CD PRE-MASTERING

Terminology: Mastering / Pre-Mastering
Mastering : Cutting of Vinyl Master Lacquer or CD Glass Master
Pre-Mastering : Preparing the Original Studio Master for the next medium: Vinyl pressing, CD, Compact cassette or streaming media.

Why do you need Pre-mastering ?
PRE-MASTERING is the moment for putting the final polish onto an album or single. The last opportunity to make sure that everything fits together seamlessly and that the sound does not vary from track to track. The secret of successful mastering is all in the blend. You need a large measure of skilful engineer, a subtle blend of traditional and state-of-the-art equipment and a sizeable dash of well balanced acoustics.

Usually each track is mixed in isolation. Rarely do you have the luxury to compare tracks as you mix. Some are mixed at 2 o'clock in the morning, when your ears are fatigued, and some at 12 noon, when your ears are fresh, resulting in differences between your tracks.
Many projects are mixed in less than ideal circumstances, inadequate monitors, uncontrolled acoustics. Many clients hear details on our full range monitors they did never hear before !
When the tracks are assembled into the correct running order, you may probably find that they do not sound like an album: Some tracks will jump out, others will be to weak, some may be to bright, others to weak in the bass.

Pre-mastering should not be performed in the same studio as the recording or with the same engineer who recorded the work.
Take advantage of the trained ear of the mastering engineer, a lot of albums of different styles have passed through his mastering room over many years. He has the expertise and the specialized gear that is not available in most studios, he is the perfect person to make the final artistic and technical decision with you on your precious project .

What happens in the Pre-mastering room ?
First we will load your tracks into our mastering DAW in the correct running order.
Then we will listen to your tracks very carefully and decide wether some or all of the tracks need any treatment, analog or digital, always with respect for your music.
Sometimes we will do nothing, good things should not be touched - good is good, sometimes we will advice you that it would be better to go back to your studio and remix.
We will equalize the songs to make them brighter or darker, tweak the stereo width or depth, adjust levels between songs, put in the correct pauses between the songs or cross fade them where you prefer, fine-tune the fade-ins and fade-outs.
We will only compress or limit where necessary, trying to keep as much of the dynamics and life in your music as possible.
We will polish your tracks and make your songs into an album.
After PQ coding we will burn you a CDR, so you can listen to it on your own system, and make the final changes before making a master in DDP format on CD-ROM for the pressing plant.

How long does it take ?
Pre-mastering a full CD (+/- 65 min) will take between 3 and 10 hours.
Masters in DDP format on CD-ROM are always delivered with one or more CD-R listening copies.
We can work from different formats: DAT, PCM1630 U-matic, SONY F1 Beta or VHS, CD-R., CD-Rom with your soundfiles in 16 to 24 bit - 44.1, 48, 88.2 or 96kHz, wav, aiff, SDII, stereo interleaved (do not send us quicktime- or mp3- files), analog 1/4 or 1/2 inch IEC, NAB or AES with or without Dolby A, Dolby SR or DBX II.