Are You High Passing At The Wrong Frequency?

Are you high passing at the wrong frequency?

It is a common misconception that the vinyl record production process differs from CD’s, DVD’s, Wav’s, etc. due to these formats not being able to handle lower frequencies.

People use to mix in the studio with huge speakers with tons of low end, and they would love it. Then, depending on the mastering engineer, they would remove a lot of that low end for vinyl.

There are a few reasons for this.

Physicality; the more low end a song had, meant that the grooves needed to be wider and bigger. Super low frequencies on vinyls make really huge grooves, meaning dub tracks, reggae songs, etc. didn’t translate very well onto vinyl when there was maybe 20 minutes a side.

Back then, most records had 15-20 minutes a side, so they would wipe out the low end so that a song wouldn’t take up all of this prime real estate. Plus, super low frequencies could make the stylus/needle pop off the vinyl.

CD was the first time they were able to preserve the low end that the mixes were giving them.

You shouldn’t make your records any differently because they are or aren’t going on vinyl; you should make them sound as amazing as possible, and then give it to the mastering engineer to master for the format!