Transferring files between PCs - quality loss?

M

musicdavid

Member
Hi all

I am working in a studio where the engineer mixes from analogue tape to DAT. He will then transfer the best mix to his laptop to do the mastering/burn the final master CD.

Occasionally I will want to take away a mix (on CD) first to transfer to my home PC and do some edits (nothing more) on Cubase. I'll burn this edit to a CD and he will transfer my edit onto his laptop to then do the mastering.

With all this transferring of files and making copies on CDs, I'm concerned about loss of quality.

Are there any guidelines I should follow in terms of burning at the right quality, 16 bit, 24 bit etc.? Would it be best to copy to DAT as much as possible instead of CD?

Any help would be appreicated.

Thanks

David
 
24-bit wav files should have no loss of quality as long as you don't scratch the disk.
But if you are doing this with audio CDs, then you may have a problem.
 
tarnationsauce2 said:
24-bit wav files should have no loss of quality as long as you don't scratch the disk.
But if you are doing this with audio CDs, then you may have a problem.
Click to expand...
Why is there a problem with doing it on audio CDs (which is what I am doing)?

What should I do to preserve quality?
 
if you're converting 24->16 then 16->24 when moving, then yes... conversions will cause issues.

if you're only moving and no conversions... then no issues.

audio CDs are 16bit.

avoid conversions
 
Sonixx said:
if you're converting 24->16 then 16->24 when moving, then yes... conversions will cause issues.

if you're only moving and no conversions... then no issues.

audio CDs are 16bit.

avoid conversions
Click to expand...
I'm unsure what the BIT rates are involved in the analogue>DAT>Laptop>CD burn chain.

However, when I get the CD home, I upload it to Cubase>save whatever changes I make to a 24 bit>burn it to a CD as a 24 bit data file>opened up in the mastering software on the engineer's laptop.
 
musicdavid said:
I'm unsure what the BIT rates are involved in the analogue>DAT>Laptop>CD burn chain.

However, when I get the CD home, I upload it to Cubase>save whatever changes I make to a 24 bit>burn it to a CD as a 24 bit data file>opened up in the mastering software on the engineer's laptop.
Click to expand...
Once in the engineer's computer, just have the files output to a Data CD as 24bit or 32bit Floating-point (native file format) files starting at T=0... but he should know this and should be aware of the best way to get you the files with no conversion.
 
well how are you burning this?


is this an audio CD or a data CD? There is a difference there. It's not the best practice to burn an audio CD to give to your mastering engineer for a number of reasons.
 
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