordings, were launched in 1984. In 1997, Grundman opened his Tokyo mastering studios and in 1998 relocated to expanded facilities in Hollywood. Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood is a complex of seven studios, including dedicated 5.1 Surround and Lacquer Cutting rooms. Virtually any analog or digital format can be played back thanks to a deep inventory of modern and legacy equipment. The facility provides high quality vinyl masters, pre-masters for CD, and file masters for standard and high-resolution digital distribution and streaming. https://www.berniegrundmanmastering.com/
