Please read this document carefully before sending us your music

Digital Domain is dedicated to reproducing your music with audiophile quality. In order for us to give you the best result, we'd like you to provide us with your best source material. If your source requires editing, sequencing, spacing, assembling from different reels, equalization, leveling, or other processing, we will transfer analog tapes to 24-bit digital for premastering in our SADiE Mastering System, or load your digital files or tapes with maximum resolution. If your music requires analog processing, it will pass through the finest converters and gear on the planet. 

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General                                                     FTP delivery                                                 Physical delivery

General

Before the Mastering Session/Communicating Your Needs to Us
Each type of music requires a different approach. Sometimes you may find it difficult to tell us what you are looking for. If you cannot be here at the mastering session, we will make a special effort to understand what your music is communicating. We will give you our feeling of how your music is sounding as we begin to try an approach. We do not "automatically" equalize. Many fine pieces of music are mastered flat (no equalization) and without additional compression or levelling. But almost every tape that arrives can use a little polish before it walks out the door. You are welcome to mention a CD of similar music that appeals to you. After the mastering session is over, you will receive a reference CD or FTP that you can check on your own playback system (there's no substitute for the system you know), and, if necessary, suggest further revisions or improvements.

Naming Your Files
It is very important that you name your tracks so it's easy for us to tell which filename belongs to which song, and the order they go in the album. For example, you can include the album (sequence) order in the filename: "02 Love Me Do.wav", or "10 Can't Buy Me Love voc up.aif". If you have not included the album order in each filename, there is an upload form at the FTP site where you can give us your list of files and the album sequence order. Or send us a readme file with the full listing.

Preparing Digital Files

What Sample Rate Should I Use?
The state of the art of converters (A/D, D/A and sample rate converters) has improved exponentially in the past five years. Five years ago, considering the abysmal state of converters, I would have recommended that you try to work at 44.1 kHz if possible. THIS IS NO LONGER TRUE. My current recommendations are for you to work at the highest possible sample rate and longest practical wordlength available to you (typically 96 kHz. I'm not yet convinced that higher rates than 96K offer a real difference). However, if you are mixing digitally, do not sample rate convert, to avoid additional degrading DSP. In other words, if you are mixing digitally, remain at the same sample rate as the multitrack; we want to see the earliest-generation file possible. If you are mixing with an analog console, there is a marginal advantage to using a higher sample rate mixdown recorder than even the multitrack. For example, if you are using a Radar 24 at 48 kHz with an analog mixing console, and mixing to the Masterlink, you'll get better-sounding results running the Masterlink at 96 kHz, 24 bit. In the mastering, we would remain at 96 kHz until the very last step.

Vocal Up/Vocal Down
It's not always easy to get the lead vocal level just right in a mix. When it's "just right", the band is up there swinging away, and the vocal has enough presence to come through but without taking away the energy from the background. And often in mastering, we may find that the song may be better served if we use a vocal-up or vocal-down mix due to the processing used in mastering. If you're running automation, then it doesn't cost anything to also run a vocal up (1/2 dB or 1 dB, or both if in doubt), and possibly a vocal down mix. This can save myriads of time later.

Stems or Splits - The Gang of Four

Professional mixing engineers never get caught with their pants down when they produce the Gang of Four. This is even better than Vocal Up/Vocal Down.

Here's the key: You produce four synced stems:

Stem #1. Full mix (that’s what I will use unless there is a problem)
Stem #2. Instrumental
Stem #3. TV (that’s instrumental plus chorus)
Stem #4. Lead (that’s lead vocal(s) plus its reverb of course (basically muting everything else).

Synchronized stems are produced by running a separate mix pass from the same starting sample each time without changing any gains. You mute the tracks that you don't want to hear. That way any reverbs or other processing which were applied on the full mix remain on the stems. Don't be afraid if the vocal-only version has 1 minute of blank at the head, that's part of the design!

In mastering, the sum of Stem #3 and Stem #4 at unity gain = Full mix. If we want a vocal down, we just take the level of Stem #4 down a hair. Usually it's good that the backgrounds (chorus) follow the lead in this case. However, if we want more lead and less chorus, we do not need a separate chorus stem. We can add Stem # 4 to Stem #1, provided the mixes were done digitally, or there will be comb filtering between the two lead vocal tracks. If we want less lead and more chorus, we can SUBTRACT Stem #4 from Stem #1, with the same considerations. Subtraction is done by inverting polarity and adding (mixing). Stem #2 is rarely used, but a lifesaver to have when requested.

Many mix engineers argue (correctly) that if they are using bus compression the stems will not reflect the same sound they got on the full mix. This is true, if you are doing strong bus compression, the interaction between the peaks of the mix and the individual elements will not be the same when using stems. In that case, a legitimate gang of four cannot be produced!

The gang of four protects you and your clients in many ways. It gives you archive options and alternative options. It gives you the TV mix you never thought you'd need but which the client requests six months later! It also allows the option of lead vocal up/down in case of unforseen problems post the mix and mastering. It only takes a few minutes extra to run “the gang of four” during the mixdown, but if you don't make those options during mixdown, it will take forever later to reconstruct that mix. So, develop the discipline to do the gang of four. You won't be sorry!

