One of the most common questions I get from customers is: “Does vinyl actually sound different from digital?” The answer is yes, but not for the reasons most people think. The real reason vinyl sounds different is the mastering process — and understanding that process helps you appreciate why some records sound incredible and others sound like a badly pressed CD.

What Mastering Is

Mastering is the final stage of audio production before a recording is manufactured. It’s the process of taking a mixed recording and preparing it for distribution on a specific format. The mastering engineer adjusts levels, equalisation, dynamics, and spacing to ensure the music sounds its best on the target medium.

Here’s the crucial point: mastering for vinyl is different from mastering for digital. The physical properties of the vinyl format impose specific constraints that don’t apply to digital distribution, and a good mastering engineer works within those constraints to produce the best possible result.

Vinyl’s Physical Constraints

A vinyl record is a physical groove carved into PVC. A stylus rides that groove, translating the physical undulations into an electrical signal that becomes sound. This analogue process has real-world limitations:

Bass management. Excessive low-frequency content causes the groove to become very wide, which reduces playing time and can cause the stylus to skip. The mastering engineer needs to control bass energy, often summing low frequencies to mono and carefully managing sub-bass content.

Sibilance and high frequencies. Harsh high-frequency content, particularly sibilant vocals (the “sss” sounds), can cause distortion in the cutting process. The engineer needs to manage high frequencies carefully without making the record sound dull.

Dynamic range. While vinyl can reproduce impressive dynamic range, extreme peaks cause cutting issues. The mastering engineer manages the overall dynamic envelope to ensure clean, accurate cutting.

Inner groove distortion. As the stylus moves toward the centre of the record, the groove becomes tighter and the angular velocity decreases. This means the inner tracks inherently have less fidelity than the outer tracks. Good mastering accounts for this by sequencing louder or more dynamic tracks toward the beginning of each side.

Playing time per side. More music means tighter groove spacing, which reduces volume and dynamic range. As a general rule, keeping each side under 20-22 minutes produces the best results. Albums that try to cram 30+ minutes per side will sound compromised.

The Cutting Process

Once the master is prepared, it goes to a cutting engineer (sometimes the same person, sometimes not). The cutting engineer operates a lathe that physically carves the audio signal into a lacquer disc.

The lacquer is a metal disc coated with a nitrocellulose compound. As it spins on the lathe, a heated cutting stylus traces the audio signal into the surface, creating the groove that will eventually be replicated in vinyl.

This is a real-time process. The cutting engineer monitors the audio as it’s being carved, making real-time adjustments to depth, pitch (groove spacing), and level. It’s skilled, artisanal work that combines technical knowledge with trained ears.

From the lacquer, metal stampers are created through an electroplating process. These stampers are then used in the pressing plant to stamp the groove pattern into heated PVC biscuits, creating the finished records.

Why Some Records Sound Better

Now you can understand why there’s such variation in vinyl sound quality.

Records mastered specifically for vinyl by experienced engineers sound noticeably better than records where the digital master was sent straight to the pressing plant. The vinyl-specific mastering addresses the format’s constraints proactively, resulting in clean, dynamic, detailed sound.

Records pressed from the original analogue master tapes have a different character than records pressed from digital transfers. Whether you prefer one over the other is subjective, but the signal path matters.

Records with appropriate playing times sound better than records crammed with too much music per side. The physics are unforgiving here — there’s a direct relationship between groove spacing and sound quality.

Records cut by skilled engineers at quality facilities sound better than records cut quickly and cheaply. The cutting process is a craft, and experience makes a measurable difference.

How to Tell

As a buyer, look for these indicators of quality mastering:

• Named mastering and cutting engineers in the credits or liner notes
• Reasonable playing times (under 22 minutes per side is ideal)
• Labels known for quality mastering (Mobile Fidelity, Analogue Productions, and many independent labels)
• “Half-speed mastered” designation, which indicates a specific high-fidelity cutting process
• Matrix/runout groove inscriptions that can be cross-referenced with cutting facility information

The Bottom Line

Vinyl sounds different from digital because it is different. The mastering process bridges the gap between a recording and a physical object, and the skill applied in that bridging determines whether the record sounds wonderful or mediocre.

Understanding this process doesn’t require engineering expertise. It just requires knowing that the choices made before a record reaches the pressing plant matter enormously, and that labels and engineers who invest in proper vinyl mastering are producing a genuinely superior product.

Next time you put a record on and it sounds spectacular, take a moment to appreciate the mastering engineer who made it possible. They’re the unsung heroes of the vinyl world.