And then ? The final step

[metalkingdom]

Hey Metalkingdom

Who's this then???

LOL!!! You scared the crap outta me when I saw that! You're a funny dude, Andy. Damn you, JM!!!

 

[metalkingdom]

Look, what I'm saying is, although Apogee, TDK, Ritek whatever have superiour dyes etc, between the half decent/good ones, you have no way of knowing which ones work best with your particular drive unless you can do an error check or check with the manufacturer of your drive. And then you've got the issue of what drive they are reading from at the plant, how are you going to know that??
...if youre really paranoid about the media, send 2, one on apogee, one on something else.

Point well taken, good solution as well.

 

[James Murphy]

hey anyone know if there's any software for mac OSX that will check error rate of a disc??

i don't know about software, but i have all the specs and ordering info on a 2U rack hardware unit that apparently is in all the major mastering houses...it's primary function is to check bler rate and it's not too terribly expensive either..a couple grand i think at most... anyway, i'm still in LA doing demos with Dino Cazares and Roy Miorga for the Roadrunner All-Stars project. i'll forward all the info as soon as i get home... Feb. 1st

 

[SPLASTiK]

3. burn only at 1x speed

That's interesting a Mastering Plant told you that. All the ones I've read tlaking about burning speeds have said burning at 2x significantly reduces the amount of BLER (Block Error Rate) in comparison to 1x. Some data i've viewed have reduced errors in half when burning at 2x instead of 1x but when burning at 4x the rate more than doubles in many cases.

Red Book standard can have no more than 220, though most mastering houses will probably want a lower amount of BLER.
With a good burner/media you should have no problems getting less than 50. Taiyo Yuden are great quality and easily obtainable and for not too much more than your run of the milll discs.
Keep the media Japanese, Taiwan discs aren't nearly as good.

And someone mentioned EAC as a way to view errors, I don't think EAC doesn't show BLER amount. You can have a perfectly listenable disc made through EAC that could still fail in mastering. All discs will be expected to have a few BLERs.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

I wouldn't MAKE a disc with EAC if my life depended on it!

But it is the best program for ripping data off of cd's by a long , long way. (For PC's at least)

 

[James Murphy]

That's interesting a Mastering Plant told you that. All the ones I've read tlaking about burning speeds have said burning at 2x significantly reduces the amount of BLER (Block Error Rate) in comparison to 1x. Some data i've viewed have reduced errors in half when burning at 2x instead of 1x but when burning at 4x the rate more than doubles in many cases.Red Book standard can have no more than 220, though most mastering houses will probably want a lower amount of BLER.
With a good burner/media you should have no problems getting less than 50. Taiyo Yuden are great quality and easily obtainable and for not too much more than your run of the milll discs.
Keep the media Japanese, Taiwan discs aren't nearly as good. And someone mentioned EAC as a way to view errors, I don't think EAC doesn't show BLER amount. You can have a perfectly listenable disc made through EAC that could still fail in mastering. All discs will be expected to have a few BLERs.

interesting indeed... this manufacturing plant manufactures a large percentage of Century Media, Nuclear Blast, and Olympic records CD's as well as many major labels and i spoke to a guy who was a head engineer in that plant.. and he was very emphatic about burning at 1x speed. i know what bler means, excuse my earlier typo.. i often type i's or u's instead of e's and vice versa. i'm also fully aware of the red book standard specifications in regards to bler rate. i have been burning at 1x speed for years now (my first mastering job was in 1996) and have only had one failure which i believe to have caused by my use of a cheaper quality CDr... i burned again, also at 1x speed onto an Apogee disc and that new master passed the bler rate test and was accepted, but i already mentioned that. i'm sure 2x or even 4x can pass given compatible media in an appropriate drive, but i have had an exremely high success rate using 1x speed, so i'll be sticking with that method.

it basically boils down to your burner/software combination though.. cd burners work by burning the dye in the CDr... at too fast of a speed the laser on some burners can't complete the burn on the "pit" (pits and lands make up the 1's and 0's) and on some burners slower speeds can "over-burn" the pit.. you may have a burner that underburns at 2x and is perfect at 1x, or you may have a burner that is perfect at 2x and overburns at 1x.... as Andy was saying before, it's impossible to say what is perfect for everyone because of the "burner" variable. software is a factor too as it is what controls the laser. needless to say, underburning and overburning of each pit can each cause errors.

in my case, 1x has been perfect.

