https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/14/phonocut-vinyl-records/
no idea how good it will be, but interesting none-the-less.
I don’t think it will be very good at all, at least for high quality vinyl. You would not have very good playback quality, and would also possibly have to go and remaster the audio for vinyl which would be a pita. Just really not worth it imo. The quality of current vinyl releases of modern music isn’t great, but this would probably sound worse. Just doesn’t make sense imo
only time will tell. 
I just don’t get the point though. Whats the point of spending 1k on something that won’t really produces records that sound that great. Chances are that if you were willing to pay for custom vinyl you would be after quality vinyl, not something pretty subpar. There are already services that you can pay to have vinyl made, but they are expensive, but you are going to get much higher quality results then what this will most likely be able to produce. Not to mention that most popular albums are already available on vinyl anyway at a decent price (excluding the ocean of older vinyl). I would also be concerned about actually playing the stuff it makes on any nice turntable due to concern over potential damage. I just think this product would be incredibly hard to justify at the price it’s at. You could put together a vinyl setup with great speakers, turntable, and phono pre + plenty of records for that price (presuming you are buying used older vinyl that can be had for 5 bucks and below)
A proper press costs arround $100,000. So I expect arround 1% the performance from the thing up top.
Might be interesting for “vinyl effects” in a track!
Well you wouldn’t be wanting to buy a press, but a master vinyl cutting lathe like the Neumann or Scully lathes and some really nice riaa eq’s, cutting amplifiers, and very good mastering technique, and a setup like this can reach 100,000k (although you can get a vinyl cutting lathe for cheaper, but it would still be well over 1k). Its a much more in depth and precise process then you would think, and can be pretty involved. Also typically the finished cut from the lathe is not going to play well on most record players, with the grooves very shallow
Edit: other lathe brands are Presto or Atom too
1 Like
ftfy
You are putting audio into an object, carving it in. Offcourse it is a super precise process.
1 Like
This is a very awesome idea but I feel as though this might not be the best way of going about it…I can’t tell if Phonocut is a Crosley type brand, where they produce shit but market a a lot towards those who don’t know better.
10" isn’t really a big deal imo, if it only lathed 78s I’d be more worried… lol. I just can’t imagine how with one input, and one button, and one single pass, there will be any good sound out of that blank… The cut will be shallow asM0N mentioned, the wow and flutter who knows because there is only one button, (is there speed control?) What about inconsistency with the record? If it is warped in the slightest as most records are, you would usually weigh it down, etc. I don’t see any clamp on the Phonocut. It seems like such a basic “too good to be true” product for such a delicate, time consuming, difficult process. I would be amazed if it’s as easy as playing a WAV file into this machine and vacuuming off the excess pvc. It has to have some sort of playback monitor right? Maybe I’m being to critical but this is a $1000+ product that has already a lot of backers ($200,000+) for an idea that could really make an impact for music lovers. I would love to see this product succeed but am very doubtful. However, these units aren’t expected to ship until December 2020 which is plenty of time to address/fix all of these issues.
It’s just at this price point, I don’t think you would be able to get any high quality components you would need for accuracy, and like you mentioned, the actual stuff they provide to cut could be hit or miss.
Money pit… They’ll definitely sell a ton of these blanks lol.
1 Like
Well maybe this is a genius marketed product. When people don’t get a high quality cut, perhaps they will complain, but just be told it was user error, and to try again on a new blank lol. So you end up with 20 used blanks and still a very mediocre at best cut that can’t really be played well on most record players. Actually perhaps they collaborated with stylus manufactures, as the cut from these records will probably be harsh on the stylus of a turntable, so they also make you buy a replacement stylus lol
jeez… I could actually see something like this happen lol… I plan to stay far away from this thing unless it really blows me away. And the price lowers.
I would feel more comfortable buying it if they were asking 10k lol and had a list of parts and methods of what they replicated from known good designs, and even then I would still be skeptical
1 Like