Following the Sonic Trail

I had a conversation with a client yesterday.  He was wondering if I would give the project my all because it's “just a kids group”.  

My reply to Jim was along the lines of, "kids deserve to have their project mastered to a high standard as anyone, platinum seller or street corner busker.”  

It kind of surprised me that anyone would expect less than my best for their project. 

Here’s why.  Long ago when starting mastering professionally and struggling through rough sounding projects, I was near throwing up my hands and letting an album go under-cooked; Then I had an epiphany.

I started to think about how I'd never heard any bad sounding work from my mastering heroes.  They must have a way to get things to sound good, no matter what.  hmmmm…

Pursuing and persevering to arrive at something that satisfies my ear is a whole lot of fun.  Even if that means pulling out all the stops, or doing next to nothing for a project, I’m game.  

Thanks for the music,

Dana

Tidal, why it matters

A Tidal .WAV?

I've been reading a lot of press lately about the music streaming service, Tidal.  Comments range from, "here we go, yet another streaming service", to "what a strange introduction with all the pop artists being paraded on stage for it's launch"...  Where's the celebration and hype about the sound?!

I see it differently, Tidal is the first music service to offer streaming music without lossless compression.  That's right, you can get the CD quality sound from this service.  This is the moment I've been waiting for as a music fan who is disappointed by MP3's sound.

That is not to say that the service is without growing pains, as sometimes I find the app a little finicky to use, and of course there is the monthly 20USD charge.

Why does this extra quality matter to the music industry?  I have seen the television world get a big boost for selling HD TVs and the high quality broadcast.  It's amazing to me that we have the picture clarity to see the lint on the outfielder's jersey from home plate, yet we consume music through a sonic funnel that is MP3.

Will consumers appreciate the higher sound quality?

Ultimately as internet bandwidth increases, it's inevitable that streaming audio at high data rates will be the norm, I think it's something to celebrate and hope the music consuming public will finally "open up their wallets to let the moths out" and get on board sooner than later.

http://tidal.com/

Specialized Mastering

Specialized Mastering - Master Player

In the quest to make a better mastering experience, I’ve added a *DDP player app you can use to listen to your newly mastered project.  

All the pressing companies are now asking for DDP over CD-R masters because they can be uploaded quickly and accurately.  Now there is a way for you to listen to the DDP, pull WAV files, and burn CDs directly from your master. 

In the modern era, with fast internet connections and dropbox file delivery, we are creating DDPs directly from our mastering systems.  In practice a DDP is much like a CD in that it contains audio, track changes, song & album/artist text, ISRC Codes, etc. 

When I create a DDP master I embed a player inside the Master folder.  All that needs to be done is to unzip the files, go inside and open the "Player" folder.  Then launch the Mac/Win player. Now you're listening to your newly mastered album!

Need WAV files for digital distribution?  The player will pull them.

Need to burn a CD to check in the car?  Just pop in a disc and hit "Burn CD"

Need to check all the song titles and ISRC codes?  Just "Export Track List"

Enjoy your newly mastered album, happy recording!

-Dana

*DDP (Disc Description Protocal) was developed as a way to interface all the different digial audio and data formats with CD replication houses.  It was created by Doug Carson Associates to allow conversion of input media to a robust and reliable format so replicators wouldn't have to lose production time with potentially defective masters from the myriad of dodgy studios that had little understanding of how CDs are manufactured.  

Mastered for iTunes

Mastered for iTunes

2012 finally marked an upswing in music sales, and hopefully represents a turning point to better economics for independent musicians.  Most of the new growth is from digital downloads and most interestingly vinyl.  Also the CD is still an important medium and continues on.  

Because MP3 files are inherently quality compromised to allow for easy delivery and storage, folks like us have been sounding the alarm for better quality for consumers.  

It seems that Apple got the message with their "Mastered for iTunes" program they started last year. 

