how to export a pdf without color profiles or color management for print?

Hi @vincent5FBA , what do you mean by vinyl? Is this for an LP cover, or some kind of large format banner printing?

Any REPUTABLE company that demands this will usually provide a profile that's specific to them, or recommend which one to use.

That being said, they don't sound like a company that would even know what a PDF\X standard is.

This is what I recommend: When you export your PDF, convert everything to CMYK using a standard industry profile (in this example I used US SWOP Sheetfed Coated).

As Will says, the PDF\X-1a preset does most of this work for you by default. But these are these are the things to check:

Output settings should be: Convert to Destination (Preserve Numbered CMYK values); Profile: (e.g. US Sheetfed Coated, but any modern one like GRACOL will be more than fine); Profile Inclusion Policy: Don't Include Profiles should be the greyed-default, but if not, select it.

THEN, If you are purposely printing spot colours, check Ink Manager to make sure they are still spot, otherwise check Convert All Spots to Process using Standard Lab values.

Check under Advanced that your Flattening settings are High Resolution (this should be the default of PDF\X-1a). For a banner, it's probably overkill, but it's always better to go "high".

Make sure you've selected your marks and bleed as appropriate. For a banner, you want a larger bleed than usual. I tend to go 1/2"

Probably the Printer means PDF/X-1a where the whole file has a single color profile and all content has CMYK values with that same profile but not attached to each single image or content.