When you can’t ‘be in the room’, vinyl records are the next best thing

In this episode, Nick and Brendan drive to Burlington to chat with Paul Miller, the Vice President of Sales at Precision Record Pressing. Initially a joint venture between Czech-based GZ Media and Burlington’s Isotope Music, Precision Record Pressing has emerged as one of North America’s largest vinyl record manufacturing facilities. Paul’s experience as the owner and founder of The Record Jacket Corporation brought him to Precision Record Pressing in 2015. 

Over the past five years, Precision Record Pressing has increased its output from 20,000 records a month to nearly 75,000 records a day. Much of this is due to the surge in demand for vinyl records during the pandemic. Their manufacturing operations offer a mix of automated (highly productive and require less labour) and manual machinery (less efficient but allows the company to offer customers innovative designs). This combination enables Precision Record Pressing to operate at the scale necessary to meet customer demand while keeping lead times shorter than their competitors in the United States and Europe. 

Precision Record Pressing has achieved increases in efficiency with a noticeably young and diverse workforce that is generally new to manufacturing. Their combination of technology and enthusiasm is evidence that when combined with the right leadership and investment, younger generations can play an important role in growing Ontario’s innovative and competitive advanced manufacturing industry.

Timestamp
00:00 – 04:00 – Intro
04:01 – 05:38 – Meeting Paul and Precision Record Pressing
05:39 – 07:41 – A quick history of vinyl, why the decline, why the resurgence?
07:42 – 09:31 – Discussing the tools of the trade and what’s changed
09:32 – 11:06 – Brendan asks about the resurgence of Vinyl
11:07 – 15:04 – The Loudness Wars!!! and how Vinyl can ‘Put you in the Room’
15:05 – 17:45 – How Paul got into the recording-pressing business
17:46 – 20:19 – Quick history of Precision Record Pressing in Ontario
20:20 – 25:49 – An artist gives you their sound file: What happens next?
25:50 – 29:51 – Discussing the artwork of vinyl – The Winckler Machine…
29:52 – 32:41 – …and how they got busier during the pandemic
32:42 – 33:50 – Waste not, Want not
33:51 – 38:20 – Their staff is diverse and ageless. How did that happen?
38:21 – 43:38 – Manual vs. automatic record presses
43:39 – 44:28 – What markets do they sell into?
44:29 – 47:48 – What’s next?

 Image Gallery

Brendan Sweeney and Paul Miller of PRP chat before recording the podcast.
Brendan holding a one side of a record ‘Master’. This will be used to press the PVC into a disc – Thanks to Sudbury for the nickel!
A PRP employee working at one of the manual record pressing machines.
Simon Daley from PRP standing next to one of the automatic machines on the shop floor
PRP staff doing quality control work (both audio and visual) on freshly pressed records.
PVC pellets before being fed into an automatic pressing machine
A work station at one of the manual pressing machines. Note how the multi-coloured PVC pellets were used to make this unique design
Up close with a finished vinyl record from the manual press. Those microscopic grooves are where the music is physically encoded
PRP staff working at the automatic machines
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