Vinyl Me Please (store, exclusives, swaps, etc)

dhodo said:
I assume they mean in house/AP cuts, right? QRP presses tons of things cut by mastering studios.

My issue with that article is that it is talking to the companies that are too big to fail. I'm worried about the impact this will have on the smaller mastering studios, which I don't think a marketing executive at Sony has any insight into.

Edit:looks like Ryan Smith is cutting a bunch of their stuff now. I guess I'm confused by what Kassem means by most of their lacquers are from MDC when they use Sterling and other cuts. I'd feel better if I heard this stuff from the actual cutting houses personally.
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Sterling is not a lacquer company. They use lacquers made by MDC or Apollo
dhodo said:
I'm not sure what you thought I meant. I know what MDC is.

I was saying that it seems the businesses most directly affected by the Apollo fire will be the cutting houses, who Apollo directly supplied, not the big labels or even necessarily pressing plants, who were the only people quoted in that article. I haven't heard any of them say not to worry and I'm not sure why discogs thinks that a Sony marketing executive saying they think it will all work out is notable in any way.
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From what I understand, a lot of labels cut in-house now. But I do agree that the article reeks of just trying to have people not freak out. Major label marketing execs saying “don’t worry it will all be fine” doesn’t exactly instill confidence in me. They wouldn’t say that the vinyl world is screwed.
 
MikeH said:
Sterling is not a lacquer company. They use lacquers made by MDC or Apollo

From what I understand, a lot of labels cut in-house now. But I do agree that the article reeks of just trying to have people not freak out. Major label marketing execs saying “don’t worry it will all be fine” doesn’t exactly instill confidence in me. They wouldn’t say that the vinyl world is screwed.
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Man, I guess I worded it terribly if two people misunderstood me. Sorry for that. I understand what the companies do. My point was that QRP isn't a cutting company, so they don't buy the lacquers either. I guess they could know where all of the cutting houses they typically use get their lacquers from, but companies like Sterling are the ones buying the lacquers. Seems like they would know best how it directly affects them, but no cutting houses (the direct customers of lacquer manufacturers) were quoted in the article.

I do not believe QRP or their in-house label, AP, cut "in-house" generally. The pressings I quickly checked from AP last year were cut by Sterling or Bernie Grundman Mastering.

Yeah, the last part I totally agree. Even if it was an exec whose job was to really know this stuff (not marketing), they'll never say things are bad until forced to. Not the exec way. Bad PR.
 
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dhodo said:
Man, I guess I worded it terribly if two people misunderstood me. Sorry for that. I understand what the companies do. My point was that QRP isn't a cutting company, so they don't buy the lacquers either. I guess they could know where all of the cutting houses they typically use get their lacquers from, but companies like Sterling are the ones buying the lacquers. Seems like they would know best how it directly affects them, but no cutting houses (the direct customers of lacquer manufacturers) were quoted in the article.

I do not believe QRP or their in-house label, AP, cut "in-house" generally. The pressings I quickly checked from AP last year were cut by Sterling or Bernie Grundman Mastering.

Yeah, the last part I totally agree. Even if it was an exec whose job was to really know this stuff (not marketing), they'll never say things are bad until forced to. Not the exec way. Bad PR.
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QRP themselves in the article say most of their lacquers they receive are from MDC or are reissues which don’t need new lacquers.

FWIW, Sterling also published an article about the effects. This is what they had to say about it:

So everyone including us, is wondering what this means. Fortunately, Sterling has been a long-term customer of MDC (as well as Apollo). We hope to continue to receiving our monthly allotment, but our capacity will be cut by two-thirds. This means we will only be able to provide cutting services for existing cutting clients for projects mastered at Sterling.

sterling-sound.com

The Future of Vinyl? | STERLING SOUND

By now, most people in the music production business have heard about the devastating fire last Thursday at Apollo Masters in Banning, California. Thankfully, there were no reports of injuries either to the staff or firefighters, but the plant was destroyed. Apollo was one of two manufacturers...
sterling-sound.com sterling-sound.com
 
MikeH said:
QRP themselves in the article say most of their lacquers they receive are from MDC or are reissues which don’t need new lacquers.

