Mark Dann Recording   Music Production Recording - Mixing Mastering - Restoration    New York City & Woodstock, NY (212) 941-7771   Home   MUSIC PRODUCTION RECORDING & MIXING -Studio Overview - - Equipment List - - Vinyl Record & Analog Tape Restoration - - Home Studio Services -   MASTERING FOR CD & VINYL   - Mastering Overview - - Analog Mastering For CD - - Mix Submission Guidelines - - Pre-Mastering Listening Test - - Web-Enhanced CDs - - Artist & Client List -  - Mixing Tips - - Audio Samples -    Photos - NYC Photos - Woodstock   email the studio! if the mail link above does not work: Mark107 - at - aol.com

Mark Dann Recording Mastering and Recording Studio (212) 941-7771 - NYC USA -  email: Mark107 at aol.com MASTERING OVERVIEW Mastering is the process of taking one or more final mixes, and turning them into a truly finished sounding product. If you were merely to transfer your song(s) directly onto a CD without going through the mastering process, and then directly compare it to your CDs at home, you would most likely be shocked at how "unfinished" it really sounds. The ONE-DOLLAR-TEST, described later on this page, will prove this to you by direct example. Keep reading...  I also believe that mastering is the process of helping finalize the artist's vision of how the CD should end up sounding. After all, it's YOUR music! So I encourage my clients to bring in a few CDs from their home collection that they like, thereby serving as a "direction" to head towards. In this way, mastering can help to further the artist's original vision. Mastering is as much an art as a science.   Mastering is also the process in which all of your final mixes are assembled onto a Master PMCD (a "Red Book Standard" disc), which CD manufacturers will accept for mass duplication. Shorter runs can be done right here in house.   Mastering is serious business. A properly mastered CD means you have gotten the absolute maximum potential out of your recording project, and hopefully it will now compare favorably with the best sounding CDs in your collection (as well as other people's collections!). Anything less than that means you have wasted a lot of money. And I don't mean just in the mastering process, but the ENTIRE recording process that led up to it.   You wouldn't buy a car without test driving it. So I offer:   THE ONE DOLLAR TEST You bring to me (or mail / FedEx / messenger, etc...) a CD or DAT of a song that you are considering mastering, as well a really great sounding CD from your home collection. The CD should be somewhat representative of the style of your music, of course. I will use the song from your (reference) CD as a model.   I will then give you a CD that has the following three items on it:   1- Your song, digitally transferred, exactly as it was on the CD or DAT tape (unchanged). 2- The song that you have chosen from the CD, also digitally transferred (also unchanged). 3- A short excerpt of your song, mastered, so that you can judge for yourself the quality of my work, and specifically what I can do for you and your project.   You pay a mere ONE DOLLAR for this.   Having your song on a CD will enable you to do direct comparisons with all of your CDs at home. This will probably be the first time you have been able to really compare what you actually have, your "final" mix, against major-release CDs. You may be in for a shock.   What you will probably find is that the CDs from your record collection sound louder, brighter, and fuller than yours. Better. Maybe MUCH better. Maybe in ways that you can't even describe. This might normally be a very depressing moment! The third track, the mastered excerpt, will put your worst fears to rest.   Of course not everybody's mixes have the potential to sound as good as the best sounding CDs you own. (Although some certainly do!). But I will say that in most cases, mastering will get you most of the way there from where the unmastered tape was before mastering. I base this statement from having worked on hundreds of records over the past twenty years.   If you would like to see this for yourself, feel free to email me for the ONE DOLLAR TEST.   _________________________________________________________   WHO AM I?, ... and WHY WOULD YOU WANT ME TO MASTER YOUR PROJECT? All mastering work is done by myself, Mark Dann. There are no interns here! In addition to being a mastering engineer with twenty-plus years of experience, I am also a conservatory-trained musician (Manhattan School of Music & Mannes College of Music), so I bring both a technical understanding as well as a varied musical background to the projects I work on.   I have mastered hundreds of records, including works by and for major artists and record companies. I have been involved full time in the recording business for over twenty-five years. (Check some of my credits, click here.) So I come to this with many years of experience.   I have evolved a process for mastering which is very efficient in both time and expense, and which also allows for maximum artistic input from the artist.   If you are ready to master, read on...   _________________________________________________________   GETTING STARTED WITH THE MASTERING PROCESS Most projects are delivered on CD, although I can accept almost any tape format you can imagine, i.e.: DAT 1/2" half-track analog tape at 30, 15, or 7.5 ips 1/4" half-track analog tape at 30, 15, or 7.5 ips 1/4" quarter-track analog tape at 15, or 7.5 ips audio cassette minidisc PCM-encoded Beta or VHS Pro Tools files, or any other "similar" disk-based medium   Many clients are now working in computer-based formats, i.e., Pro Tools, etc. Whenever possible, it is preferable to deliver the mixes in that format, at 24-bit, than to use regular audio CDs. In most cases, this will yield a better sounding CD in the end. BIG ALERT: These days I am receiving a lot of mixes that are WAY TOO HOT! By that, I mean the levels are already pumped up. In terms of mastering, this is a very bad thing. These mixes may be more fun to listen to at home, but in terms of mastering, they are a virtual time bomb. Any mix that has been cut with levels "hitting the top" (peak limited and/or overly compressed) will DISTORT when more work is done on them. Let me repeat that: Even though these mixes may not seem distorted prior to mastering, further post production work (i.e., mastering) will yield distorted peaks. I see this problem turning up in clients' mixes more and more. How to avoid this? -DO NOT run the mix levels hotter than -3dB -DO NOT use a peak limiter on the mix bus (master module/master fader) on any mix destined for mastering. -if you use compression on the mix bus, go easy on it, or better yet, do not use it at all. These tips will go a long way towards having a clean sounding, loud, yet UNDISTORTED CD.   