Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[djwaudio]

A wonderfully talented client, with whom I worked with last week, called asking for "help with uploading her files to the replication house' server".  

She was ripping the files in iTunes from the CD-R master I produced and QC'd.  Fortunately she stopped, gave it a second thought, and called.  

After I regained consciousness, with the aid of some smelling salts, I quietly suggested she send the hard copy of the master, of course.  

[hnewman]

I had a very successful client reburn their master in itunes because they decided to drop a song from their album.  I don't know exactly what happened, but the pressed CD doesn't come close to nulling with my master, even the peak levels were different.  

[masterlab]

I LOVE iTunes!!

It's sooooo easy........






...to get it wrong....  

[Ed Littman]

I tape the master shut in three places. Hopfully they think twice about opening it as ripping the tape is bad.....

Ed

[Gold]

Someone stopped by to pay me the other day. It was his first time pressing records. He was doing it for a friend. He had them in the back of his car and informed me he didn't get a test pressing and was about to send them to Japan. Yikes!

[jackthebear]

Ed Littman wrote on Wed, 22 September 2010 04:07

I tape the master shut in three places. Hopfully they think twice about opening it as ripping the tape is bad..... Ed

We do similar and remind clients that it should stay that way until it gets to replication....however......there's always that odd one out who sees it as a challenge.....the harder you make it to open the more tempted they are to open it up.......like it's some kind of tabu......

[compasspnt]

I put the master(s) in a separate sealed package/envelope, and write on the top in RED that it is for the replication plant, not to be played, and not to be opened except by the plant.

The artist gets their own "ref" package with "PLAY THIS ONE" written on it, with strong advice as to what to send to the plant.

So far, so good, as far as I know.

[biigniick]

masterlab wrote on Tue, 21 September 2010 08:49

I LOVE iTunes!! It's sooooo easy........ ...to get it wrong....

a friend showed this to me this weekend.  i know it's a few years old, but thought it fit into the conversion.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/technology/22cooder.html?_ r=2&oref=slogin

ugh. . .

[Waltz Mastering]

biigniick wrote on Tue, 21 September 2010 18:05

a friend showed this to me this weekend.  i know it's a few years old, but thought it fit into the conversion.  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/technology/22cooder.html?_ r=2&oref=slogin ugh. . .

Interesting and scary.  Makes you wonder if he's been standing next to those amps a little to long.

[Thomas W. Bethel]

We tape the master CD closed with yellow tape and the sticker says  MASTER CD ONLY TO BE OPENED BY THE REPLICATOR OR DUPLICATOR.

A while back I got a phone call from a plant in NC. They wanted to know why the PQ sheet did not match the master we sent them and why the master was done TAO instead of DAO. There were two additional songs on the master and it was done on a CD someone got from WALMART (ours are TYs).

I called the client and asked him what was happening. He told me that he had decided to put two additional songs on the CD and had his nephew reburn the CD with the additional songs on it. I told him that the plant had rejected the CD and he should bring over the two additional songs and I would correct the master and send it to the plant. When I got the two songs they were not mastered and were of very bad quality. I did what I could with them, added them to the CD and had the client listen to the proof before sending it off.

If it were me I would not have included them but the client insisted and I finished up the project and sent him a bill for additional mastering and new CDs.

[djwaudio]

compasspnt wrote on Tue, 21 September 2010 13:38

I put the master(s) in a separate sealed package/envelope, and write on the top in RED that it is for the replication plant, not to be played, and not to be opened except by the plant. The artist gets their own "ref" package with "PLAY THIS ONE" written on it, with strong advice as to what to send to the plant. So far, so good, as far as I know.

Seriously considering this idea, as I've always been a stickler for clear labeling.  Might have to add "send directly to plant, do not upload"...

[hnewman]

biigniick wrote on Tue, 21 September 2010 18:05

a friend showed this to me this weekend.  i know it's a few years old, but thought it fit into the conversion.  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/technology/22cooder.html?_ r=2&oref=slogin

wow.  THAT just ruined my day....  

[turtletone]

I super glue mine shut.

[Andrew Hamilton]

biigniick wrote on Tue, 21 September 2010 18:05

a friend showed this to me this weekend.  i know it's a few years old, but thought it fit into the conversion.    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/technology/22cooder.html?_ r=2&oref=slogin ugh. . .

"... his usual test — playback in his Toyota, on the factory-installed stereo — the result wasn’t to his liking. “It started to sound processed,” he said. “We were losing the feeling of the thing, and this is not music that can withstand this.”

Then Mr. Cooder noticed something else: When he burned a copy of the album using Apple’s iTunes software, it sounded fine."




I remember that story.  Was hoping it was only an urban legend.  
Interestingly, Mr. Cooder, a purist type of acoustic-electric guitar recordist (I love Paradise & Lunch, Jazz, and Bop til You Drop), felt that more low quality preset processing made his album sound less processed than before!  

