Ever wondered how a record is made? What about how a Grammy winning record is made? In nearby Brier, tucked away in a private studio, master lacquers are being cut every week. 

Beyonce? Yes. Billie Eilish? Yes. Pearl Jam, Metallica, Sunny Day Real Estate? Yes, Yes, Yes. We have one of the leading master cutters right here in our community, and I was honored to have the chance to meet with Levi Seitz, ask him some questions and watch a master being cut.  

Introducing an interview with Levi Seitz of Blackbelt Mastering

Rachel: How did you get started with mastering? Was this always your dream career? 

Levi: I’ve always had a love for music and a curiosity about all things mechanical from a young age…mastering, specifically for vinyl ended up being a perfect fit as it entertains both those curiosities. I think in my teens my dream was to be a touring musician, singing and playing guitar. Over time that dream was exchanged with my growing passion for audio engineering. 

While in high school, I saved up and bought a four-track recorder, very simple and not great quality, but it didn’t matter. I was hooked! Along with some musician friends, I learned how to record and mix my own music and  eventually, after graduating, I attended an arts college in Seattle with a dedicated audio department. Ultimately, it was too expensive and after the first two semesters, I dropped  out. 

With plenty of time on my hands, I found an internship in Portland at Jackpot! Recording Studio. After that I moved back to Tacoma and started running live sound at a church. I continued to work weekends doing live sound while eventually completing a liberal arts degree at the University of Washington in 2006. 

After college, I started work as a contract dialogue editor and sound designer at a production studio on the Microsoft campus. I held various positions related to audio at Microsoft over the course of eight years and started Black Belt Mastering in 2009 as the work at Microsoft began to dry up.  

During this time, I was slowly building up my mastering business, hosting sessions in the evenings, taking on work when I could and building relationships with mix engineers. Over time people would ask me more and more about mastering for vinyl. I finally got to the point where I wanted to expand, and the options I chose between were to invest in the equipment to do vinyl mastering or mastering for Surround-sound (5.1 at the time). 

In 2014, my wife and I took out a second mortgage, and in a leap of faith (with the support of my friends and family), we bought a vintage, 1940s Scully vinyl lathe. After putting in a few months of hard work to get cuts that I thought would be acceptable to charge money for, I quit my day job to pursue mastering full time on April 1, 2015 (and yes, my employer did ask if my resignation email was an April fools joke…it wasn’t). 

I can’t say I’ve ‘never looked back’. The first few years on my own were pretty rough. I continued to re-invest back into the business, upgrading speakers, room treatment and equipment when I could. I started to develop more vinyl centric relationships with  pressing plants and labels…but the first big one was with Pearl Jam, who I still work  with regularly 10 years later. Being self-employed as an audio engineer (to me) means maintaining a constant hustle. Nothing is guaranteed so I’m always checking in with  clients. I love helping them see a project to completion.

Rachel: Tell us about what you do. What does a typical day or week look like?  

Levi: The week starts out with anything that’s an urgent or time-sensitive job. Because I’m certain I have some high-functioning ADHD, it takes a lot of focus to stay on a singular task. 

I usually spend my first hour replying to emails and wrapping up loose  ends from the weekend. Essentially, I have two different ‘jobs.’ The majority of my day is centered around vinyl. With that job, I’m taking audio (typically other people’s masters or mixes) and cutting it to a lacquer disc. The goal is to do this as seamlessly as possible, using various techniques (EQ/level/dynamics) to work within the limitations of the vinyl medium. 

This process is called ‘vinyl mastering.’ The other service I provide is ‘digital  mastering,’ which is taking a group of completed mixes and preparing them for  commercial release. This process consists of making sure the tracks all have consistent  eq, dynamics and volume within a timed-out sequence that can be used for digital distribution (download, streaming and CD). 

Most of my week is cutting physical masters for vinyl. It’s important for a master lacquer to be plated (plating is the manufacturing step after cutting) as soon as possible, so the discs get shipped overnight to an  electroforming facility where they create the ‘stamper’ that goes on to press the individual records. 

In some cases I’m delivering both the digital and the vinyl masters for a record. Those projects can be really fun, and I love being able to provide a dynamic and impactful master for both mediums. 

Rachel: What would you say is unique about your mastering studio?  

Levi: Owning a vinyl lathe is pretty rare. Professional machines in working condition are scarce and have not been made in earnest since the last production model was released in 1980. The majority of lathes in use today were made between 1966 to 1970 by the German company Neumann (yes, the same one that makes microphones today).  

Sadly, all the documentation and tooling to produce lathes was destroyed. I was talking to a colleague who repairs lathes about how many he thinks are still in service, and his best guess is that there are maybe 125 working machines left on the planet. Wild, right? Having a lathe gives me the unique ability to check how my masters translate to vinyl without any guesswork. 

Based on what I’m seeing and hearing in the grooves, I can make tweaks to get the best results, and I’d say this method has worked out pretty well. A recent example of this is the new record from the band Clipping. Initially I  mastered it for digital. The record has some really articulate high-frequency information that works perfectly in the digital domain but can be tricky to cut. 

But with very minimal alterations, I was able to get it to cut and play back on vinyl and still sound crisp and punchy. Had I simply guessed and applied de-essing to mitigate the high frequencies, I  would have been compromising the sonic integrity of the music.

