Need advice from CD mastering people

Enoch wrote on 1/27/2004, 6:57 PM

I just bought CD Architect and I'm wondering if those of you who use this product to master your own music to CD, use the direct x plug-ins that come with the program, or do you find them inadequate for compressing, limiting and equalizing your project? If you do find them lacking, what other products do you use before formatting in Architect?

Enoch

Back to post

Comments

farss wrote on 2/13/2004, 2:16 PM

Project was to convert 24 43 min programs (spoken word mostly) to mp3 and CD masters. Material supplied on DAT tapes.

1) Using Vegas capture from DAT via light pipe.
2 Use Vegas to split 43 min programs into tracks according to supplied cue lists
3) Use SF7 to derive max peak value, use nearest 3 dB increment to set gain in Vegas leaving at least 2dB headroom. Also apply top and bottom rolloff in Vegas to remove any nasties and some of the tape hiss. I figured this wasn't going to help the mp3 encode.
4) Encode each track to mp3 and render as separate .wav at 16/44.1
5) Use CDA 5 to assemble tracks, burn proof copy at 16x and master copy at 4x. Run Plextools Pro to check no C2 errors on master.
6) Include cue sheet from CDA and printout from Plextools with master CD.

Damn job is nearly finished, its been pretty boring. Interesting results from Plextools, differences found in number of C1 errors between CDRs. The Gold Masters give very low C1 errors, the cheaper dub stock give around double the number of errors but still no C2 errors. Had one master with a burst of C2 errors in one spot, went into rubbish bin. Burn speed deosn't seem to make any difference though.

Doing this I know probably isn't what would be considered 'mastering' as the content was already determined by the clients people. Oh and yes I did a few checks with SF7 and there was no DC offset in the material.

And lastly thanks to all here for the advice, particularly Red, hope I've interpreted it correctly, guess I'll know soon enough.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 2/14/2004, 6:37 PM

"You're in such denial. You say CDA is "Far" more appropriate to do mastering than Sound Forge. I think I've proven you wrong and explained the basic mastering NECESSITIES that are needed and are included in Sound Forge and not CD architect. The most important one aside from spectral analysis and DC offset, is a VU meter "

DC offset removal in SF before you start. Waves PAZ Analyser, but I suppose a RMS meter is not close enough to VU for you - but a cassette deck VU meter is.

" still mix to DAT tape. How do you get this into CD Architect to master?"

SPDIF transfer into SF. Save.

I'm not using an external multiband compressor, so your analogy doesn't hold, unless you are now claiming that an external hardware unit is necessary for "true mastering".

There are many levels of mastering, and I find CDA just fine for the level I am at. I accept that it may not suit experts such as yourself. CDA could (and should) easily have the missing bits you want, as well as direct recording (at least to facilitate digital xfers).

geoff

Rednroll wrote on 2/14/2004, 8:02 PM

Geoff,
I feel like at this point you are disagreeing with me, just for the sake of disagreeing. Basically, you're saying the same thing I am. Before you disagreed with me in the Sound Forge forums, when I said what Sound Forge needs is a CD architect feature like it was in the past, where CD architect came up directly within Sound Forge. So what you're now saying is that CD Architect needs all the Sound Forge features. LOL!!! Now what's the difference? It seems more logical to me to add CD architecture features to Sound Forge, where I could assemble CD tracks and burn a Disc-at-once CD within Sound Forge, and is what a lot of users seem to be mad that they can't currently do within Sound Forge. Fine, have it your way, let's add all the Sound Forge features to CD Architect, that will make me happy too, then we can just disagree on what it's going to be called.

Another point I'ld like to make is that I can see the support on CD Architect is minimal right now. For example, I recently installed the latest CD architect update. I only have SF7 installed on this system. CD architect did not recognize that Sound Forge 7 was installed on my system, but the update was released well after SF7's release. Ok, easily enough, I can go into the preferences and tell CDA to use SF7 as the default editor. Now when I go into CDA and do a "open in sound Forge", and the file opens in Sound Forge, within Sound Forge the screen will get messed up, where I can hardly read either the meters or the time display that I have docked on the top of Sound Forge. Hmmmmm....so much for perfect integration between apps.

I'm not disagreeing with you, that if you're mastering with CDA and that works for you, then fine. The thing I disagree about is that you think CDA is far more supperior than Sound Forge for mastering. The thing I find ironic is that you have both CDA and Sound Forge and choose to do your mastering within CDA. Why are you limiting yourself, when there are key features within Sound Forge for mastering that are not in CDA?

Geoff_Wood wrote on 2/18/2004, 2:27 AM

I actually agree with you either way !

If CDA5 features integrated into SF(8?), I would prefer a dedicated 'view'. But to carry it to an extreme, why not roll Vegas into the package as well ?

Yes, the lack of CDA support is lamentable. After all, Sony (and Philips) did *invent* CD !

geoff

Rednroll wrote on 2/18/2004, 3:12 PM

"But to carry it to an extreme, why not roll Vegas into the package as well?"

LOL!!!! I can't believe that came from you Geoff. You're one of the people that say you like the simplicity of the interface of CD Architect rather than doing this type of work in Vegas. So how would you throw it all together and keep the UI simplified. I think that's already worked out for me with just using Sound Forge and Vegas. I just think Vegas needs a few feature tweaks that went into CDA and didn't go into Vegas for CD assembly.

Geoff_Wood wrote on 2/18/2004, 9:44 PM

Red sed "LOL!!!! I can't believe that came from you Geoff."

That's why I called it an 'extreme'.

Actually I don't care about the app-count. What I care about is the UI - nothing superflous to the task in hand; no irreleant menus, markers, windows, mouse-functions, etc, that are likely to confuse or complicate the task in hand. So far this seems only acheived in separate apps.

WaveLab does something like this, but I find it disorientating in it's implementation. But I'm sure that's just me....

geoff

cosmo wrote on 3/18/2004, 12:29 PM

You guys are cracking me up -) Did anyone notice how easy it is to get caught up in a game of who's right and who's wrong? If I may be so bold as to suggest that isn't the point either of you really want to make(geoff and Red). You each have your own way of getting things mastered. Rednroll is far more technical in most everything he does then like 90% of us! I'm guessing geoff is closer to the opposite of the spectrum - a 'feel' player. GREAT - we've got all walks represented in this forum! Excellent! Each method to me has it's good and bad points, and readers of this thread such as myself should take away a little of everything.

As for me, I master in Wavelab. It's so similar to Soundforge though really. CD's go out from Vegas. Mastering is definately a necessary and very important part of the process. It can enhance your hard work or ruine it.