You have your stuff all ready to go but there are too many tracks on the CD, or it is on a cassette tape, or it was recorded live and has no track ids. We can now help you with all this. We can do final mastering on the computer adjust your normalization, adjust bass and treble, adjust stereo image, etc. very inexpensively. Re-arranging tracks or adding track numbers is no problem. We can make your home recorded demo into a professional sounding CD in many cases. Levels on a live master too low, no track numbers, and other problems can usually be solved for $30 - $75. Call Hugh at 303-485-9226 or fill out our contact form. If you have technical questions. Most of the time I can help you or know who to call. Or look into the ideas published below.

• The prefered media for your master is now a finished CD that has been mastered for production. It should play flawlessly and have no marks, smudges or scratches on the read surface (side that the audio is burned into.) A master can play ok and still not duplicate properly due to the differences in error correction in a player vs. a duplicator. Today most people can make a master from their computer. The most common errors with homemade CDs are using the data writing CD software instead of audio and not writing Disc-at-Once. We also occasionally receive disks that are not closed or finalized. Usually with Easy CD Creator or Toast, if you use the Write Audio Disc feature this happens automatically.
  

  We often do "One Offs" from DAT tapes to CD. Please follow the dirrections to make sure that your DAT is ready to copy and you don't incurr extra charges.

  First Prepare your DAT tape.

  The perfect DAT is ready to go and has only to be put in the machine and copied onto the CD. Please be sure that your levels are consistent from song to song. If you have an audio editing program this is fairly easy to do by using the "Normalize" feature. Make sure the track ids aren't in the songs or too far ahead of them and that the songs are in the correct order. (If you use Ã"auto id writeÃ. it will put the track ids in the songs. In order to put an id in place the machine has to detect signal resulting in a cut off beginning og the program. If this is the case the ids must be moved.) PLEASE be sure your name is on the DAT and on the box card. Also on the box j-card put a list of the selections with start id number, start time and end time of each selection as well as overall time. If there is to be a label on the CD that information is provided on a separate sheet of paper with everything spelled out legibly and with upper and lower case properly noted. Anything less than this can result in additional charges and an imperfect job. We can and do edit DAT tapes. If we must edit your DAT we will want you to come and proof the changes before any duplicationg is done from it.

• The perfect CD for duplication is all of the above and ready to go with no re-arranging necessary although we now have several methods of re-arranging tracks. It is also written Disc-at-once. Your CD burner manual will explain this. Editing song order on a CD is much easier than it is from a DAT and often there is no extra charge. We will not accept CD masters with paper labels on them as they can cause terrible problems in high speed CD burners. We highly discourage the use of paper labels, I've had them become stuck in my car stereo on several occasions.
• Keep your levels a bit below 0 db. That is the point of "over" and you don't want to reach it. There are passing peaks that don't register on your meter (the meters are analog) but that will cause your amplifer to clip or distort at high volumes. The old vinyl records were all set to peak at what is -12db or slightly above on your digital meter. Nowadays most people master hotter than this going up to around -3 db or so. If you are going to have a mastering studio do the work on a computer mastering system they will need some headroom to work with also.
• Space between songs is standard at four seconds. That is an eight count at a moderate tempo. Shorter times leave a never-ending quality to your selections and too long leaves the listner wondering if the next song is ever going to start. If you give us a DAT with a lot of space between songs that you want removed be prepared to pay for some editing time.
• VERY IMPORTANT! If mastering onto DAT, leave at least one minute blank at the head of the DAT, the machine uses this space to find the end and turn around, etc. and the most wear occurs here. Also the most likely place for the tape to break. Play it safe and leave that space.
• Put the start ids ahead of the songs, not right on them. Be careful of using the automatic id marking on most DAT machines. To place an id the machine must detect signal and often the id is in the selection just ever so slightly cutting off the first sound of music when scrolled to on the CD. If they are done this way tell us and we can use a feature called ADT (audio delay time) which backs up the id by a specified amount - generally a quarter of a second. This way the numbers appear and then the music plays rather than simultaneously.
• It is possible to affect the overall sound of the mix as far as bass, treble, balance, stereo image and spatial. We can do this to a limited degree with a DSP (digital sound processor) or you can go to a mastering studio for a more professional job done on a computer system. This is different from mix down of the tracks which is done first. During mixdown you put your instruments and vocals where you want them to be then you go to the post production process and adjust the overall bass and treble response, width of the stereo image and the depth of the stereo image. You also might want normalization which makes everything as loud as possible without distortion. See our list of studios for professional mastering people. With the DSP we can do most of these functions in real time but you must be present to approve.
• Label your DAT before leaving the studio with it. When you get to our shop they all look the same.
• Make a backup of your DAT. If you don't have a way to do it we can make one for you. A backup CD is the same thing and a bit less likely to be damaged.
• Keep it clean. Dirt can get on the tape and cause wierd noises ruining your tape.

• Tape  does not have the same dynamic range possible on CD. Sometimes to get it onto the tape and have the quiet passages clear and the loud passages undistorted it is necessary to use compression. Just how much varies with the type of music. There are no hard fast rules and careful listening is key. Generally the peak shoud be no more than -3db and the floor no less than -10 db. This is a little tight dynamically but within the realm of possible.
• If the tape is to be run directly from the DAT the songs must be in the proper order.
• We prefer that songs for side A be first and all are within one program number. Songs for side B should also be in the proper order and all under one progrm number. If the DAT is a dual purpose DAT, that is for both tapes and CD production, in which case each song will have it's own id, there should be a gap between the songs for side A and the songs for side B that is long enough for the tape to run out at the end of the side without catching some of the other side on it. You can't believe how much easier it is to run tape from this kind of master.