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Author Topic: Mastered for iTunes  (Read 9368 times)

djwaudio

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Respectfully submitted,

Dana J White
Specialized Mastering
www.specializedmastering.com

Greg Reierson

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2012, 01:44:11 PM »

Isn't that what the Sonnox Pro-Codec is for?

http://www.sonnoxplugins.com/pub/plugins/products/pro-codec.htm

GR
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Greg Reierson
Rare Form Mastering

BiigNiick

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2012, 06:29:26 PM »

i just downloaded it.  it's pretty cool for auditioning the AAC codec and the command line utility is cool too.  it only does AAC. . .  the ProCodec does 'other flavors' of lossy compression.  plus, the roundtrip plugin is only AU format (no VST or RTAS).  the plugin does have a cool feature that you can blind test and select A or B and it will tell you which is the source (you'd have to be deaf not to notice the difference. . .)  still cool stuff for free


 - nick



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Twerk

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #3 on: February 25, 2012, 08:01:57 PM »

While auditioning with their AU tool, I'm a bit surprised at how big some of these ISP's are. In some cases, I'm having to back the ceiling down to -3dBFS to make room for them. Not to say that's a terrible thing in some cases, but 3dB is a bit of level to lose when dealing with clients that want things as loud as possible.
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mmarra

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #4 on: February 26, 2012, 03:40:35 PM »

I find that the Fabfilter Pro-L limiter with the use of the ISP meter, oversampling (x2 or x4) and correctly dialed in look ahead time it reduces the magnitude of those ISPs when converting to AAC.

But I still set my ceiling lower and back out the gain if it's a digital project. I try to keep the same dynamic range in mind where it's for digital or CD medium.
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Mike Marra (P.Eng)
Joćo Carvalho Mastering
http://www.joaocarvalhomastering.com & http://elitemastering.com
Toronto, Canada

Greg Reierson

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #5 on: February 26, 2012, 10:28:11 PM »

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Greg Reierson
Rare Form Mastering

Jerry Tubb

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #6 on: February 27, 2012, 12:51:45 PM »

JJ is commenting on this topic over on GS.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/mastering-forum/702605-mastered-itunes-guidlines-apple.html

GR

Who's JJ?

To me anything less than full (24/96 ~ 16/44.1) bandwidth is just a compromise.

Although I actually did buy an album on iTunes recently, Weather Report's "Sweetnighter" from 1973. Somehow the LP got away from me.

Best, JT
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Terra Nova Mastering
Celebrating 25 years of Mastering!

Jerry Tubb

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #7 on: February 27, 2012, 12:52:25 PM »

Oops, double post... More coffee please!
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Terra Nova Mastering
Celebrating 25 years of Mastering!

Greg Reierson

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #8 on: February 27, 2012, 12:59:48 PM »

Sorry. Jim Johnston. The guy who did much of the research and wrote most of the code behind, MP3, AAC, etc.
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Greg Reierson
Rare Form Mastering

Jerry Tubb

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #9 on: February 27, 2012, 08:39:57 PM »

Sorry. Jim Johnston. The guy who did much of the research and wrote most of the code behind, MP3, AAC, etc.

Aha! So straight from the "horses mouth" as they say.

Very interested to see if this actually has an effect on how we work.

Guess in our word-of-mouth advertising, we could add "Currently Mastering for iToons" :-)

JT
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Terra Nova Mastering
Celebrating 25 years of Mastering!

bradsarno

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2012, 10:19:53 AM »

So is this "process" really as simple as pulling the ceiling down a bit, keeping the peaks down to safely avoid most ISP's and then encoding to 256k AAC directly from a 24bit master?

I was just checking out the new Springsteen on the iTunes "Mastered For iTunes" store section and the readable peaks seem to never go above -1.75dBFS. We know that continuous full-sample peaks and ISP's can cause all kinds of nastiness with compressed formats, so it's appearing that what's going on here is simply avoiding ISP's and making the jump from 24bit to AAC/256k a one step process.

Am I missing something else here?


Brad
www.bluejadeaudio.com

Twerk

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #11 on: March 06, 2012, 02:18:13 PM »

That's definitely what it seems like to me. Easy enough.
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bradsarno

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #12 on: March 06, 2012, 02:33:34 PM »

I did download the apple toolkit, and that AU plugin is a pretty handy ISP indicator. Nice little blind A/B test tool too. And a couple of handy Apple format AAC drag and drop tools as well. This is exciting, all this gear and resolution to eventually squeeze out turds.


B


djwaudio

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #13 on: March 11, 2012, 04:36:11 AM »

After giving this a little thought, I really like the Mastered for iTunes concept.  Reason being that, although flac, alac, wave etc are technically superior, not everyone has 24bit playback hardware. I'm leery of giving artists 24 bit versions of their record unless they ask for it. Playing back 24 bit files on 16 bit hardware or unknowing bounces to CD and the resulting truncation potential isn't worth the risk to me.

With Mastered for iTunes, there is no problem with playback systems, there is the potential for better sound (at least there's a discussion about quality), and the file sizes are small enough to be convenient to the public.

The raised awareness about avoiding clipping during mastering is possibly the best part of the whole campaign. ;-)
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Respectfully submitted,

Dana J White
Specialized Mastering
www.specializedmastering.com

Waltz Mastering

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Re: Mastered for iTunes
« Reply #14 on: March 11, 2012, 12:24:15 PM »

All current iDevices can play ALAC–encoded files, 16 bit wav and aiff files.
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