www.loudcds.com? is this for real?

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ratnip101

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Is this company for real? Check it out. Cant decide if I wanna use them to master my CD for $5 a song.
 
$5 per song is dirt cheap, so I wouldn't expect much. The website looks fairly new and there are no actual testimonials in that section. The sound samples just sound like someone slapped a limiter (& perhaps and exciter) on the mixes. I'm not impressed. I would also not trust my work to a company who seems only interested in making "loud cds."
 
Someone ran out and bought Cakewalk and Waves Gold and decided on a clever marketing scheme (but bad website).

I don't trust it.
 
This looks even worse than that Mastering by Mail company in the other topic like 3 threads down.

All people can really say is you can go for it and see if you like it. It's cheap enough that it wouldn't really kill you to do one song to try, but remember, you get what you pay for.

I just checked out the samples, which are all in mono, so already you don't get a very good example.

I can tell you this, the 'mastered' versions are definitely 'louder'. I can't tell if they've been compressed or if the 'unmastered' versions were pulled down for the mix. There also appears to be more bass. As said in the other thread, it's very easy to fake examples.

The testimonial section of the site doesn't work, and that relates to the whole site. It's very bland.

In short, I would not dare master with this company. :P
 
ratnip101 said:
Is this company for real?
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It's not a company. It's a guy with Cakewalk (he doesn't even say Cakewalk what) and a P.O. box.

Not to give anyone any bad ideas, but anybody here who knows how to use the "Normalize" button could do the same thing this guy is doing. If you're rookie enough to not only not know how to normalize, but to think that normalizing is a good idea, send this guy your five bucks.

Better yet, send it to me instead. I'll normalize it for you for $4.95 a song if you want. You'll save a nickel a song and you'll be getting someone who'se not afraid to show his face around these parts.

Best yet. Just do it yourself. and save the five bucks towards a nice microphone. :)

G.
 
Good god, these bullshit "mastering" businesses are coming out of the friggin' woodwork! (note the quotes around the word "mastering")

It's your $5 bucks, but Glen essentially nailed it as to what to expect from these scammers..........
 
I'll do it for $2!!!

as a favor to HR members...I'll run your music thru my Sonci Maximizer TWICE!! not once but TWICE!!!

everyone else who's not my friend will pay $2.25.

I'll have a Mastering Studio online as soon as my 4 yr old gets my free-Web page done.
 
Man . . . do ya think I could get $10/song if I run it through the LA2A on my UAD-1?
 
mshilarious said:
Man . . . do ya think I could get $10/song if I run it through the LA2A on my UAD-1?
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Make it $9.95, and you've got a deal....
 
Whoah boy . . . he's got more than Normalize, he's got the dreaded multiband compressor! The bass on all his before-after samples is freakin' obnoxious! The tuner crowd will love it though, it'll make their Daewoos shake in the parking lot of the multiplex :rolleyes:

Also he does mixing for $25/song :eek:
 
Alexbt said:
This looks even worse than that Mastering by Mail company in the other topic like 3 threads down.
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Well, at least they post crappy samples - not quite as blatant a lie, eh?
 
Alright this guy is an official piker . . . as I'm avoiding real work tonight, I gave his sample the ol' Wavelab analysis - his befores float around -21dB RMS (who does a mix that quiet :confused: ) with peaks around -6dB. His afters are about -11 to 14dB RMS with 0dB peaks, but I'm impressed--no clipping!

I figured for $10 (sorry, $9.95) I could do much better. I dimed the gain and set peak reduction to 80 on the LA2A, set to limit, and got -6dB RMS :D
 
There is another site offering $15 songs mastered called www.clearcutlabs.com and I think they don't even have a phone number to talk to anyone there. I am starting to think this place might just want my money and not my input into my own song. What kind of mastering company doesnt even have a phone?
 
ratnip101 said:
There is another site offering $15 songs mastered called www.clearcutlabs.com and I think they don't even have a phone number to talk to anyone there. I am starting to think this place might just want my money and not my input into my own song. What kind of mastering company doesnt even have a phone?
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What do you expect for $15? (or $5--loudcds doesn't have a phone either)

You need to get with reality here. These two "mastering" houses you've mentioned belong to the "you gotta be kidding me" school of musical silliness. Do you really expect to be able to give them detailed input for $5? or $15?

The good news is that they apparently don't want your money because $5 or $15 dollars is **NOTHING** to pay for mastering. I can pretty much guarantee that anything they can do you can do with whatever DAW you are currently using. Total waste of money in my opinion.

These low ball so-called mastering houses are just outrageous. Appalling, avoid them at all costs.
 
I'm going to add that service to my website but under the guise of CD prep... :D

and i'll also run a special that never seems to end at 4.50 a song but regulary 40.00 an hour if you buy it now!
 
OK, here I go causing trouble again, but the more I think about this stuff, the more I realize that I have a different question in my head than what's being posed in these threads. I have been lying in bed tonight and not falling asleep because I have been dying to get this question out. So here goes...

When we have forums here filled every day with people asking how come, after hundreds or thousands of dollars of gear and weeks or months of working on a recording, they can't get their recordings to sound good enough or loud enough; when we have tesimonials and polls and threads here every week that it takes hours to days just to properly mix one song, and that good mastering requires even tighter specs than good mixing...

...just why is it that anyone here even give places like Masquerading By Mail or PlowedCDs any consideration whatsoever?

I'm going back to bed now...

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
OK, here I go causing trouble again, but the more I think about this stuff, the more I realize that I have a different question in my head than what's being posed in these threads. I have been lying in bed tonight and not falling asleep because I have been dying to get this question out. So here goes...

When we have forums here filled every day with people asking how come, after hundreds or thousands of dollars of gear and weeks or months of working on a recording, they can't get their recordings to sound good enough or loud enough; when we have tesimonials and polls and threads here every week that it takes hours to days just to properly mix one song, and that good mastering requires even tighter specs than good mixing...

...just why is it that anyone here even give places like Masquerading By Mail or PlowedCDs any consideration whatsoever?

I'm going back to bed now...

G.
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Funny -- the EXACT same question was going through my head ever since the topic came up!

The answer probably is similar to why people buy cheap gear expecting it to perform like the expensive stuff? Probably because they don't understand the fundamental theory behind good recording technique -- it's much easier to shell out a few dollars on cheap gear and beleive the hype than it is to try and understand/learn the theory.

Same with mastering -- they don't understand the process, so they buy into some scammer's hype that $10 mastering is good enough and that technology can cover-off what once required talent!
 
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