If a label asks u for -3dB tracks?

sauce · Post by **sauce** » Thu Sep 27, 2007 10:36 pm

I'm with Torque on this one.

It doesn't matter if your final, stereo track is over compressed or not compressed at all.. When the mastering guy gets your stereo tracks (hopefully un-compressed) he can simply simply bring down the gain to achieve all the headroom he needs. The -.3db general rule is indeed to stop the stop the track from sounding shitty on certain systems, mostly where the manufacturer has implimented some sort of "enhancement" in the player that can push your levels above peak.

In your case, it sounds like the label (unwisely) is leaving mastering all up to you. They want you to leave the track at -.3db so theycan use it as-is. If it were a mastering issue they would have said not to compress or excite, and would have said nothing at all about overall gain.

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:58 am

sauce wrote: In your case, it sounds like the label (unwisely) is leaving mastering all up to you. They want you to leave the track at -.3db so theycan use it as-is. If it were a mastering issue they would have said not to compress or excite, and would have said nothing at all about overall gain.

I wouldn't think that's the reason. They probably want it at -.3 db so when they play the cd on a cd player to go through the eqs, mastering compressors and finally the amp that drives the cutting head on the lathe they make sure that the sound comes through without clipping on the cd deck. They want the level high like that on the cd so they can cut down on signal to noise ratio. They probably are more used to people giving them things done with hardware that can get noise from cables and whatnot. It's an extremely common request.

NULL · Post by **NULL** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 1:49 pm

Personally we like to master the tracks in our own studios, once the track has been approved it's sent to us where the final mastering is done before the cut.

wtf · Post by **wtf** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 7:15 pm

the request that started this post has absolutely nothing to do with cd players.
where did all this talk of cd players skipping come from? They don't play cds into the mastering equipment when mastering audio. why would they do that? It makes no sense.

mlexicon · Post by **mlexicon** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:39 pm

oh boy

wtf · Post by **wtf** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:57 pm

I wasn't trying to be rude and hopefully no one anything I said badly. This forum is for people to discuss production techniques and try to learn. I saw someone saying something *very* misleading and I felt the need to correct him. I was only trying to help.
If anyone is curious about the specific points made here, go ask a mastering engineer. Don't put too much faith in any one person's opinions on web forums, including mine. I just couldn't let that first point linger without mentioning that it's completely wrong. It gives the wrong idea to people trying to learn this stuff.

Torque · Post by **Torque** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 8:23 pm

wtf wrote:I wasn't trying to be rude and hopefully no one anything I said badly. This forum is for people to discuss production techniques and try to learn. I saw someone saying something *very* misleading and I felt the need to correct him. I was only trying to help.
If anyone is curious about the specific points made here, go ask a mastering engineer. Don't put too much faith in any one person's opinions on web forums, including mine. I just couldn't let that first point linger without mentioning that it's completely wrong. It gives the wrong idea to people trying to learn this stuff.

I am an engineer. What makes you think they don't play cd's through mastering equipment to cut plates for vinyl? Most of the people who cut vinyl have no interest in using computers to do it. Most of them either want cd's or DAT tapes.
So for the last time this is how it works:

Your mastering engineer wants a cd with the audio on it so he can master it and do his job. You are going to want the mixdown to be loud so you can cut down on signal to noise ratio in the mix therefor making it sound clearer. However since most cd players have a flaw due to cheap parts or whatever this causes them to not always start clipping at 0db sometimes they clip from 0db to -.3db so in order to make sure the mastering technician get's some audio that is the clearest possible with the least clipping possible you give him a cd with some headroom of -.3db so he doesn't have to worry about it clipping inside the cd player before the signal comes out the player and into the mastering equipment.

I don't know why some of you have a hard time believing this. This is such old news. They found all this out in the 80's. If your mastering tech is giving you these instructions it's because he is expecting you to give him the production master on a cd. If you're sending the production master to him as a .wav file or something the same rule does not apply, but most people still hand the mastering tech their music on a cd to master from.

jessejames · Post by **jessejames** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 11:10 pm

Torque, is it commonplace for digital labels to not do their own mastering? Does mastering pretty much only go hand-in-hand with vinyl releases?