About cd mastering, its format and why it is necessary to us album mastering services to prepare your music for duplication. Learn what you will need to supply before getting your album pressed. The CD is an optical data storage medium. The Compact Disc has been available since 1982. It was developed to store and playback audio recordings.
Audio Engineers used to create a glass master while an album was mastered in the studio. The glass master was used as a template for the cd pressing similar as used by vinyl mastering. Today a template will be cut by the duplicator.
Now during the process an audio engineer is preparing an album for the duplication compliant after the red book standard.
Either a Red Book CDR or the digital version called DDP will be created which will then be used by the pressing plant for replication. This is the next step after the actual audio master and is very crucial for the the play back quality.
What is a Red-Book-CDR? A Red-Book is a special formatted CDR. It is used by the duplication company in order to press cds.
They include mastered stereo audio files in 16 Bit and 44,1 kHz. Each song must have a minimum length of 4 seconds. A gap of min 2 seconds between each song is needed. Otherwise playback errors will occur.
A DDP file is the digital and more secure version. This can also be booked to remastering and many other of our audio services.
In order for cd-players being able to play back correctly, formatted cd’s are very important. Authoring is crucial here to set the start and ending points of each song on the cd as well as spacing and more.
If they aren’t correctly formatted after this standard several problems can occur.
The red-book-standard is necessary in order to achieve the same play back quality through all players. Use our contact form to book a session for a cd release.
This process should only be done by a professional engineer to ensure all is error free. Otherwise you could face a faulty pressing.
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The International Standard Recording Code is a 12 digit standard code used to identify audio recordings, song mixes in the mixing studio and music video recordings. It can be added during the cd mastering process along with cd text. It identifies a particular recording. That means that each version of a song for example a remix or instrumental version needs their own code.
The EAN is a barcode (UPC in the USA). Known as the European Article Number (now renamed to International Article Number) is a 13 digit barcoding standard used to identify a product or article. It is also used in to identify the whole album as a product. The EAN code can as well be obtained at the for your country specific agency.