Audiophile Jazz Prologue - part 01

Half-speed mastering is a technique used when cutting lacquers from which vinyl records are produced. The cutting machine platter operates at half the usual speed while the signal to be recorded is sent to the cutting head at half its normal playback speed. By halving the speed when cutting, hard to cut very high frequencies become much easier to cut since they are now mid frequencies.

To understand what makes "One-Step" so special, let's compare it to the usual process. The lacquer is transformed into a first father stamp with an inverted groove structure. This is then transformed into a mother stamp with the correct groove structure. It is only in the next step that the press stamp used to produce the disc is made. With the One-Step, the lacquer itself is converted directly into a press stamp. The result is a disc that sounds closer to the original master tape.