As it stands, I was  able to get a truer translation to vinyl through test cuts and observing the actual groove geometry. Of the three different lathes I have, each one has a unique set of features that  affords me either a mechanical or sonic advantage. 

My primary lathe is a Neumann Am32b, which was originally built in 1957. It has had numerous upgrades over the years, making it one of the more advanced systems around. I’ve easily cut more than 5,000 records on this machine, so I have total confidence using it, which allows me to really push the boundaries when I need to. 

My second machine is a stock, low hours VMS-66 that also has some upgrades to optimize land use (important when cutting long sides) with a cutter head that has a specific tonality to it. It sounds very ‘sweet’ and works well on certain materials. 

My last lathe is just about ready for commercial use after a year-long overhaul. It will have a custom amplifier driving the cutter head and advanced pitch computer to allow long sides to be cut louder. I’m pretty excited about it. Knowing my equipment well is super important when the physical master I’m cutting can potentially go on the press as few as 300 but as many as 10,000 or even 60,000 copies of a record. It needs to be right no matter what.

Rachel: Do you have a favorite album that you have mastered? Or maybe top five?

Levi: An all-time favorite album of mine has always been ‘Diary’ by Sunny Day Real Estate, released in 1994. I think it was 1995 when I first heard it. I was 12 at the time, and in some of my most formative years musically. Like a lot of people, it made a big impression on me. 

Fast forward to 2024, the band went back in the studio and re-recorded the entire album live. I had worked with Jeremy [ Enigk] on various re-issue projects prior to this. I was asked to master it for digital and vinyl, which was a total pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming moment because this record is just embedded in my DNA.

The new recording has so much depth and the band sounds better than ever, so it was very special to be part of that. Jeremy and the  rest of the band are wonderful to work with. Beyond that, the top five vinyl records I’ve cut lacquers for is a mix of re-issues and new releases. 

Most of them I did not do the digital mastering but was brought on specifically to cut the vinyl master. Nirvana – “Nevermind,” Metallica – “Master Of Puppets,” Beyonce – “Renaissance,”  August Burns Red – “Phantom Anthem” and a tie between Pearl Jam – “Yield” and “Vs.” 

Rachel: How long have you been located in the PNW?  

Levi: I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest my entire life. I was born in Tacoma and lived there until just after high school when I started to move around trying out different schools and jobs to see what was a good fit for me. 

I’d end up living short stints in Bellingham, Seattle and Portland before landing back in Seattle, where I met my wife (Sarah). When we were first married, we both did contract work on the Microsoft Campus and lived in Bellevue, where the first version of Black Belt Mastering was made by outfitting an old enclosed car-port attached to a house we rented from Sarah’s uncle.  

The space was pretty small and I didn’t have much money to build it out, so I got creative. I modified shipping pallets as room diffusers and made my own acoustic panels out of rigid fiberglass covered with fabric. 

The roof leaked…I remember one session we had water dripping down from the ceiling with buckets catching it and a tarp over part of the console so it wouldn’t get wet…NOT ideal, hah! I’m currently in my third building, which was a scratch-build, and I’m happy to say that things are much better…no  water leaks! 

Our current space, located in the City of Brier, is roughly 1,200 square feet and hosts two cutting rooms: A lounge and a shop where I repair and maintain the studio’s  equipment. We’ve even got space for a pinball machine.

Rachel: What are you most excited about this year?  

Levi: I recently started cutting vinyl masters for this series called ‘Because Sound Matters,’ created by Tom ‘Grover’ Biery, who used to run Warner music in the early 2000s. 

So far, I’ve cut three major Linkin Park re-issues and ‘American Idiot’ by Green Day. As the name implies, the fidelity of the cut is super important. Every effort is taken to ensure that the quality of the cut, plating and pressing is the best it can be. 

Even the PVC used to press the records is a special formula made to bring out the finest audible nuance within the grooves. The goal of these releases is to be the definitive, archival  copy of the album and people are really responding positively to them, so I can’t wait to see what comes next in that series. 

Rachel: Any advice for aspiring mastering enthusiasts? 

Levi: Less is more. It’s easy to get caught up in the I-need-this-gear-to-make-a-master-sound-good mindset, but the most important thing is that you’re working in a room that you know and trust the ‘sound’ of a place that you’re able to confidently make decisions about EQ, dynamics or level. 

When it comes to making vinyl, don’t hesitate to reach out to a person who has experience cutting lacquers. Vinyl has real physical limitations, and the person operating the lathe will know how to work within those to get the best result. 

There is a lot of misinformation online about how you need to prepare your audio for vinyl in the digital domain (i.e. make the bass mono and heavily de-ess), and although sometimes those things are helpful, they’re not always necessary, so resist using ‘lowest common denominator’ processing unless you’re the one seeing/cutting the resulting grooves to know if it’s helpful. The most important thing is to know your space and trust your ears.

Rachel: Thank you, Levi, for your time and letting us get a glimpse in your studio and process!

Rachel Gardner has a heartfelt appreciation for art in all forms and believes everyone is an artist, some just don’t know it yet. A dedicated and involved Edmonds resident, she can often be spotted onstage cracking jokes between sets or in the audience enjoying local live performances. She enjoys being playful with her art and finding unique ways of expression, like forming a boho-grunge-folk ukulele trio with local Edmonds moms.