The gist of this is, they are still selling "lossy-compressed" music files to fans, but rather than accepting only CD Quality as input, they are opening up to larger, higher resolution recordings.  The idea is that a better input results in a better end-product.  We can provide these mastered for iTunes files for you during your mastering session. 

These special high-res master files are also good for selling on Bandcamp (my favorite).  Other sites like Reverb Nation will ask us to provide WAV files at CD quality, and prepared MP3 files.  

On a related note, in our tests, we have discovered our mastering system provides very good MP3 encoding, so let us know if you'd like to have us prepare them or any other digital format while mastering your project. 

CD Text Mystery Revisited...

Metadata part II

Have you ever put a CD into your laptop that wasn't connected to the web, and noticed the titles didn't show up?  While recent car CD players, and stand alone players read titles directly-from-the-disc, computer media players do not.  

This is because media players refer to the "Gracenote's on-line CDDB," not the CD text itself.

CDDB stands for Compact Disc Database.  It allows a CD's unique track and play-length to be queried, and returns track titles, album, and artist info. 

In order to cover all the bases for your CD release, I use a combination of CD Text (which must be done during mastering) *and* submit your titles to CDDB.  

Also the CDDB:

* Can be updated and changed by anyone

* Takes a day or two to show up

* Short CDs or singles may not be recognized correctly

After mastering a CD with text, I use a script for iTunes to automatically pulls titles from the disc, and posts to CDDB.  This keeps the information consistent, and is easy to do at the end of a long mastering session. 


Also I recommend sending a finished project to "All Media Guide". Windows Media Player only shows CD titles if they are listed with All music. They will add the titles for you, here's where to send it.

All Media Guide
1168 Oak Valley Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
The listing will be up 4-6 weeks later.

Next up, a brief article about tagging MP3s, to complete the "Metadata Trilogy". Thanks for reading.  

Meta-Data made easy

Audio Metadata Made Easy!

By Dana White of Specialized Mastering

You've probably seen song titles show up on your car stereo when you play a CD... and you've seen them in iTunes, and even on the radio. 

How did they get there?    What is this “meta-data”?    What else goes in there?

The term meta-data essentially refers to all of the title, informational and non-musical content on your music recordings.

With the CD Audio format it is possible to include:

Album

Artist

Song

ISRC codes

UPC/EAN barcode

This information is added by your engineer during the mastering of a CD.  It is helpful to be prepared in advance to ensure you have correct spellings and codes in time for the session. 

With MP-3 and similar types of audio files, it is also possible for them to contain:

Album

Artist

Song

ISRC code

Composer

Genre

Lyrics

Artwork

Comments

Nimbit can provide ISRC and UPC/EAN codes for you for free.

ISRC codes are a great way to log spins on radio, and help prove ownership of a song, as well as keep track of songs that have multiple versions that go out for licensing, or on compilations, etc.

Having complete meta-data, helps your fans keep track of your music, helps potential fans and search engines find your songs, and enriches the digital music experience.  While no replacement for an LP gatefold, use of meta-data is par for the modern game of digital music distribution.

Happy recording!

Dana

Dana White is the Chief Engineer and owner of Specialized Mastering. 

“Today’s Solution for High-Quality Audio Mastering”, in Portland, OR and Boston, MA.

Copyright ã 2010 Specialized Mastering All Rights Reserved

Welcome to the Specialized Mastering Minute!

Welcome to the Specialized Mastering Minute! 

Hi, I'm Dana White from Specialized Mastering.  Here you are going to find relevant information about getting your recordings to sounds their best.  I'll be adding video and audio examples along with posts to really help clarify issues that come up in our mastering lab.

I've been a professional mastering engineer since 1995, and have been operating Specialized Mastering since 2000.  I have answered many questions about audio over the years, and have worked on over 1500 albums during time.  

I am overly-passionate about music & sound and have some ideas that go against the mainstream.  My mission is to help artists build their career on recordings that Sound Great! 

Sincerely,

Dana

Specialized Mastering