In the earliest incarnations of this analog medium, a band would stand around the recorder in strategic positions (a poor man's mixing board) and play directly into a small amplification device, basically the horn of a phonograph going being used as a crude microphone. As the pioneers of this (Thomas Alva Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Emile Berliner, among others) got more and more into it they would use multiple horns, as depicted to the left.This method of recording continued on until digital tape was finally reasonable for big studios, after which the studio could record a master tape, and then use specialized hardware to convert the signal from the tape deck into a cutting lathe, which would "cut" a master. (remember Edison's finger? this is like that, except highly refined) That master record, whose 'data' contains the exact negative of the signal, is then sent off to the pressing plant where a couple hundred records would be pressed from the master. After that the master would wear out and they would have to cut another one.

The cutting process nowadays is defined as a little needle going right to left (rather than up and down, as was the trend with a couple different companies) according to the frequency and amplitude of the signal input. The record is scraping a blank vinyl disc typically coated with either copper or cellulose nitrate lacquer. That disc that has just been cut is called the lacquer, and from that lacquer they "grow" a 'nickel mother' by putting a lacquer into a bath of nickel compound and letting the nickel settle onto the surface of the record. After this they will cut a record from that, the 'nickel positive,' and it is from this nickel positive that the 'stampers' are made. The stampers are the metal negatives that 'stamp' a piece of vinyl with the relavant information.