CD packages and mastering?

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pathdoc

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I have a nice 4 song recording for a young local band who want to order about 1000 CD's. I wanted to send the songs off for proper mastering but the band insists the place printing up the CD's will handle it. Does that sound right to you guys? Seems to me we should have them properly mastered and then sent to the CD print company.
 
disc

Try Disc Makers, they also can master it for you as well, but for a price?????
 
Mastering is really the process of making the glass master ready for pressing im sure.
But these days mastering means getting the mixes ready for burning to CD (or whatever format) to get pressed.

Eck
 
i'd say, let them try to master it with the option of not using their mastering version if you don't like it, and maybe if you don't like it, they won't charge or they'll give you a break if you decide to not go with it.

but definitely listen to it first, and get other opinions and listen inthe car, mp3 compress it, different stereos, your monitors, etc.

if they don't let you do that and wait for your 'ok' then i wouldn't use them.
 
pathdoc said:
Seems to me we should have them properly mastered and then sent to the CD print company.
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Absolutely.
 
I have heard masters come out of those places that are downright awful. If they have the place do it; at least warn them about digital overs.
 
I wouldn't do discmakers, or oasis or anything. Do somewhere local-ish if you can. That way if something goes wrong, you are not just some serial number to the manufacturures, but a person. I had to get my inserts re-printed, and if I chose discmakers I never would have been able to do that easily. Get the manufacturing done somewhere where you can actually talk to the people.
 
I've seen a lot of CD pressing companies also offer mastering services but have never heard the results. Probably depends on how much they're looking to spend. $1000 CDs will be somewhere in the $1500-2000 range depending on where you go and how much packaging you're looking at having. Maybe less, I'm going off of Digipack prices. Some places offer package deals ($1000 or so to 'master' the CD before pressing - maybe $500 for a 4 song), or an hourly rate for work. If you haven't done anything to the recordings other than mixed them, chances are the $1000 offer will make the CD sound better than if you did nothing. It won't sound as good as if you went to most professional mastering houses, but I'd expect you'd be paying a lot more for it. Depends if they're planning just to use it as a demo or if they really want it to sound 100% professional. You can't seel a 4 song demo for very much so you may not want to spend 10k in production and printing cost at this stage. Most places should do one song for free to let you hear what they can do. You can ruin a fine mix by 'mastering' it wrong so you really need to hear their work on your music first. They may be really good at doing a certain style of music but have no idea how to deal with a diferent genre. Something to look out for. To them matering may mean slamming the whole mix up to 0db so it sounds really loud, and like absolute garbage.
 
I used a local place to replicate that had a mastering facility on site.
I had to go back four times at $90.00 an hour and it still sucked.
I don't confuse the facility with the engineer though. The man behind the controls was to blame. The recordings where not the best. They where from a studio, but a cheaper one. I got much better results years later doing it at home and that's no according to me.

All this is pointless though because depends on who is doing it. They may have two people working out of there. One great and one not so great.

I'd listen to some completed projects before I threw down any money and make sure you are getting the same engineer not just the same equipment.

With a "pretty good" but not great recording the mastering can make a huge difference either positive or negative. Well I guess with any recording that is true.

Make sure you play the mastered version on many systems for a few days before you send it off for reproduction.

There is really no way around premastering unless you have the ability to do pq editing and print instrutions out for the reproduction facility etc.


F.S.
 
any place you send a disc to get mastered will alter it in some way.. some for the better some for the worse.. the best way IMO is to send it somewhere that you know of ther results... also try local studios... most producers there would be more than happy to critique your work for a small fee
 
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