Mark Lanctot wrote: > What I've always wondered is - is this compression and clipping > happening on the master? In which case, that music is damaged forever. > Not that you'd want to preserve the drek the latest > flavour-of-the-month artists put out anyway...
Depends on which master you mean. With analog recording, you would typically 'track' on 2" magnatic tape, 24 tracks, this is the tracking engineer. Then you would "mix" it down to stereo, the job of the mixing engineer. This was usually a half inch, two track tape. Finally, a mastering engineer would take the two track and master it for vinyl or CD. With ProTools, or other all-digital techinques, you still start with 24 or 48 or whatever amount of mono tracks, mix it to stereo (or 5.1) and then master it. When CDs are "remastered" it may mean remixing it, and then remastering it, or it may mean taking the stereo mix and literally remastering it. Neither has to hurt the original multi-track recording. But, 2" tape reels are expensive, well over $100 each, and its trivial to go through five reels in a eight hour session. In the olden days, a group might spend six months in the studio, generating 100 days of tapes, or 500 reels. Most of the time, the original tracking tapes were recycled. Compression is often (usually? always?) applied on the tracks as they are mixed. Mastering even before loudness wars nearly always added compression. Its a lot easier to burn a DVD and keep the premixed tracks with digital stuff, than it is to keep a garage full of 2" tapes. -- Pat Farrell PRC recording studio http://www.pfarrell.com/PRC _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