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

I burnt a CD at 42x the other day and it came out fine. *shrug*

Edit: and its probably in your mailbox haha

Edit no. 2: Not that I'd EVER do that with a master, i was kidding!

 

[James Murphy]

I burnt a CD at 42x the other day and it came out fine. *shrug* Edit: and its probably in your mailbox haha

i'm not even going to address that

kidding eh?... you're a funny guy Hop

 

[Hopkins-WitchfinderGeneral]

Now now, no need to get excited.

I'm just being my usual jackass self.

 

[black sugar]

A few years ago, I "mastered" a demo/ep thingy for my band, and I burned the final using the Vari-Rec feature of my Plextor drive (on the max setting):

http://www.plextor.com/english/support/faqs/G00009.htm

You can access that feature in the Advanced controls of the final pre-burn menu in EZ CD Creator, for example, and just by turning on Vari-Rec EZ CD Creator will not allow you to burn faster than 4x.

ANYWAY... The guy at the duplication plant was actually impressed and said it was one of the cleanest burns he had ever seen when he did the BLER check. Too bad it sounded like balls.

A few other things to keep in mind, some more obvious than others:

Don't touch the bottom surface! (duh). Don't even pop the thing into your CD player to check it -- especially in your car -- no freakin' Taco Bell residue on your final master, ok? Right. Just take it out of the burner and put it in the jewel case.

Paranoia rules, so burn a backup copy for the dupe plant (don't listen yet), then burn ANOTHER backup copy for your reference. Ok, you can listen to that one now.

If you subscribe to the high-end CDR theory, try Mitsui Gold (do a Google search). FWIW, the "clean burn" scenario I described above was on a TDK "professional" (BS) something or other I got at Best Buy.


So, um... Andy, James, (or anyone else) if you're (still) reading this mess that is my post, what do you guys do in terms of Red Book "compliance" when you prepare your final master? Also, related to that, do you find that the glass mastering process at the dupe plant changes the tonality of your master and, if so, do you adjust accordingly in advance?

Thanks, everyone, for your input in this thread...


Bryan


edit: I forgot one of the main reasons why I decided to start this post...

Since there's pretty much an infestation of cheap, short run duplication houses these days, some of them obviously have lower quality standards than others in the race to give you the cheapest 1000 cd's humanly possible. I've heard/read horror stories about places NOT doing BLER checks or just printing error-laden CD's anyway.

Do your homework and DON'T CHEAP OUT. Off the top of my ass, I could recommend Oasis and Disc Makers for starters (in the US, anyway).

 

[Kenny Lee]

We had are stuff mastered once at a Mastering house.When the ME went to burn me a Master he had the SAME taio yudens I had in my bag. Mine were BRAND NEW still wrapped. He didn't want to put them in his machine and charged me $15.00 a burnt Master C.D. of the EXACT type and brand and wrapper C.D.'s! But, yeah it depends on your CD burner and what it likes to munch on. I have two CD burners, one burns great on Taio yudens. The other burns great on verbatims.

 

[metalkingdom]

Check this out. This kinda consolidates what we're all saying here.

http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?CategoryID=28&ArticleID=5185

 

[egan.]

Check this out. This kinda consolidates what we're all saying here.

http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?CategoryID=28&ArticleID=5185

Good article. It reminds me of this thing I saw on tv a while back where they showed a CD spun at a steady 52x in slow motion and you could actually see the disc flex up to an 1/8th of an inch. Granted they probably chose the floppiest media possible but it was pretty eye-opening about the limitations of speed and media.