Direct Metal Master

Can someone please remind me exactly what the DMM process is and how it differs fron the standard vinyl process?

 

I am wanting an answer for this myself. I have a one DMM LP, Randy Crawford's 'Abstract Emotions' (1986). The fidelity is actually quite poor and also very compressed. This is perhaps not a fault of the DMM process but it's not a good advertisment for it either.

 

I think DMM uses copper instead of lacquer, and the cut is more shallower than the normal method?

 

I was just listening tonight to Todd Rundgren's Utopia Another Live DMM from Rhino and could not get past the sibilance. I increased then decreased tracking force and no difference at all. The sibilance must be on the disk. I then played Utopia's Ra DMM with the same results.

 

I'm sure this has been discussed before but a Google search dug up this excellent thread on PSW outlining a good chunk of the story behind DMM (including the Scientology connection).

Shellac's Excellent Italian Greyhound is an extremely nice way to compare DMM to CD, btw - the CD is handily included in the package, for free. The masterings are largely the same, and the LP sounds largely the same as the CD. No sibilance.

 

That is correct. My band recorded a record with Steve Albini and at his suggestion we did the DMM process. We also mastered at Abbey Road which was very cool but we didn't foresee the cost in pounds vs dollars, so that was a bit of a shock.

The reason some people (like Albini) prefer it is for quality control issues, or at least that is what he told me. With traditional lacquers, you have to keep them climate controlled and press right away. Also, the lacquers have a very limited life before you have to make new ones, whereas the DMM's are very rugged and require no refrigeration. There is less deviation from one pressing to another with coppers as well (at least I've been told).

I have the DMM's in my closet which I can do many more pressings if I like.

Some insist that DMM's don't sound as good as lacquers, while other disagree. Maybe somebody here who presses records will chime in as my knowledge is very limited.

When we made our record and got to the pressing phase, we ran into major trouble with Europadisk going belly up, luckily my rep sent our copper DMM's back to me. Others weren't so lucky.

Albini mentions DMM briefly here, on the new Breeders record:

The "All Wave" philosophy, which loosely stated, is that everything should be an analog sound recording of someone playing or singing, rather than using a computer to generate or digitally manipulate sounds separated from the dimension of time in which they were performed. In short, to record All Wave one must use no computers, no digital recording, no auto-tuning, or any other mainstays of contemporary production. A parallel drawn with the realist film movement (including Lars Von Trier’s Dogme 95 school) is not inappropriate. The All Wave philosophy carries through the entire production and mastering process, including mixing, editing, sequencing, post-production and the exceptional step of an all-analog direct-metal master for the vinyl LP.

 

Your post came up while I was posting, so I didn't notice your Albini reference. That is a great sounding record and a good way to hear DMM done right. I think the record was engineered by both Steve and the bass player Bob Weston whom is an excellent recordist and mastering engineer as well.

I forget, but I believe the mastering was done at Abbey Road also.

 

DMM is a cost-cutter.

From Steve:

 

From Stan Ricker:

 

I have a few DMM lps and for the most part, I think they're excellent. However, there IS a musical "natural" sound they lack that's very hard to describe....

I'm convinced that engineers cut records that they made sound better on DMM cuttings from what they learned and heard....

 

I like my DMMs.

 

DMM also took a very long time to get right and there were some major manufacturing changes that went in since the initial release that affected the sound. The only one that comes to mind right now is a big change in the copper blank composition.

So DMMs from the 80s might not be representative of the DMM you can produce now.

 

That might be true, as almost if not all of my 80s and 90s DMMs sound thin and brittle, with little bottom.

Another reason that DMM was widely used in the CD era for vinyl releases was because you could cram a 70 minute album onto a single LP with DMM, that would be near impossible with lacquer.


-Aaron

 

Well as usual I have learned something new from this forum. Publius than you so much for the link to PSW which I had never heard of. While much of it was a little hard to follow (I need to learn more about audio engineering ) the posts by Art Blavis and Steve Berson where very useful. This one really helped:

"DMM stands for "Direct Metal Mastering" and was the last refinement in vinyl record mastering technology issued by Neumann (in collaboration with Teldec and Toolex) in approximately 1982. It consisted of the VMS-82 lathe, the SX-84 cutter head, and the SAL84 amplifier rack, along with associated plating technologies. With DMM the lathe uses a diamond stylus to cut into a layer of copper plated over a steel substrate - as opposed to lacquer mastering which uses a heated sapphire stylus to cut into lacquer coated over an aluminium substrate. A big advantage of DMM is that a nickel stamper can be plated directly from the Direct Metal Master (also known as a copper mother) - eliminating the need for 2 additional plating stages done for lacquer mastering (where it goes -> lacquer master (which is then coated with silver) -> nickel father -> nickel mother -> nickel stamper).

