TIPS FOR BETTER MASTERS

Give adequate information
Tapes or files should be send with a complete CD-track-listing, name of the artist, telephone numbers of the producer and engineer, titles of songs, catalogue number and ISRC-codes, clearly indicating where to find the different original masters.
If you cannot attend the pre-mastering please indicate your wishes clearly and send a CD of the same type of music you like.

DAT's.
If you are still using DAT's (we do not recommend this) please number your DAT ID's and fill in the titles on the DAT's sleeve. Start each DAT by recording at least 1 minute of silence. If different sample frequencies are used within the same DAT, please indicate it clearly, the same applies for Emphasis, please, please make a note.
When sending a DAT, please make a clone and keep it in a safe place before sending us the original.

Analogue Tapes.
The resolution, purity of tone, clarity, depth and transparency of a 2-track, 1/2" 30 IPS tape are hard to beat, it captures more of the depth and space in the source. A good analogue recording has a three-dimensional character which cannot be obtained with "cheap" digital. Depending on the music, it's debatable whether 96 kHz/24-bit sounds as good as fine analogue.
If you send us analogue tapes we will convert them to 24 bit for pre-mastering in our Sonic Solutions Mastering System, keeping everything in maximum wordlength throughout the entire process.
With analogue tapes indicate speed, curve (IEC-CCIR, NAB or AES) Dolby A, Dolby SR or DBX II. We really need reference tones at 1000 Hz, 100 Hz and 10 kHz(record tones with noise reduction OUT) and Dolby-tone if Dolby encoded.

CD-ROM's.
We recommend you send us your tracks on CD-ROMs as 24-bit WAV , SDII or AIFF interleaved stereo files ( do not send us quicktime files).
Use preferably 74 minute blanks with green or greenish-blue chemical layer of known brands (Taiyo Yuden, Sony, Fuji, Mitsui or HHB) at x2 or x4 speed for minimum errors.
If you are mixing digitally stick to the samplerate of your multitrack, if you are mixing analogue use the highest possible bit- and sample rate available to you. The sample rate can be any standard up to 96kHz.
Do not use paper labels, they increase errors by altering the rotational speed of the disc, especially at fast speeds. Paper labels can become partly unglued and come off in the CD reader, making it sometimes impossible to remove the disc from the reader.
Please leave some silence, at least 1 second, within the file in front and at the end of the music.
Collect all the good mixes in one folder, naming them by the names of the songs.

VocalUp / Vocal Down.
Often in mastering, we may find that the song may be better served if we use a vocal-up or vocal-down mix due to the processing used in mastering. If you're running automation, then it doesn't cost anything to also run a vocal up and a vocal down mix. This can save myriads of time later.

About Compression and Limiting.
The Loudness-War has been with us for as long as we can remember.
However, over the last couple of years it has grown completely out of proportion.
So far, that today's music is really suffering from this hyper-compression and so is the listener.
Over-compression, as we hear on many CD's today, takes the life and excitement out of the music and only gives the listeners a headache. It takes all depth and detail out of the mix and just puts it "in your face".
"...this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue."(David Bendeth/Rolling Stone).
The sad thing is that this loudness-war is starting to affect jazz- and even classical music.

True, we need compression; some form of dynamic control is needed. The background noise of the places were listen to our music is much higher than that of the concert hall; if we turn our volume up to hear the low level information of a recording our neighbors will complain when the loud parts play or our playback system will start to distort.

Pop and rock vinyl albums had an average dynamic range of about 20 - 30 dB, so did the early CD releases, until somebody invented the digital compressor/limiter as a computer plug-in and made it affordable. This is when the record companies discovered that everything could be louder and decided that "louder is better".
So today's music ends up on CD with hardly any dynamic range at all, heavy metal or an intimate ballad, all the same!
The argument that your CD will not be as loud on the radio than others just does not hold. All radio-stations use 5-band compressors that will make sure all songs to be broadcasted equally loud; radio is the great leveler. All will depend on the way your song has been recorded and its frequency content. By the very nature of the radio compressor an hyper-compressed song might sound less loud on the radio than a well balanced, open and moderately compressed one. A hyper-compressed track might even start to distort.