The way I work: -I like to start the mastering process with a Pre-Mastering Listening Test. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is so that I can get inside your head (so to speak) and get an idea what kind of sound you like (how bright, how compressed, amount of low-end eq, etc.). This enables me to create a master that will be more in tune with your taste in CDs. Another reason is to see if there are any mix issues that should be dealt with, as compared to other CDs that you have already decided that you like and think sound good. This session may take half an hour or more. By the end of it, we should all be pretty comfortable with the direction to take, hopefully closing the gap between your mixes and the sound of your favorite CDs. -Some projects I receive may sound too "digital", so I often copy them to 1/2" analog tape, which often makes a night-and-day improvment in the sound. Read more about that here: Analog Mastering For CD -After several hours of hard work, all of the songs should now sound pretty good, and a reference CD will be made, which can be taken home and scrutinized. -After listening to the reference CD for a few days, you will probably have a list of adjustments you would like (i.e.: adjustments of spacing between songs, eq and level comments, etc.). -The next step is to work off of your input (i.e., make song #2 louder, more space between songs 4 & 5, etc...), and then in turn make another CD to take home. These changes tend to be small, and use very little time. ----We repeat this process until we are sure that it is as perfect as it can be. -When the CD is deemed final, a PMCD disc is cut, which will be used to manufacture from. A Timing Sheet (PQ codes, etc.) will accompany this disc. The CDs that are manufactured will be EXACTLY like the one you took home and okayed. Alternately, I can do short runs of CDs here in-house.   THE DISC ITSELF (some tech info) I can make both PMCD (a RED-BOOK-STANDARD master for mass duplication), as well as standard CDRs (reference CD), from your DAT or other media. The PMCD is a disc that is ready for glass master production, containing all of the proper subcode information. A reference CD is useful as a test disc or "one-off", and offer an appealing alternative to cassettes for publishing demos and similar projects. Below is a more detailed description of the differences between a reference and PMCD.   NOT ALL CDs ARE PMCD! There are many inexpensive systems capable of producing CDs that will play in your home system, however just because a disc will play at home does not mean it has error rates that are within acceptable limits for glass master production. This is due to the fact that CD players have error correction built in. A duplicator will be unable to produce a glass master directly from a CD-R that is not up to PMCD spec. If they receive such a CD they have two options: either to ask for a correct PMCD, or to perform an analog transfer of the CD to a Sony 1630 machine. Unfortunately both of these options cost you time and money. In order to produce a PMCD the laser in the CD recorder must not turn off between songs. That means no interruptions are permitted. The recorder and software must also support "disk-at-once" mode, which means the laser turns on and stays on from the beginning of a disc to the end. Some CD recorders and software packages do not support disk-at-once mode, utilizing instead a mode known as track-at-once. As you might guess, track-at-once mode is not acceptable to produce a PMCD. This is due to the fact that the areas on the CD where the laser shuts off will be seen as errors.   OTHER RELATED SERVICES   IN-HOUSE CD COPIES We can do small runs of CDs. They can be used for radio promotion, selling at gigs, impressing your friends, you name it. They come in standard jewel boxes, and can have simple text labels, or full-color photos printed right onto the CDs themselves! If you need short runs of CDs that look and sound like commercially released product, call...   THE COMING DVD REVOLUTION, AND HOW IT RELATES TO YOUR CURRENT PROJECT Did you know that the CD as we know it is already on it's way out? Just as CDs have replaced cassette tapes as the preferred way to deliver music to the masses, DVD has already done that in the world of consumer video. Most newer computer systems also read DVD discs. The same thing is going to happen to audio CDs over the next few years. The reason for all of this is because a DVD disc can hold as much as eight times more information than a standard CD disc can. Think of the possibilites: more music, video clips, photos, web links, etc.   What this means for music, is that now it will be possible to deliver 24-bit audio to the people. 16-bit audio has been the standard since the early eighties, and technology has come a long way since then! 16-bit audio is why many purists and audiophiles have been screaming for years about how bad digital audio sounds (to them). No doubt you have met some of these people. Perhaps you are one yourself. 24-bit audio goes a long way to resolving this dilemma. Higher resolution digital audio has been available in recording studios for several years now. Even most consumer-oriented recording systems offer "higher then 16-bit" options. But, no matter how great sounding these higher-resolution projects sound in the studio, they have all needed to be "crushed" down to 16-bit, in order to deliver it to the people, on CDs. Those days are numbered though, and that's a good thing!   All mastering here is done at 24-bit. All finished mastering projects are saved and archived. So.... in a few years, you will be able to "re-release" your project at 24-bit as a 24-bit DVD, and you will be able to reclaim the sonic glory that was sacrificed in the making of a standard, redbook-format, CD.     Questions? click to EMAIL