Lathe (audio mastering)

A disc cutting lathe is used for transferring a sound recording to disc for the production of vinyl records. The cutting stylus of the lathe's cutter head engraves the music groove into the blank lacquer-coated disc which is used as the master to produce matrices from which the record is pressed. For all intents and purposes, the finished vinyl record is a facsimile of this master disc.

Neumann VMS70 Disc Cutting lathe

The direct metal mastering (DMM) process uses a copper-coated disc rather than lacquer coated and its biggest advantage is the simpler production of matrices.