Perhaps he should have tracked and mixed to analog!

Seriously, though, I think a car stereo is a terrible place to proof the sound quality of a master.  If it sounds better in the car when you make the master sound worse, get a better car!  Talk about wagging the dog.  Why didn't he just hire Doug Sax and then go on vacation?






(Please) Say it's a hoax...




Andrew

[Jerry Tubb]

I had a similar situation about a year ago. The client decided he liked the sound of his ref CD better than the master.

Much discussion ensued about different discs reacting to playback transports, I even proved to him that the data was identical with a null test.

But he ripped the heavily played Ref anyway, burned a new disc and sent it to replication. At some point you can't control what a stubborn client does.

JT

[24-96 Mastering]

I had an unattended session a few weeks ago in which many of the incoming tracks had (unknowingly) been 'enhanced' by iTunes. It took a LOT of work to make them sit well, and then, after that was done of course, the producer managed to find some better sounding (non-itunesed, as it turned out) versions.

Why of why would any non-specific-hardware-bound music player software want to add such intrusive DSP... and have that 'feature' on by default? The logic is beyond me.

[subvertbeats]

One of the reasons DDP images are a good thing...

[adoucette]

haha oh my god! I would have passed out too.

[Nick Sevilla]

I usually have the mastering house coordinate the delivery of the Master to the plant directly.

Precisely to avoid last minute client hijinks.

If I don't have it in my hands, and neither does the client, then we cannot mess it up (more)...

Cheers

[djwaudio]

I'm not all that comfortable even sending DDPs electronically, without the ability to download them from the plant's server to make a ref copy.


Rethinking QC procedures for DDPs at this very moment!

[masterlab]

djwaudio wrote on Thu, 07 October 2010 07:34

I'm not all that comfortable even sending DDPs electronically, without the ability to download them from the plant's server to make a ref copy. Rethinking QC procedures for DDPs at this very moment!

Would you explain why?
Did you have bad expirence with DDP over Ftp?
Thanks

[pmx]

if you zip or rar the ddp folder, then it will be 100% identical to what you have uploaded. if not, the zip won't open and report an error while unpacking.

[bblackwood]

pmx wrote on Thu, 07 October 2010 05:49

if you zip or rar the ddp folder, then it will be 100% identical to what you have uploaded. if not, the zip won't open and report an error while unpacking.

I'm not so sure it's that black and white, sadly. I was speaking with a tech at one of the large labels recently and this is what he shared:

Quote:

As we’ve seen many times in the past, it’s best to simply send the file as-is, with an external standard md5 checksum. Any added steps are merely opening the door to problems. In practice, most of the time it’s OK, but in our exhaustive tests of data compression on audio a few years ago, 1 out of 5 audio files did not pass a null test after zipping/unzipping, even when using the same PC and algorithm. sometimes the bad data was audible, sometimes not.

[Tomas Danko]

bblackwood wrote on Thu, 07 October 2010 12:41

pmx wrote on Thu, 07 October 2010 05:49 if you zip or rar the ddp folder, then it will be 100% identical to what you have uploaded. if not, the zip won't open and report an error while unpacking. I'm not so sure it's that black and white, sadly. I was speaking with a tech at one of the large labels recently and this is what he shared: Quote: As we’ve seen many times in the past, it’s best to simply send the file as-is, with an external standard md5 checksum. Any added steps are merely opening the door to problems. In practice, most of the time it’s OK, but in our exhaustive tests of data compression on audio a few years ago, 1 out of 5 audio files did not pass a null test after zipping/unzipping, even when using the same PC and algorithm. sometimes the bad data was audible, sometimes not.

This would imply some mishandling of data prior to zip compression, or some odd misuse of the zip algorithm.

Imagine if one out of five zipped PC applications downloaded from the Internet did not run...

[djwaudio]

No problems here, it's just the DDP files don't have titles that match the project name, so I'm always concerned that the wrong project could go out and no one would know until the CDs came back.

I still make a ref CD from the DDP master to send to the client when possible.  

[dcollins]

Tomas Danko wrote on Thu, 07 October 2010 04:45

\ Imagine if one out of five zipped PC applications downloaded from the Internet did not run...

Exactly.  And while one missed bit in a program is likely to crash it, in audio it may be inaudible.  Or make a half-scale pop, depending.

Something is fishy here.


DC

[bblackwood]

Tomas Danko wrote on Thu, 07 October 2010 06:45

This would imply some mishandling of data prior to zip compression, or some odd misuse of the zip algorithm. Imagine if one out of five zipped PC applications downloaded from the Internet did not run...

Yah, I know - just gave me pause. No reason for him to lie, but I have no idea what their 'exhaustive tests' were...

Still zipping here, with no compression.