DMM was a commercial failure because it was introduced at the same time that CD was. Afaik there were only around 20-some DMM lathes ever made. Currently you can still get DMM mastering done at Abbey Road, The Exchange (both in England), Optimal (Germany), GZ (Czech Republic), and possibly a few other places in Europe. Currently there is no place in North America that offers DMM mastering commercially (although the Scientologists use a DMM lathe in their California mastering facility to transcribe L Ron Hubbard's speeches onto metal discs which are placed into time capsules).

Best regards,
Steve Berson "

I can understand why the reduction in the required plating steps would be a good thing with respect manufacturing the record.

The reason why I asked about DMM is last night I finally got a chance to open one of the many, many records I have bought and not played. The one I chose was this:

http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=VINLP3407

As you can see it is DMM made in the Netherlands. Except for a few minor ticks on the 4th side the vinyl was perfect. I thought it sounded very good and my wife who is a huge Clapton fan loved it.

 

Mine, too. I avoid DMM LPs. They sound harsh.

 

My U2 - The Joshua Tree, is a DMM.
I bought it used and haven't listened to it for a while but I think I liked it better than my standard US CD release.
I'll have to give them both a listen, paying particular attention to the low-end.

 

I've generally been disappointed with DMM LPs with one exception: there are some old Blue Note DMMs pressed in Europe that sound very good. A local store here, Low YoYo, had several of these which were cut-outs. I bought a couple and TommyTunes bought several.

 

I too have some DMM recordings which are amazing. The ones that I can think of off-hand are from Teldec (Telefunken) and were made in Germany. They are of Bach works and include harpsichord, choral, piano mainly. I am not a fan of choral works actually, so much of it is wasted on me but the harpsichord and organ is the most realistic that I have heard from any source. Played back on a Dynavector, Rega, Bryston, Focal system, its immediacy and transparency was amazing. My home system is a little less ambitious these days but still has the same front end and these recordings are still awesome. I never really appreciated Bach before hearing these.
-Bill

 

I have a feeling that most vinyl listeners own more direct metal masters than they realize and would have a very difficult time distinguishing them from traditional lacquer pressings.

The record that we recorded with Steve has ample bass, in fact it is the most bass heavy recording we've made (the sound of the vinyl) and we have a history as a band of dong analog only recording even when we pressed to CD.

For those interested in QC issues which seems to come up a lot here, DMM is a good choice.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but the obvious visual difference between DMM-cut and laquer-cut LPs is that laquer-cut LPs have an outer rim thicker than the recorded surface itself - it has a bead on the outside. DMM LPs are pretty much flat all the way out.

 

The thing I have noticed about DMM is that many of them will give major tracing distortion/mistracking on anything but a microline stylus.

 

I can understand why lacquer has a very limited "shelf life" after cutting and why it has to be plated right away. Lacquer's characteristics show themselves in auto body work, especially if done incorrectly. If deep sanding marks are left in the bodywork, and they were "filled in" with lacquer primer, sanded smooth with fine grit paper, then finish painted, it looks great initially. Two weeks later, as the lacquer shrinks, all those sanding marks reveal themselves (making it obvious that bodywork was done). So with the cut lacquer disk, I'm sure the "shrinking after cutting" of the material could also cause some "pre-echo" and "post echo" issues, as well as other distortions. That is probably the main reason that the conditions and time factor are important between cutting and plating (and the sooner the plating process occurs after cutting the lacquer, the more likely the finished product is to be better). ...At least that's the way I understand it.

 

I have a couple of german DMM pressings of ENJA (jazz label) and Teldec (classical) titles, and they all sound very fine.

 

I think shrinkage is not an issue with fresh *cut* laquers. The cut may be fresh but the laquer itself should be stable. It's just a fragile material. If the laquer itself wer so fresh that it had not stopped shrinking yet it would be disasterous.

 

Judging from the smell alone of 40 year old lacquers in my collection, the shrinkage continues until the lacquer springs off the aluminum substrate.