As of March 15, 2026, Gotta Groove Records is excited to provide its own in-house Direct Metal Mastering (DMM) cutting service!

As with lacquer cuts, it is our strong recommendation that you have your audio professionally mastered specifically for vinyl by a mastering engineer who regularly works with the format. We have a list of mastering referrals here.

While we have some extremely basic suggestions/guidance available on our website, please note this is not meant to replace having a professional prepare your audio for vinyl. There is no difference in the audio preparation for DMM vs lacquer – in either case, be sure to use the highest resolution files possible. GGR can accept up to DSD/DXD files for cutting, but for most people, 24 bit wav files are best. Otherwise, the audio can be mastered in the same manner for DMM or lacquer cutting.

While it is true that DMM cuts in the past have frequently required different mastering vs lacquer cutting, the Gotta Groove Records DMM lathe does not require any specifically different vinyl mastering vs for lacquer cutting. This is due to a variety of advances made in both the cutting apparatus, as well as the cutting medium (the blank copper disc).

Our lathe was built by Thorsten Scheffner of Organic Music Studio and Andreas Bauer of AB Mastering.  Mr. Scheffner designed and built nine Scheffner lathes during the 2020-2022 time period.  Our lathe was #7, and was originally set up for cutting lacquers.  Andreas Bauer worked on the DMM conversion of this lathe in 2025, and our first commercially available cuts happened in March 2026 — the first DMM record cut on our machine was the album You Get Lost by the band Mantis.

One of the most distinguishing features of the Scheffner lathe compared to traditional lathes is the stationary cutting head – it is the turntable platter that moves as the record is being cut, instead of the cutting head.  Mr. Scheffner came up with this design concept with Mark Doehmann 20 years ago.  The concept is simple – the cutter head is the most delicate part of a milling or grinding machine (which is essentially what a record cutting lathe is).  Stability and precision can be optimized if the head is fixed. Mr. Scheffner also designed and built the pitch and depth system himself for this lathe. 

Adding to the stability, our lathe is set up in a room that is on a segregated cement slab, isolating the room from the other machines in our factory. The lathe itself is incorporated into an optical isolation table with pneumatic support legs.

Our main cutting head was custom fabricated by Flo Kaufmann at FLoKaSon, and is serial number 217. This modern cutting head was designed and built by Flo to improve upon the Neumann SX-84 cutting head that was designed in the mid-1980’s when the DMM cutting process was first invented. Flo was able to take the best attributes of the SX-84 cutting head and improve upon them to make a cutting head with natural system resonance in the 1200-1400hz range. A cutting head report is available upon request.

One of the big reasons why DMM never caught on as the predominant method of cutting masters for vinyl record manfucturing is timing – DMM was invented right about when the cassette tape format was killing the vinyl record format in the United States. With the time and costs involved in R&D and improving a newly developed format, DMM just did not have a chance to thrive (or survive) in the North American market – there were no major recording companies making large investments in vinyl production at the time, due to the focus on cassette tapes (and eventually, compact discs).

When the DMM format was first invented, the blank copper discs were made using an acid plating technique. While acid plating is extremely stable (and is still commonly used for non-record related copper plating), it generally yields a harder copper plate vs other methods.

Through modern chemical engineering, GGR has developed a non-acid, non-cyanide plating process that yields a far softer copper than that of most previous copper cutting discs manufactured around the world. Additionally, since there are more direct controls over a plating process compared to a painting process, GGR’s process is able to yield a far more uniformly flat and even thickness of 0.004″ in the cutting surface across the entire face of the disc when compared to the thickness consistency of a lacquer coating cutting surface.

The consistency of the copper discs, combined with the advanced technology of the cutting head, pitch/depth system, and the cutting lathe itself permits audio to be cut in a manner consistent with what most people expect from lacquer masters. Additionally, without the need for silvering, copper masters are essentially a 1-step plating process, which both reduces time and costs involved with processing as well as yields record stampers that are only one generation away from the cut copper master.

Finally, the non-acid and non-cyanide plating process used to make the copper blanks is a far more environmentally friendly and safe manufactuing process compared to acid plating; and there are no VOC’s involved in the process.

Currently, all in-house DMM cutting is being performed by Matt Earley. However, we have an open-door policy, and invite any cutting engineer who would like to offer DMM cutting services to her/his client base to come to our facility and perform DMM cuts on site.

Our DMM cutting lathe is located in Columbus, Ohio at our high-security plating facility, which is equipped with 24 hour video surveillance to comply with the requirements of all label groups’ policies to handle high-security titles.

For more information, please reach out today at (800) 295-0171 or email mastering@gottagrooverecords.com