Haarlem Vinyl Festival, the world’s first multi-day festival dedicated entirely to vinyl culture, returned for its second annual edition. From September 27th to the 29th, the event saw fans, artists, sellers, collectors and professionals come together for a full weekend of listening, spinning, crate-digging, discussing and celebrating this beloved and timeless music format.
Having partnered with the festival for its first edition last year, the Vinyl Alliance once again hosted “Meet the Experts!” – a two-day program including interactive listening demonstrations and Q&A sessions with experts from across the industry. With much of the festival focused on the record fair, live performances and exhibitions, Meet the Experts! offered a unique opportunity for festival goers to learn about the craft, technical processes, and the art that goes into making vinyl records and the equipment we use to listen to them.
Meet the Experts! took place at the PHIL, a renovated historic concert hall and event space located in Haarlem’s city center, which served as the festival’s primary daytime venue. Visitors who made their way upstairs to the Van Beinum Hall found themselves entering a room resembling a grand laboratory of all things vinyl—multiple listening stations kitted out with Audio-Technica hi-fi equipment, a microscope for looking up-close at grooves, enlarged model cartridges and styli, and samples of PVC compound, splatter records, special edition releases and production equipment.
It wasn’t just the hands-on gear drawing guests to the room. The epic, sweeping sounds of Ennio Morricone, whose famous soundtrack scores are collected on a fantastic compilation by local Haarlem label Music On Vinyl, emanated from massive Genelec monitors at the front of the room. The music was part of a special listening demonstration and was centerpiece of the Meet the Experts! program.
At the front of the room was a four-channel playback setup featuring a digital interface, Whest Audio soundstages, and three Audio-Technica turntables with Ortofon cartridges. This setup enabled a unique demonstration that compared a single recording (Ennio Morricone Collected in this case) across four different formats — digital master recording, DMM cut, mother stamper from a lacquer cut, and finished pressed record. Each hour of the festival, with the help of Morricone’s majestic “The Ecstasy of Gold”, we took audience members on an audible journey through the record pressing process.
Was it possible to hear a difference between the digital source file and the pressed record? Or between the DMM and lacquer cuts? Did one format sound better or worse than another (or phrased another way, is there any audible degradation during the pressing process)? What is the difference between lacquer and DMM? The demonstration opened the floor to these and many other questions during lively discussions with visitors, led by the Vinyl Alliance’s Ryan Mitrovich and Key Production’s Andreas Kohl.
Following each demonstration, we welcomed a distinguished expert from the vinyl record industry drop join our festival guests for an approachable Q&A session. During each session, the experts described their work and craft, answered audience questions and gave a further glimpse of the work that goes on behind the curtains of vinyl and playback hardware production. Vinyl Alliance members and invited guest experts representing just about every aspect vinyl, from production through to retail and listening hardware, engaged with audience members curious to gain deeper knowledge of the format.
Renowned cutting engineers Daniel Krieger of SST and Frederic Stader of Music Matters Mastering walked audiences through the lacquer cutting process, detailing the technical and creative decisions necessary when making that first cut. The difference between one and three-step mastering was also explored through additional listening demonstrations. Audio Engineer Andreas Wagner also led a session from a different perspective on the lathe cutting process, demonstrating the Space Time Control software he developed for the new Sillitoe disk mastering system.
From the pressing plant side, Thorsten Megow of optimal media gave a presentation on quality control procedures during and after the production process. Ton Vermeulen of Haarlem’s local pressing plant Record Industry told the story of how he came to open what is now one of Europe’s biggest pressing plants. And from the other side, sharing their stories of opening new pressing plants, were Jeremy Guillot of Objects Manufacturing in Berlin and William Shin of FRYK Vinyl Pressing in South Korea.
Several industry experts were there to elaborate on what happens after records leave the plant. Karen Emanuel of Key Production and Ryan Wietzel of A to Z Media, representing two of the industry’s largest physical media manufacturing brokers, shed light on the practical and creative decisions that allow an album’s worth of music to become a physical LP pressed and released on vinyl. Billy Fields, vinyl strategist at the Warner Music Group, drew upon his long career in the vinyl record industry to share how sales of vinyl have risen and continue to grow in the modern music marketplace. And Lloyd Starr of Discogs gave an inspiring talk on how the company continues to evolve its culture in order to best listen to and serve the fans and collectors across the globe who interact with its renowned database and marketplace.
On the playback hardware side, audiences were led into the groove as Sven Van Leere and Clive Atkins of Audio-Technica spoke about the fascinating technology behind electromechanical transducers—better known to fans as phono cartridges. Leading us further into the territory of playback technology, James Henriot of Whest Audio explained how phono stages amplify the tiny signal coming from the cartridge and the importance of doing this in a tonally neutral way that produces the most accurate version of the recorded sound. A lifelong jazz fan, he also shared details of his upcoming Whest Central project supporting London’s local scene.
The program’s final session on Sunday afternoon featured our beloved vinyl guru Andreas Kohl hosting his famous “Myth Busters” session, where he gave his unfiltered takes on a number of misconceptions, conflicting arguments, and open-ended questions surrounding the vinyl format.
Each session throughout the weekend concluded with a buzz of continued conversation. Between the listening demonstrations and expert sessions, it was clear Meet the Experts! had left an impression on all those who attended. Visitors spanned the full spectrum of vinyl fans, from those new to the format to long-time enthusiasts, from younger people just getting started in industry positions to veterans with long careers. In addition to being a source of information and supplying answers to questions, the weekend’s program also served as fertile ground for new ideas and exchanges.
After two days of lively discussions, exploring the many diverse facets of the vinyl record industry, had we arrived at some final conclusion? Far from it, in fact. What we’re reminded of each year in hosting the Meet the Experts! program is how subjective the enjoyment of vinyl is for each fan, and how endless that journey of enjoyment and discovery can be. To that end, we’re excited to be in a position to offer some guidance on that journey, and to give fans a unique way to learn about and celebrate the format.
Stay informed on future events and programming from the Vinyl Alliance by signing up for our Newsletter, HERE.