Mondo Knows Facts
Vinyl cutters fold deep bass into mono
Out-of-phase low frequencies would throw the stylus out of the groove A stereo groove has one wall for each channel, and a strong low-frequency signal that differs between them makes the stylus lurch sideways. Cutting engineers therefore sum everything below roughly 100 to 150 hertz to mono before the lathe. Club records often keep bass centred for the same reason, and for how it behaves on a dance floor. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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More facts like this
A vinyl side trades loudness for playing timeFitting more minutes on a disc means narrower grooves and a quieter cutMastering for vinyl cuts a physical grooveA lathe engraves a lacquer disc that is plated and pressedCardioid subwoofer arrays push bass forwardStacked subs fed with delay cancel low frequencies behind the stagePeaks between samples can exceed digital zeroReconstruction filters can overshoot the highest stored value in a digital fileRecords got measurably louder and flatterHeavy compression raised average level while squashing peaksStreaming services turn loud masters downSpotify plays most tracks at about minus 14 LUFS, so a hotter master gains nothing
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Tags: vinyl, mastering, bass
Vinyl cutters fold deep bass into mono: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Out-of-phase low frequencies would throw the stylus out of the groove. The figure is taken from Sound on Sound, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.