Yet another naive mastering question

[cracker]

Let's say somewhere down the line I record and mix a project and actually have the $ to take it to a mastering house. Assuming I'm recording to tape, what format should the mixdown be done TO? What medium are mastering houses gonna want? Am I being overly simplistic?

[No Wave Casio Kitsch]

It varies from facility to facility so if you have a particular place in mind I'd give them a call or check their website for their prefered format(s). I imagine most places will take "1/4, "1/2, CD, DAT, and probably a few other formats too.

-Giahni

[G-Rat]

Just to add to the question, what format if recorded digitally? .wav files? aiff?

[cracker]

So, mixing down to a cd is acceptable practice?

[Electricide]

well, if you have the ability to make a data file of your mix, like .wav, then you can keep your session at the highest resolution possible, like 24/96. They'll also take an audio CD if that's all you can do. But any decent mastering house can take wav aiff, masterlink, etc.

[I'm Painting Again]

depends what formats you have and they have right?

I would opt for .25" or .5" if you have it..

cd-r isnt the best way to do this but if its what you got its what you got..you got a computer, send them the original files or session if they have the ability to work from that..

[cassembler]

Most mastering houses these days only accept a freshly cut wax cyllinder. But burning 24 bit wave files, saved as a data CD should work well for most places. You need too ask the mastering house.

[Cellotron]

If you don't have access to a good 1/2" or 1/4" analog 2-track deck (or if it is something like chamber music that imho doesn't benefit from mixing to tape) then usually the best thing for mastering houses is to receive a data disc containing your files at the highest resolution that you have recorded at (i.e. if it's a digital recording that you tracked at 24bit/44.1kHz give them that - if it's 24bit/96kHz give them that). I always ask what the mastering studios preferred format is as - i.e. studios with Sonic HD prefer aiff files split into L & R mono, I'm using the SAWStudio workstation so I prefer interleaved stereo wav files. Not all mastering studios have a Masterlink - but I'd say nearly all can deal with data CD-R, DVD-R, & 16bit DAT.

The reason to avoid audio CD's (digital audio on CD-R) is because it is already at the lower 16bit/44.1kHz (cancelling out the fact that the mastering house most likely would have been able to retain more of the image and smoothness on the fades and reverb tails when changing bit depth that you would), it increases the transfer time - and it is not an "error free" format in that when read by the laser there is usually always some minor form of error correction going on - where as data CD-R's can be verified for correctness and the transfer to their editing DAW's goes much quicker.

My suggestion is to leave anything but subtle peak limiting & compression off the 2 buss and don't normalize the files as these things will be usually better accomplished by the mastering engineer.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[cgarges]

A good mastering house can take anything. Except that Abbey Road for some reason gets confused by 24-bit CDR AIFFs. But hey, at least they've got 24-bit DAT. That's real useful.

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[audiogeek1]

As far as tape goes it definitely glues the project together but can be difficult to deal with sending to a matering engineer. You need to make sure you have multiple reference tones, speed of tape listed, Biasing information, noise reduction method, and track list hopefully with leader tape between songs.

Last project I did I mixed it to a 1/2" ampex atr 102 and then sent that to a masterlink at 24/96. Those files are the ones that were sent to the mastering house on cd 24 aif. The band could not tell the difference between the 2.

Definitely check with the mastering house as far as options of files go.

Mike