FWIW, Sterling also published an article about the effects. This is what they had to say about it:

So everyone including us, is wondering what this means. Fortunately, Sterling has been a long-term customer of MDC (as well as Apollo). We hope to continue to receiving our monthly allotment, but our capacity will be cut by two-thirds. This means we will only be able to provide cutting services for existing cutting clients for projects mastered at Sterling.

sterling-sound.com

The Future of Vinyl? | STERLING SOUND

By now, most people in the music production business have heard about the devastating fire last Thursday at Apollo Masters in Banning, California. Thankfully, there were no reports of injuries either to the staff or firefighters, but the plant was destroyed. Apollo was one of two manufacturers...
sterling-sound.com sterling-sound.com
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Right, but the fact that QRP is a pretty in demand pressing plant that presses from lots of different mastering studios when MDC supposedly makes up less than 50% of the lacquers makes that statement just seem weird to me. If true, I guess they were also a poor source for the article as they obviously won't be affected and wherever the cut Apollo lacquers go will.

Thanks for the Sterling quote. Can't be good to reduce cutting output by 2/3, that is a pretty huge hit to business. That would destroy most companies. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what they mean? Do they mean something else by reduced capacity? I guess they are implying the cuts that they actually master themselves will still be made. Maybe that is where most of the money is and just pressing cut on a provided mastering isn't significant to their bottom line but somehow makes up 66% of their lacquers? Confusing myself at least.

I hope there aren't any great mastering labs who were only getting Apollo lacquers, because I don't see how they can continue short term, unless they have a large stockpile of lacquers.
 
dhodo said:
I do not believe QRP or their in-house label, AP, cut "in-house" generally. The pressings I quickly checked from AP last year were cut by Sterling or Bernie Grundman Mastering.
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You're correct with AP. They contract out all of their mastering. The only audiophile label that cuts in-house remains MoFi.

dhodo said:
Thanks for the Sterling quote. Can't be good to reduce cutting output by 2/3, that is a pretty huge hit to business. That would destroy most companies. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what they mean? Do they mean something else by reduced capacity? I guess they are implying the cuts that they actually master themselves will still be made. Maybe that is where most of the money is and just pressing cut on a provided mastering isn't significant to their bottom line but somehow makes up 66% of their lacquers? Confusing myself at least.
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I do think it's going to have a massive impact on Sterling, and this is just their damage control to remain top of mind when it comes to vinyl mastering. I read this as 2/3 of their stocks of lacquers came from Trasnco. I reached out to Joe Nino-Hernes on Instagram who I've chatted to in the past casually about the issue and he read but didn't respond to my message. I actually regretted poking him about it because now I'm imagining he's facing some job insecurity as the junior vinyl mastering engineer. For what it's worth he's posted pics in the past of the shelves of lacquers at Sterling and there was a lot of Transco stock on those shelves.

At the end of the day they will survive as one of the biggest and most prestigious operations in the game but I do imagine as you fear that many smaller outfits will have to shut their doors.
 
MikeH said:
QRP themselves in the article say most of their lacquers they receive are from MDC or are reissues which don’t need new lacquers.

FWIW, Sterling also published an article about the effects. This is what they had to say about it:

So everyone including us, is wondering what this means. Fortunately, Sterling has been a long-term customer of MDC (as well as Apollo). We hope to continue to receiving our monthly allotment, but our capacity will be cut by two-thirds. This means we will only be able to provide cutting services for existing cutting clients for projects mastered at Sterling.

sterling-sound.com

The Future of Vinyl? | STERLING SOUND

By now, most people in the music production business have heard about the devastating fire last Thursday at Apollo Masters in Banning, California. Thankfully, there were no reports of injuries either to the staff or firefighters, but the plant was destroyed. Apollo was one of two manufacturers...
sterling-sound.com sterling-sound.com
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This came across as a fairly honest assessment. Not the death knell, but also not nothing. I do think there will be some closures and some shortages in production across the board.
 
biglazymoose said:
I can confirm the new Torres album sounds pretty awful. Reminds me of a fresh bowl of Rice Krispies with milk. Precision strikes again. Gonna see if I can get some store credit.
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Awful in what sense? Noisy or poor mastering, ie muddled sound?. Sorry i cant translate the cereal in milk analogy
 
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