MAKING VINYL CONFERENCE IN NASHVILLE
Julie Mullins
Nashville, Tennessee, hosted the 2024 Making Vinyl US conference on June 4–5 at the Hutton Hotel.
This conference is all about, well, making vinyl, with an emphasis on the businessto-business side of the industry. Making Vinyl was founded in 2017 in part to share knowledge across the vinyl-record supply chain and to support problem solving and progress in the industry.
At this year’s conference, industry experts—primarily stakeholders in the record-making business, suppliers, and on the artist/pro-audio sides—addressed a broad range of topics in talks, panel discussions, and events that filled those two days. The presenters shed light on the state of the industry alongside some underrecognized issues. I’ll share a few highlights of most interest to audiophiles and vinyl aficionados.
“Greener” vinyl topics formed the basis for a few discussions and presentations. Modern record makers continue to explore more sustainable practices and materials, such as ProVinyl’s bio-based PVC compound “Infinite” and Dutch manufacturer PlastChem’s “Bio-Vinyl,” which is now available in the US market. Others examined manufacturing practices, such as determining and reducing a vinyl record’s carbon footprint from “cradle to factory gate.” Ryan Weitzel of A to Z Media presented the “first carbon footprint report” from the VRMA/Vinyl Alliance6 Working Group on carbon footprinting the vinyl record supply chain. The objective was to show where vinyl’s footprint lands relative to the carbon footprints of other common everyday products and activities. The findings were based on research done mainly in the UK.
The presentation included detailed case study data gathered from a handful of specific makers on a vinyl record’s carbon footprint across various types and formats—7" single to 180gm 12" LP—as measured in kilograms of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) across production and through the album delivery cycles. A vinyl record’s footprint was shown to have an average range of 0.7 to 6kg of CO2e. These figures were compared with examples such as a load of laundry washed at 104°F and tumble-dried (2.2kg CO2e), an 8oz UK domestic steak (5.8kg CO2e), filling up a car gas tank with 50L/13.2 gallons of fuel (178kg CO2e), and so on.
Traditional PVC comprises roughly half of vinyl’s average carbon footprint “from cradle to factory gate,” fueling interest in more sustainable, “greener” bio-based PVC and/or more natural alternatives for record-making, such as “bio-plastic” PET.
Another presentation, by The Vinyl Institute, expressed a desire to a drive a sustainability initiative across the PVC industry, to encourage and help supplier companies to look at their formulations with an eye toward increasing the use of bio-based materials.
They also noted that streaming is not without its own environmental costs. Heavy-duty servers for handling mass quantities of data require their share of energy and bear their own carbon footprint concerns. The previous presentation reported that the carbon footprint for Spotify during the year 2023, for example, was 275,535 metric tons of CO2e.
All told, the environmental presentations showed that there’s plenty of ground to cover and matters such as legislation to consider. But recognizing the issues and taking even small steps toward sustainability on a broader scale can only help.
Many speakers shed light on concerns that remain under the radar for most record buyers. Marcus Cohen, from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), presented “Busted: The Latest Crackdown on Bootlegs & Counterfeits,” which documented the extent and impact of “unauthorized physical music product”— bootlegs and counterfeit reproductions— and the resulting fiscal losses and the damages to artists and the industry at large.
Music and its path to vinyl reproduction was another focal point. One topic was “The Record Collector’s Journey in a Digital Age,” from Discogs. Another was a panel discussion with artists who get involved in the production of their records, sharing their perspectives on the process. Another interesting presentation was called Spin Through Time: The Evolution of Record Players and Turntables in the Vinyl Renaissance.
Concluding the conference was a fascinating panel discussion about old-school analog and new digital tech, a round-robin panel conversation that examined all aspects of restoring a “lost” Hank Williams acetate recording from an Iowa radio station. It was originally intended for a onetime play circa 1950 on what was known as The Garden Spot Programs. It was brought back just over a decade ago. An extended edition was released in May 2024 and awarded Best Historical Album at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards.
The panelists were six experts from the Hank Williams restoration team, including Grammy Award–winning mastering engineer and restoration specialist Michael Graves of Osiris Studio, Cheryl Pawelski, Grammy-Award–winning producer and founder of Omnivore Recordings, and Jett Williams, singer/songwriter and Hank’s daughter, who, upon learning about the project asked, “Do you mean you’re going to take my daddy back to vinyl?”
Graves described in detail his process and the tricks he used to solve problems he encountered, such as when the timbre of Hank’s voice led him to question the speed accuracy of a previous transfer. He noticed that when he set a hum-removal tool to 62Hz, the hum, which should be at 60Hz, disappeared. So he made new transfers with the playback speed corrected.
One room showed a more familiar active demo: a high-end two-channel hi-fi system featuring components distributed by Axiss Audio, presented here in partnership with PlastChem. The setup, which mostly replicated a system that Axiss showed at AXPONA in April, included a pair of Gauder Akustic DARC 250 MK II speakers, a Soulution 727 preamplifier, a Soulution 757 phono stage/tape stage, a pair of Soulution 511 monoblock amplifiers, and an Accuphase Clean Power Supply PS-1250 (used to power all electronics except the amps), Tara Labs cabling, and Nihon Onkyo acoustic treatments. The main sources were, of course, analog: a couple of JR Transrotor turntables, a Tourbillon on a matching stand, and a Strato Nero with that maker’s Tamino cartridge.
A spin of Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s oft-covered “Hallelujah,” from the Live at Sin-é: Legacy Edition double album, felt like an ideal conference conclusion, a classic, intimate listening experience that did that familiar time-travel thing, providing a glimpse into Buckley’s 1993 NYC coffeehouse performance, just Buckley and his Fender Telecaster guitar and amp— complete with subtle but audible ground hum—resurrected within that space in three dimensions, almost as naturally as
if he were in the room, singing, breathing, living.
Live music also drew attendees. Guitarist and singer Raul Midón played a few songs during the second day in the main Lyric Ballroom following a brief talk with Michael Fremer. The first evening, singer/ songwriter/guitarist Olivia Jean played a rocking concert alongside two bandmembers in the Hutton Hotel’s Analog Theatre.
Finally, I enjoyed live music and Southern cooking at Rudy’s Jazz Room: a swinging gypsy jazz quartet, some Cajun-style red beans and rice, and pecan pie. A couple of side trips—including to Third Man Records Nashville7—rounded out my visit. cleaning machine marque Loricraft reports origins dating to the work of the late Percy Wilson, technical editor of Gramophone magazine, and a prototype demo’d in the 1960s. In 1990, Loricraft launched its first Professional Record Cleaner (PRC). Loricraft’s two latest models, the PRC4i and PRC6i RCMs, are now manufactured by SME, which also provides “advanced engineering input.”
Other brands on Rhythm’s roster include Tannoy, Goldmund, and Garrard. and manufacture of high-end components for analog audio. SME continues to manufacture not just turntables and tonearms but also specialty components for other fields requiring extreme precision, such as aerospace, Formula 1 racing, and medical equipment.
Monarch Audio Systems handles distribution for other high-end audio manufacturers, including Alluxity, B.audio, Audio Physic, Chario, and Siltech.