Redbook Quality Mastering Possible?

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GaryR50

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I'm interested in either the VF-160 or the VF-80CD models and I'd like to know if it is possible to master a CD on these units to Redbook (commercial) CD quality. Are there any users out there getting this level of master out of either of these machines?

Gary
 
In terms of audio quality, the VF's both offer the highest quality, 44khz,16bit, very, very low error rate. If you were to copy a commercial CD on a VF160, then burn it onto a CDR, you would not be able to tell the difference, unless you lowered levels, etc. There are some particulars about Redbook that may not be utilized. Some people talk about Orangebook standards...
 
I would like to learn more about Redbook standards, but I don't think (with my limited knowledge) that it is possible to get Redbook quality masters without sending your stuff to a pro mastering house. There are many software plugs and maybe even some things on the VF80 or 160 that would get you a good sounding recording, but not to the level that a pro mastering house could do. Just my opinion.
 
The answer is no. I spent 2 years recording a commercial release on a Roland VS1824CD. First of all, Redbook is a format, not a level of quality. You can make a Redbook master that meets all of the technical requirements of that format that is absolutely awful in sound quality. But a computer will be able to figure out the name and length of the song, among many other things.
Now the Roland is a 24bit, 96khz hard disc recorder. But the moment you plug into its preamps, you are subject to all of its analog deficiencies. The moment you mix down to stereo and burn a CD, your "master" has become a 16 bit, 44.1khz recording with any and all errors introduced by the CD-R drive, whether internal or external.
That said, this is how it can be done. (how I did it)- First, you do all analog to digital conversion outside the box, because the AD conversion in most standalone recorders is substandard. You take a kickass analog preamp (I used an Avalon AD2022 and a Joemeek twinQcs, mostly), and you send their analog signal to a serious AD convertor- (OK, we started with a not-so-serious AD convertor- a TC Electronics M300, and then switched mid-project to a Lucid AD9624). You send the signal by S/PDIF or optical, or whatever, to your standalone, which totally bypasses the AD conversion and the cruddy preamps of your standalone, straight to its hard drive.
Now comes the decision- are you going to mix it yourself, once you have all the tracks on the hard drive? If you are, go ahead, mix. However, I advise you to skip all the reverb, compression, or any other substandard FX, EQ, and processing you could put on the tracks in your standalone. Any FX or compression was applied by outboard boxes before the signal ever hit the (outboard) AD convertor. We didn't bother to mix down. We pulled the tracks off the Roland by S/PDIF, 2 at a time, in real time, into Pro Tools. Before we did that, we placed a 4 beat click track on track 1 of every song, and did a track copy to every track, so that the tracks could be synched manually in Pro Tools. Then we sent those tracks to the nice mixing engineer, who applied EQ, ambience, compression, noise reduction, etc, with his golden ears and multi-thousand dollars worth of gear instead of the mediocre effects of our little VS Studio.
Then we sent those mixed down audio tracks to the nice mastering engineer, who shelved useless frequencies, and applied overall ambience where needed, and produced the nice Red book master.
That is how you produce a commercial quality master on a standalone recorder. As soon as you ask that box to do *anything* except be a hard drive with a built in mixer, you are in trouble. Sorry, I answered the question I heard, instead of the one that was asked. I have no idea whether your standalone can produce a master that conforms to Red book standards, although I doubt it. What I am sure of is, if it does, it will have created a bad demo. Please note that if the players are kickass, and the guy who does the mixdown has the talent for it, it will rock anyway, so do not be discouraged. The quality of the music is generally more important than the quality of the recording. On the other hand, if you want to make commercial quality recordings with a standalone, you're going to have to think "outside the box".-Richie
 
Wow, nice response to the asker's inquiry. I have also been interested in Redbook differential. I was overjoyed to hear about how you set up the click track so you can send out via spdif and line up tracks on the computer. I have been asking this question in every known forum on the Net and no detailed response. I do see how this can be done from the beginning of the song's recording track by track, but I was wondering how it could be done after the tracks were recorded. Well, I have been pondering sending out my music to more pro sources myself, as the kind of equipment and how to use it would probably take years and dinero to learn and acquire. Thanks again, for this learned thread, Psongman
 
Yo Psongman- If you didn't create 3 or four seconds of silence at the beginning of every track, you should have, but anyway, most standalones will allow you to insert audio, so create that 4 beat click track, insert it at the beginning of every track. You can manually synch the tracks without that click track, but it's a lot harder. After the 12 hours or so it took to pull the tracks off the Roland for the whole album, and the 4-6 hours it took to synch them, I bought a Digi002 and a MusicXPC. I'll never have to do that again! Now I use the Roland only as a remote stereo recorder, so I only have to pull 2 tracks total off of it. Lord, you don't know the S/PDIF I've seen! BTW, I learned that click track trick from some guy (bless his soul) on VS Planet.com.-Richie
 
Thanks for the responses, guys, especially Richard. Very enlightening and informative.

I don't suppose it helps that I am not doing any vocals or using any analog instruments, or would it? All I am interested in doing is mixdowns and masters of tracks recorded on my Ensoniq ASR-10, Roland XP-10 and electric guitar, all of which would be plugged directly into the hard disk recorder, of course, thus keeping it all in the digital domain (except for the audio cables, that is).

