Accountability
Posted on | November 23, 2008 | 1 Comment
This note from a client illustrates an unfortunate situation that I’ve seen happen twice now.
“We received [the album] from the manufacturer, and it sounds fantastic! The warmth, the nuances, even the silence between songs is perfect.
There is one hitch, and it’s a bummer: the Artist and Song Title data file wasn’t on the master, and so isn’t on the CD. I’d like to know how this was missed so I can watch for it in the future, and how difficult it would be to make a new master with the correct data on it for the next pressing.”
As a default, ZenMastering does full PQ encoding (CD Text, UPC, and ISRC codes if applicable) on all discs. So when I got this note I double-checked their file and saw their master was sent out fully encoded.
This happened to me once before and I had the client check with the replication plant. The replicators made a copy of my master disc (without copying the PQ information) instead of using the disc I supplied. The glass master from the copy and then was delivered to the client with no CD Text.
It goes without saying that a replication plant should use the mastering facility disc, not a copy, to create a glass master. But it’s something you should ask about just to be sure.
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From Ohm to Om reflects the opinions of mastering engineer Paul Abbott, owner of San Diego's ZenMastering.
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November 23rd, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
I had a similar problem on one of my projects. The replication house messed up the CD Text. The disc wouldn’t play on new CD players with the CD text function.
It took a while and several complaints from customers to figure out what the problem was. In the end they made a whole new batch of CDs for me but man was it a pain in the short term!
Good point to ask/confirm that they’ll go straight from your disc and not a copy!