Ortofon Partners With PHONOCUT to Further Develop High Quality Home Vinyl Recording

At Making Vinyl Hollywood, 2019 Austria-based PHONOCUT demonstrated a still in development all-analog based home vinyl cutting system that uses blank vinyl (not lacquer) discs. At 4:52 in the embedded video at the above link you can watch the compact system cut a record and learn more about it.

Ortofon just announced that Chief Officer of Acoustics and Research, Leif Johannsen has joined the international PHONOCUT development team to contribute his and Ortofon’s expertise in high-end audio hardware development, production and quality control. Johannsen will participate in the final stages of PHONOCUT’s first generation home vinyl recorder to be shipped in 2021. The projected cost is $3300, with blank discs costing around $10.00 each.

Mr. Johannsen sent PHONOCUT 96/24 files (down-converted from 32/192 original files) produced using an SAT arm and Anna D cartridge and PHONOCUT cut a vinyl record and returned it to Johannsen who digitized it at 32/192 and then downsized it to 24/96 before sending it here (whew!), but here it is (an excerpt from the legendary RCA “Living Stereo” The Royal Ballet”): PHONOCUT FILE

Here’s PHONOCUT’s Making Vinyl presentation:

PHONOCUT’s founders are Impossible Project co-founder Florian “Doc” Kaps, lathe master Flo Kaufmann, Internet entrepreneur David Bohnett and Arts Technologist KamranV.

AnalogPlanet visited the Vienna-based Supersense Store back in 2017. If you missed the video be sure to watch!

COMMENTS
JohnnyCanuck's picture

I had to check the article's date to make sure it wasn't April 1.

Jim Tavegia's picture

Pretty good bass performance and much better than the the file I listened to. In the file the bass seems distance if that is a correct interpretation of what I'm hearing.

Still promising I would think. Sadly, S3300 is more than most would spend on a TT rig, but for the audiophile who has everything...

PeterPani's picture

was the main character in saving Polaroid instant film. As analog as analog can be.
Maybe one day he will do the most important thing for audiophiles and rescue the analog tracks of Laserdiscs for pure Audio Laserdiscs (pAL, not PAL). Then a long journey comes to an euphoric end.
Since I live in Vienna I will try to get this into his head :-)

Bskeane's picture

They currently are offering a pre-order special for 2499 Euro, approximately 3031 US dollars. Vinyl blanks are listed at 10 Euro each.

miguelito's picture

Digital and Neumann lathe are pretty good. This thing's sound is not. I understand the charm factor but this is just silly.

vince's picture

I think this has potential as a marketing tool. Using this, a band might put together some prototype sleeves and LPs and send them to potential customers.

Probably has some potential in doing direct-to-disc recordings as well.

It is pretty cool that a tool like this is so inexpensive. A working Presto is roughly the same price.

Anyone know how much Presto lathes cost new, and adjusted for inflation?

Telekom's picture

Who wouldn’t want to make discs at home? As a producer, it would be really exciting to do this with new tracks as a test. This is an expensive device though. I sent some files to a lathe cutter in London about 7 or 8 years ago, and the results were reasonable but expensive (£45). The exceptional skill and expense of producing dub plates may have motivated the desire for a device like this. But, like Polaroid, this is going to be a niche system that only has a business model if it STOPS being a niche system.

Jim Tavegia's picture

I would put a $899 Tascam DA 3000 up against this machine any day for sound quality. I can take the DSD output of the DA 3000 and actually do something with it in my computer and share it with friends.

ivansbacon's picture

The video near the bottom of the post was pathetic, it neither told me or showed me anything informative. (the link at the top was a dead end)

What is the point of recording digital files to vinyl?

I could see how it would be useful if one could use it to record analogue music that is record on real to real tape and then transfer that to the machine via quality cables, or even direct to disc from a mixing console.

KamranV's picture

Here is the making vinyl 2019 video where Michael visited https://www.analogplanet.com/content/making-vinyl-hollywood-bernie-grund...

and the Making Vinyl 2020 presentation https://youtu.be/kYSaU_XmLbM

Michael Fremer's picture
You can also record from cassette, reel to reel or from vinyl records
dbowker3d's picture

For one thing, this is great way of archiving favorite LPs, or even better LPs that are of high collectable value! I also agree it be great for musicians to make demos with, and of course to covert rare cassettes, CDs or even rare LPs.

This last year I sold three records for a total of around $650 over on Discogs, and though I have around 2500 records I don't have that many super valuable ones. But what if you did? 15-20 LPs that were worth $200-$300 each, you could buy this thing and make a copy of each album and STILL have money to spare. What if you had a really deep collection of high value collectables? At the very least, a product like this gives you the ability to make copies to play without causing any wear to the originals. Whether you keep or sell the originals is up to you, but at least you have you own copy that you won't have to worry about damaging.

audioj's picture

I like the idea very much but it won't work to archive favorite LP´s because Phonocut does 10" only as far as I understood. Please correct me if I'm wrong

gbougard's picture

even the manufacturer admitted this is a "pos"

Alan Morris's picture

I don’t think you learn a great deal about the products recording ability from the video due to the LoFi nature of the actual song.
I would, however, really love one of these to create vinyl versions of all those releases around 2000 that were only available digitally.

pessoist's picture

fashion item for the wealthy private vinylizer.
It's a bit like buying a Quartz Colour Breitling to go with a fresh summer style clothing, while being actually a haute-horology fan of whatever manufacture watchmaking house of history.
we have serious recording - it's digital.
you make nothing better than that with a digital to average analog recording.
I prefer pressed items, even re-releases.
Even Tape if it has to stay analog.

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