Another argument is that radio programmers only listen to the first few bars and decide only on the impact this makes. Just make sure your song is musically interesting and they will listen beyond the first bars. For radio, the loudness of your track does not matter for the reasons explained.
The next argument we hear so often is: “When I play my CD in my car, I cannot hear the soft parts unless I turn up the volume so loud my system will start to distort when the loud parts play.”
Do we have to take the worst condition and make it our standard? The old Compact Cassette had a greater dynamic range than today's' CD's (Don't believe it? Try it!), in-car noise-levels sure were higher in those days and car sound systems of inferior quality. So, what is going on??
The only solution would be to put a compressor in car CD players; perfectly possible and affordable with today's technology.
It's not only the total dynamics and the dynamic balance between the songs that are ruined. It also ruins what we would call "the micro-dynamics", the difference between the level of the notes and the silence between the notes. The effect of the hyper-compression is off course most evident on percussive sounds like drums and piano, making everything sound loud but dull, uninteresting, hard and with lots of distorted transients.
The term "Digitally Remastered" has become synonymous for "Severely Reduced Dynamics".
This might be the reason why there is so little quality difference with the mp3 version of a song. With the dynamic range of today's CD's we do not need 16 bits. If we were to use 8 bits, nobody would hear the difference!
Every musician, music lover, recording engineer, mastering engineer we have spoken to recently thinks this madness must end. Still the first question we get after a session usually is: "Can you make it louder?"

If clients ask:” Can you make it dynamic?" 99% mean: "Can you make it loud?"

The engineers who make the "master", recording engineer as well as mastering engineer are under constant pressure to compromise sound quality, most of them very reluctantly and sometimes under protest.
Listeners are by now so used to this over-compressed sound that they will reject a CD if the music is not cutting off their ears with the first bar of a new song they hear ... or isn't it? Maybe they are buying less CD's because they are tiered of this constant attack on their hearing.

Of course, if you play a late 80's or early 90's CD after one of 2008 you will have to turn up the volume as much as 12 dB to even hear it play.
Somebody suggested a double layer CD with two versions: a hyper-compressed- and a normally compressed one. This is madness and a complete waste of money, but maybe an idea for the Internet sale.
It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to agree on a standard of compression or average dynamic range. Every production is different. However, a solution has to be found; if the rate of dynamic reduction goes on as it is doing lately, (it has nearly become a law: -1dB of dynamics/year) we will soon end up with CD's with white noise!
Your tracks have been painstakingly mixed with adjustments of 0.5dB to different instruments and effects. If it is being over-compressed later, the whole mix will change by the very nature of the compression process.
If it is necessary we will ad compression or limiting, taking care that the balance of your mix changes as little as possible.
Please bring or send us some tracks that you like, sound and level-wise and we will try to match it as best as we can.
Anyway, please do not over-compress your recording; this leaves us very little room to do any equalizing if necessary.
Beware of, or forget about: finalizers, maximizers and other dangerous animals. We found that today the average CD has about 12 dB more compression than a seventies hard-rock vinyl pressing. It surely makes the CD sound louder, but what about the music?

If you insist on a very loud compressed master we will of course do it for you, we just want you to consider the alternative. Let us bring the dynamics back to music.

Please do not drive your AD-convertors into overload; do not use them as limiters. We receive a lot of CDR's with heavy overloads: this means DISTORTION. This distortion increases with every further digital- or analogue signal processing; the distortion might be quite unacceptable at the end of the process: Your CD or LP!

Please let us stop the level-war and bring back the dynamics to our music!

Send us the highest possible bitrate.
Digital mixing and processing creates extra bits both above and below the original dynamic range, that must be retained throughout the production and only reduced to 16 bits as the very last step to fit the final delivery media.
Send us your CD-project as 24 bit AIFF, WAV or SD2 files on a CD-Rom. We can achieve better end-quality working in 24 bit until the very end. This will also avoid double dithering.
Please leave some headroom, even if your mixes peak at - 6dB you are still working in 23 bit ! This will give us the necessary headroom for further processing.

Radio Ready.
Forget the term "Radiomix" ! This word should not exist. Radio is the great leveler.
Tests have shown that different degrees of compression on the same title makes hardly any difference to the loudness on the radio, they all sound equally loud. Hyper-compressed CD's even sound less loud and start to distort after passing through the Orban radio processors.