So, basically, I shouldn't even bother getting a hard disk recorder at all, since they're not good for recording anything except demos, right? Since I want to independently produce and sell commercial quality releases of my music, I'd probably be better off using a software studio on my computer and sending the results out for mastering by a pro, correct? Then again, I have to wonder why they even make hard disk recorders if they suffer from such a serious limitation. Are they making them for recording hobbyists and musicians and songwriters who are only interested in recording demos? That's the impression I'm getting. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Gary
 
Essentially, Gary, you are correct. By and large, the preamplifiers used for most commercial releases of any consequence are quite likely to run $1000+ per channel. If you built an 18 track standalone recorder to do commercial work, the 18 channel AD convertor alone would amount to $7000! Then add an 18 channel Neve console with 2-4 "gold channels" at $1500 or so per channel, a dual hard drive with a 4mb processor, $2000 or so, a built in distressor and a TC Electronics M5000 for FX, and a few thousand bucks worth of plug ins, and you have just built the world's first $35,000 standalone!
On the other hand, your needs are far simpler, because you are layering tracks, not doing a live studio recording, and your signals are mostly beginning in the digital domain. I needed at least 6 simultaneous tracks in (drums), and virtually all of my tracks began as real sound in real acoustic space, which required about $7,500 worth of microphones, and $6,000 worth of preamps.
You can get your signals to the hard drive of a standalone pretty easily, and if you choose wisely, you can export those tracks as WAV files, and not have to go through what I went through. What I think you can't do (well), is the post-production processing of those tracks. The available compression, EQ, and ambience in any standalone is simply not commercial level quality, and that generally is true of computer plug-ins as well. Proper mixing and mastering requires a boat load of expensive outboard gear. The processing of my album "Reunion" used outboard FX and EQ units that individually exceed the cost of any standalone ever made, and with good cause. But like I said- if the music kicks ass, it won't matter. And- if the writing and the playing and the basic engineering sucks, all those high priced boxes with blinking lights won't do diddly to change that. To sum up my position, I think you can track commercial quality music on a standalone, or a PC, if the mics, preamps, and AD conversion are top notch and outboard, but doing the post production work on a standalone will result in a product that can only be so good.
Computers make editing much easier, but the best mixing and mastering virtually always involves dedicated, expensive, outboard hardware, not plugins.-Richie
 
Would that apply to Pro Tools, as well, Richard? How about Cool Edit Pro (now Adobe Audition)?

Gary
 
Yes Gary, that applies to Pro Tools, even if you own the whole bloody $10,000 software package. Show me a mastering house that masters entirely in PT, without outboard EQ or compression, and I'll show you a mastering house I wouldn't use. Admittedly, the software based post production options are improving every day, and the day will come, I have no doubt, where everything I have said above will not be true. That day has not arrived. I'm finishing the upgrade to run Pro Tools right now, so don't think I'm just some old analog guy that's afraid of computers. For our commercial work, though, I think we'll continue to outsource our mixing and mastering to people with a rack full of gear, at least for the forseeable future. And before that signal ever reaches the hard drive of a computer, it will have already gone through *our* rack full of gear.-Richie
 
Thought you'd say that, Richard. ;)

So, basically, the state of the art in digital recording is just not quite to the point, yet, at which we can expect to take our music from composition and recording to finished, commercial grade master in our home studios. This reminds me of the same thing, regarding digitial video, or desktop publishing, two other fields in which the same fundamental gap between commercial grade video and publishing and digital amateur production exists.

So, the issue, then, is when will we have software and/or hardware for the amateur or hobbyist that equals the same level of quality and capability the pros have now? Will it ever happen, in fact? The pros, I'm sure, jealously hope not, as the market for their services would dry up overnight, right?

Gary
 
Richard Monroe said:
On the other hand, your needs are far simpler, because you are layering tracks, not doing a live studio recording, and your signals are mostly beginning in the digital domain. You can get your signals to the hard drive of a standalone pretty easily, and if you choose wisely, you can export those tracks as WAV files, and not have to go through what I went through. What I think you can't do (well), is the post-production processing of those tracks. The available compression, EQ, and ambience in any standalone is simply not commercial level quality, and that generally is true of computer plug-ins as well. To sum up my position, I think you can track commercial quality music on a standalone, or a PC, if the mics, preamps, and AD conversion are top notch and outboard, but doing the post production work on a standalone will result in a product that can only be so good. Computers make editing much easier, but the best mixing and mastering virtually always involves dedicated, expensive, outboard hardware, not plugins.-Richie
Click to expand...

Very wise, and well said. Gary, if it would help, I'd be willing to send you a CD of some stuff I've done on a VF160 -- a few fairly successful radio commercials, and some acoustic guitar/vocals...
 
For only $14.99? LOL. Just kidding. Billisa, I appreciate your generosity. It would give me a chance hear, first hand, what can actually be done with this gear, and then I can determine if that's good enough for my needs. That's one thing lacking in message boards like these: sound. Sure, someone could post a WAV file, but it's not going to sound the same as a CD, and my computer's speakers, as good as they are, won't sound as good as my stereo, etc. I can send you my mailing address via email, okay?

On second thought, I just noticed that the email function on this board keeps the message on the server, as opposed to opening my email browser. Looks like a privacy risk, to me, so I tell you what; just email me at garyrea[remove this part address]@cox.net (covering my ass so the spammers don't get my email address, either).

Gary
 
mastering

ive had two cd's mastered at disk makers, while i know they are a dicount house, they did a great job, they even made some suggestions and let me make some changes to meet their suggestions, sent them new files, and they really did a great job, not very expensive either.......

i think it is well worth haveing your cd mastered professionally
 
GaryR50 said:
For only $14.99? LOL. Just kidding. Billisa, I appreciate your generosity. It would give me a chance hear, first hand, what can actually be done with this gear, and then I can determine if that's good enough for my needs. just email me at garyrea[remove this part address]@cox.net (covering my ass so the spammers don't get my email address, either).Gary
Click to expand...


Gary -- I sent you an email at the above address.

Bill Keane
 
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