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[Ronzie]

As an "armchair" mastering engineer I lurk here every now and then.

Being an experienced engineer, who's been to dozens of mastering sessions, I understand the analog/digital "chain" aspect of your disipline but I'm lost when it comes to the" codes" that are continually discussed in the threads and what they're used for.  Obviously, CD's, SACD's,DVD's and the like need different codes for a myriad of reasons and this is my disconnect.  I'm looking for a basic "checklist", just to inform myself and possibly others could benefit as well.

If someone would be so kind as to point me in the direction of info that sums up codes used in our modern mastering world, it would be greatly appreciated.

Tell me if I'm stepping on toes.

Ron Allaire, Skyline

[David Glasser]

http://www.airshowmastering.com/upcimg/lastword.pdf

[Greg Reierson]

That is excellent David!


GR

[TotalSonic]

I've got a much shorter version at http://www.totalsonic.net/subcodes.html

David -
I've seen your pdf before and forgot to mention  it then - but your pdf really is an excellent and well written resource.  Nice work!

BTW - There's one improperly written link embedded in the pdf -  http://www.sonydadc.com/thankyou.go?download=file/cdtext.zip gets read as   www.%20sonydadc.com/thankyou.%20go?download=file/cdtext.%20z ip

Also - if you end up correcting that you might want to include AMG Lasso - http://www.allmediaguide.com/lasso - (who MS use for Windows Media Player) and Musicbrainz (who are an updated extension of freedb) - http://musicbrainz.org in your info on CDDB organizations.

One other nitpick - quite a good number of CD Text compatible players (perhaps the majority) will not display beyond 31 characters (including spaces) - so I always recommend that people keep the CD Text to 31 characters or less for each field.

Ron -
Another commonly used code that might not be obvious is the PQ "pause ID" index (an index of "0" instead of a track index of "1").  This tells the CD player when displaying program time to show a backwards countdown to the next Track Id - and is commonly used to mark areas of longer silence between tracks or areas of applause on live albums.  Note that areas marked with a pause id are ignored by CD rippers and players in shuffle mode.  Note that every Red Book standard CD must begin with a "pregap" pause of at least 2 seconds - luckily most burning software these days adds this in automatically.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Ronzie]

Guys, thanks so much for the information.

David, I'm bookmarking that sucker!

Steve, the PQ is the only one I know LOL.  But your consise explaination is great.

Keep 'em comin if there's anything to add.

Ron Allaire, Skyline