The Voodoo of CD Mastering

The Voodoo of CD Mastering

The Voodoo of CD Mastering

Update history: March 29, 1998 –
made the first update in over a year, just
cleaned out dead links and got rid of some of the icons (they looked
cool, but made the page slow to load.) I’ve been
busy writing a doctoral dissertation in electrical engineering
which I hope to defend in May.
I have a huge directory of e-mails of links to add to this page which
people have sent me over the past year. I hope to do a major update
after my defense is out of the way.

*.txt files are discussions I’ve been archiving
from the the sonic,
ddesign, and daw-mac mailing lists and rec.audio.pro
newsgroup and a few other places. I’ve generally edited out the bulky
headers and sigs. I used to update these every once in a while.
(Alas, I don’t have time to do so anymore.)
The latest update is shown in parens. (Sorry the articles aren’t always
in any particular
order…)

Some of these threads contain posts that are at times
critical of
some products… please remember these are just one person’s opinion, and
that many folks swear by the products discussed here, so when reading these
remember there is a larger context…

Read this article
by Bob Katz, which warns of the dangers of overcompression.
Read it now. Read it before you
read anything else. The decreasing dynamic range
of CD’s is something that’s concerned me for a while now, and I’m glad that
mastering engineers are talking about it and educating their clients about
the problem.
Mastering Houses

recommendations.txt – every once in a while, somebody asks for names and
numbers of good mastering engineers… here’s the nets collected two cents
(10-7-95)
MUST VISITS
(highly informative)		 DRT
Digital Domain
Mastering Houses Hotdish
Frankford/Wayne
Rocket Lab
Ultimate One (Hong Kong)
Trevor Sadler
Final Edit Mastering
Restoration and Mastering Quintessential Sound
Omega
Mastering & More HotWax
Nilson
Creative Media Corp.

The iNTERLAB

Overtom
Digital Audio Workstations

digid-vs-sonic.txt – Digidesign vs. Sonic Solutions, what’s
right for you? (12-26-95)


Sonic Solutions
usp-dangers.txt – Dangers lurking in the Sonic Solutions USP (12-26-95)


sonic-digid-fusion.txt – Integrating Digidesign stuff with
Sonic Solutions stuff (12-26-95)

ABG (dealer page)

Digidesign		 digi-init-dae.txt – Problems
with Digidesign INIT’s and the DAE (12-26-95)


audiomedia-issues.txt – issues concerning the Audiomedia card (12-26-95)


audiomedia-noise.txt – getting the SCSI chatter out of your
Audiomedia audio (12-26-95)
PC-Based
Sadie |

Spectral |

Digital Audio Labs
Audio Hardware and Software
D-A, A-D, sample rate converters, digital meters, etc.
Apogee |

dB Technologies |

Mytek |

Z SYS.


analog2digital.txt – thoughts on A-D converters (12-26-95)


connections.txt – interfacing digital audio equipment (9-6-95)


jitter.txt – with some general DAC issues (12-26-95)


overs-and-metering.txt – and clipping and distortion etc. (12-26-95)


T.C. Electronics
m5000.txt – tidbits on the T.C. Electronics M5000
(12-26-95)


l1_vs_m5000.txt – which is better? (a moot point
since they’re totally different animals, but still interesting discussion)
(12-26-95)
DSP Plug-ins, editing software, etc.
bias (Makers of
Peak, way cool editing software) |

Waves |

Arboretum
Analog Domain
Manley Laboratories |

Focusrite
Misc. Processing
valley.txt – Tidbits on Valley DSP’s (12-26-95)
Other cool stuff
Gallery Software
CD-Recording Hardware, Software, and Media

cdr-drives.txt – CD-R hardware and software (12-26-95)
CD-Prep Software
Toast |

Golden Hawk
CD Writers Yamaha |

cd-9xx.txt
on Sony’s writer (also known as cd-2xx by Sonicians) (1-3-96)
Media
cdr-media.txt – CD-R media (including the yellow vs. green controversy)
(12-26-95)


cd-art.txt – printing and silkscreening on CD-R’s (9-6-95)
Don’t forget…
hard-drives.txt – trials and tribulations of hard drives
for digital audio (9-6-95)


backup.txt – backing up large soundfiles (10-7-95)


audio-from-cd.txt – converting audio on CD to soundfiles (10-7-95)
The Art (?) and Science (???) of Mastering
Artistic Choices
bass.txt – how to stop bass which sounds cool on great monitors
from going blech on cheesy boom boxes (9-6-95)


compression.txt – use of compression in mastering (10-7-95)


dithering.txt – techniques for reducing quantization distortion (12-26-95)


equalization.txt – use of equalization in mastering (12-26-95)


mastering-adv.txt – advice on “problem solving” in mastering
(9-6-95)


mastering-importance.txt – colorful exchanges on the importance and role of
the mastering engineer (9-6-95)


noise-be-gone.txt – tools and tips for dehissing, declicking, decrackling,
etc. (12-26-95)


normalization.txt – to normalize or not to normalize (and issues related
to matching apparent volumes) (10-7-95)


pitch-shift.txt pitch shifting and time stretching/squishing (12-26-95)


stereo-image.txt – improving the stereo image during mastering (9-6-95)
Technicalities
1630-vs-exabyte.txt – (and vs. CD-R) What’s the best
mastering format? (12-26-95)


error-correction.txt – (in CD’s, DAT’s, etc.) (12-26-95)


filter-formulas.txt – conversion formulas
for filters specified with differing units (12-26-95)


golden-ears.txt – do these lessons in listening work? (12-26-95)


redbook.txt – CD format standards (12-26-95)


hidden-track.txt
(12-26-95)

General philosophy


  • canonical-jokes.txt     – including Gabe Wiener’s list of engineering jokes
    (9-6-95)

  • copy-protection.txt     – the bane of much music software (12-26-95)

  • costs.txt     – articles with specific price info (12-26-95)

  • crippling.txt     – on the annoying habit
    many companies have ofreleasing crippled versions of programs
    as marketing gimmicks (12-26-95)

  • mailing-lists.txt     – info on mastering-related (sometimes vaguely)
    mailing lists (9-6-95)

Monitors

Duplication facilities/brokers (including one-offs)

Sales

  • MacBeat – hardware and software
  • CD Archive sells CD-R recorders,
    software, and media, and does mass replication and one-offs

  • The Cassette House     also
    sells CD-R media and DATs and other such things

More info

  • Jay rose has some
    useful docs     on computer audio formats and such

Misc.

Click

here
to learn about the ever expanding, ever improving St. Louis
area local music scene.

Last modified 29 March 1997
Maintained by

Aaron Lanterman


adl@essrl.wustl.edu