Photos: Where vinyl records are born

No trip to the South would be complete without a visit to Nashville, Tenn. With that in mind, CNET News.com reporter Daniel Terdiman stopped in Music City during Road Trip 2008 with an eye toward finding noteworthy music-related sites.

One stop was United Record Pressing, one of just three companies in the United States that still make a meaningful amount of vinyl LPs. Surprisingly in this digital era, records are on the upswing. This is largely because the emergence of MP3s has led some audiophiles to conclude that vinyl offers a more pleasurable home-listening experience.

Pictured is what is known as a stamper, the fourth step in the process of making an LP. The process begins with the original recording, which is used to make the master recording, which unlike a record, has ridges instead of grooves. Then, the master is used to make the "mother," a metal version of the record that can actually be played. The stamper is made from the mother, and it too has ridges. All vinyl records are made by pressing the stamper down onto hot vinyl.

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