Maximum Program Length
The final CD Master tape, including songs, spaces between songs, and reverberant decay at the ends of songs, must not exceed 79:38. We can determine exactly how long your CD will be after editing and master preparation.

Nuendo/Wavelab/Samplitude/Sequoia Users:

FTP Delivery

You can upload or download files using your browser or with an FTP client. In either case, we would like you to ZIP the files as it assures safest, glitch-free traveling through the internet. If your file is bigger than 2 GB, please use an FTP client as the browser won't support any files bigger than that. The other advantage of an FTP client is that you'll be able to use the resume function to resume a file if the connection dropped or the program crashed.

Free FTP Client for Mac OS X: Cyberduck

Free FTP Client for Windows: Ace FTP 

Browser Instructions (there is also a help menu in the ftp section of our browser) 

UPLOAD: If you're using a browser, you can upload up to 20 files at once. There is a BROWSE button where you pick the song on your hard drive, a pop-up menu where you can choose the track number this song will be on the album, and a text box to fill in the full name of the song or any minor comments (such as "voc up").

At the bottom you'll have to fill in Artist and Album Title information, and any further comments. If you have any ISRC's, catalog numbers, UPC/EAN... please put those in the notes field, or include a readme file with the extra information.

After that you'll be able to press the BEGIN UPLOAD button and we will be automatically notified that you have uploaded new files. Please click here to open our online ftp access. 

DOWNLOAD: If you're using a browser, click on the black DOWN arrow to the right of the file name you wish to download. 

Physical Delivery

Labeling your tape or disc
About half the tapes in a typical library are labeled Master by mistake. You can imagine it gets pretty confusing separating the elements from the final master if things don't have the proper label. There is only one MASTER for an album, which is the final, PQ'd, equalized, edited, spaced, and prepared tape or disc that needs no further work, and is ready for replication. Only properly-formatted PCM-1630 tapes, DDP Exabyte tapes or files, CD-A masters can meet those qualifications. A DAT is not a CD master. A CD ROM with mixes is not a master. Please label the tape or disc you are sending for mastering: Submaster or Work Tape, or Mix, or Final Mix, or Session Tape, or Edited-Mix, or Compiled-mix, or Equalized Mix, to name several possibilities. This will avoid confusion in the future when revising a work, when looking through the tape library for the real master.

Here is a sample disk label that tells just about EVERYTHING the mastering house needs to know about your files! You can also include a "readme" file on the disk with further information such as ISRC codes, and your comments or wishes about sound, fades, etc. Other useful information: channel order if surround (e.g. L, R, C, LFE, LS, RS; or L, R, LS, RS, C, LFE), interleaved or split. It's easy to confuse or lose a disc or a master tape. Please try to label your discs with this valuable information!

Alesis Masterlink
This is a wonderful format especially for people who like to mix down to an external recorder. But the preparation of playlists takes time and there is little space on a CD-R these days at high sample rates, but at least CDRs are inexpensive; frankly I suggest you skip the Masterlink, cut files and copy to DVD-R or CD-ROM. Please try to name the songs, not just keep the default "song01" name supplied by Alesis. It's tough with only 8 characters, but better than nothing!

This machine purports to offer "finishing tools" for preparation of CD Masters, which gives the impression that a finished master is as simple as applying compression, equalization, and pressing a few buttons. There is no such thing as a stand-alone "finishing tool". The ultimate "finishing tool" is a skilled, experienced mastering engineer working in a calibrated environment, capable of applying his/her experience to the creation of a superior, finished album. Please reserve the Masterlink to make "demonstration" or "roughs" prior to sending the raw mixes for mastering. 

Analog tape
1/4" or 1/2", 30 ips, 15 ips or 7 1/2 ips, Dolby A, Dolby SR or DBX type 1, IEC, AES or NAB equalization. Begin and end the reel with some "bumper", followed by leader. If possible, put leader between songs (except for live concerts and recordings edited with roomtone). Tape should be slow wound, tails out. Label each reel with the album title, song titles, running times of each cut. Indicate tape speed, record level for 0 VU in nw/M, record EQ (NAB or IEC), track configuration, and whether it is mono or stereo.

Include alignment tones of 1kHz, 10kHz, 15kHz, and 100Hz plus (highly recommended) 45Hz and 5kHz at 0VU (on 15 and 30 IPS tapes. Also highly recommended is a tone sweep (glide) from 20 Hz through 500 Hz. Call for information about tones on 7-1/2 IPS tapes). Needless to say, the tones must be recorded by the same tape recorder that recorded the music, and ideally, record the tones through the same console and cables that were used to make the mix. If you find the console meter is not flat when sending tones through it, then have a technician check the console before proceeding. Put the tones at the head of reel one or on a separate reel. Indicate type of noise reduction. The tones should be recorded without noise reduction.

Many historic analog tapes do not include proper tones and sometimes it is not possible to put tones on new masters. If it was not possible to lay down tones on the session, then we will use sophisticated methods to guarantee azimuth and equalization accuracy.

Indicate the proposed order that the tunes will be on the CD, either on a separate sheet, or in a column on the log sheet.