Hollywood, CA (March 12, 2024)—Bernie Grundman Mastering has responded to the ever-growing global demand for vinyl records with the build-out of a second cutting room, dubbed CUT-2, at its seven-room facility in Hollywood, Calif.
“Our primary cutting room is equipped to handle any full-service mastering job,” explains mastering engineer Scott Sedillo, “but a good portion of our cutting projects are for albums that have already been equalized and mastered and only require an expert, high-fidelity transfer to lacquer. This second room is streamlined for that purpose.”
“This new room is highly simplified so that it’s more straightforward,” owner Bernie Grundman confirms. “It’s the result of all of our experimenting in the first room and is set up to be direct from the signal source right to the cutting system, resulting in the closest to what the master sounds like on the disc.”
CUT-2 houses a reconditioned Scully lathe, mounted on a pneumatic table for isolation, with BGM’s custom head suspension. Jacob Horowitz of History of Recorded Sound rebuilt the Haeco SC-2 stereo cutting head, which is fitted with a diamond cutting tool. A Compudisk CD-20 system provides variable pitch and depth for maximizing groove geometry.
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The new room also features an audiophile-grade preview/program disc-cutting console with only a single, discrete amplifier in the signal path. All analog filters and de-essers can be bypassed, and all connections are direct, with no patchbay. The new room’s Tannoy SGM-10B speakers are driven by modified Yamaha P2002 power amplifiers. All electronics are powered by custom BGM power supplies.
BGM’s in-house-built DAW running WaveLab and Pro Tools is in an adjacent rack, along with an Antelope Audio Trinity word clock resolved with BGM’s custom 10 MHz time base generator.
Clients have a choice of Lavry DA-N5 or JCF Audio Latte D/A converters for audio playback.
Grundman attributes much of his company’s success to chief technology officer Beno May, with whom he originally worked at A&M Studios before both went independent at BGM. “Without Beno, we wouldn’t be where we are today. It’s the combination of Beno’s technical expertise and my mastering experience—I wouldn’t be able to get the sound and quality that I’m looking for without Beno’s imagination and ability to fabricate the unique tools that we use here.”
