When I put my CD in the computer...

You rush home from your album's mastering session, turn on your computer, launch iTunes, put your CD in the drive and think "where are my song titles?" I hear this question a lot.

The short answer would be, that CD's information hasn't been added to the Gracenote CD Database (CDDB for short). The Gracenote CDDB is the most used source for software such as iTunes to find the CD information (artist name, album title, song titles) and display it on your computer.

In a fairly inexact science, iTunes uses the CD's table of contents, the number of tracks, and the length of each track. When you insert a CD into a computer that has an active internet connection and iTunes open, iTunes will look at the table of contents and then connect to the online Gracenote CDDB to compare the table of contents of the CD in it's drive to the thousands of tables of contents that have been registered with the Gracenote CDDB. When a match is found it will pull that information down from the CDDB into the iTunes window. If there is more than one match iTunes will ask which set of information you want to use (this is a rare occurrence when you consider the likelihood of two albums having and exact same table of contents, but it happens).

In order for the Gracenote CDDB to have the information in the database, the information must first be submitted to the database. The easiest way to do that is with iTunes.

The first time you insert your CD into iTunes just enter in all of the information and then select "submit CD track names" from the Advanced menu. You will then be asked to select a genre, that is if the genre you already selected isn't an option since the iTunes genre list differs from the Gracenote genre list, and click "OK". It generally takes 48 hours for the CDDB to record the addition of a new album to the database, after 48 hours re-insert your CD and select "get CD track names" from the Advanced menu in iTunes and you should see your CD information. The good news is that anyone in the world that has your CD will be able to see that very same information.

The more in depth process is to be an authorized Gracenote CDDB content partner. Being a content partner gets you the Gracenote Content Partner software you can use to submit CD information. Much like getting an ISRC registrant code, being a Gracenote content partner probably only makes sense if you're releasing a lot of music. If you're only doing an album every year or two you can let someone else take care of that for you.

For Windows Media Player it's very much the same process in that there is an online database and WMP uses the CD table of contents to compare to the database submissions. The big difference is Windows Media Player has chosen to work with a different database, they use the All Music database. Adding your information to the All Music database is more involved as you have to physically send them a CD for inclusion into their database. The submission information for All Music can be found here.

Wait, so what is CD-Text?

In the CD creation there is some "hidden" information it's called meta data. Meta data includes CD-Text and ISRC, I wrote about ISRC in this post. The only way to see CD-Text is with a CD-Text enabled CD player which are mainly car CD players, they scroll the information across the small screen on the car stereo like this one.


So, in short:

CD-Text is written into the disc itself and is displayed on car CD players.

CD information is NOT written into the disc and is what is see on computer software like iTunes and Windows Media Player

I really hope this helps.

ISRC explained (in simple terms) I hope...

Do you want to sell your songs through a digital distributor? Any interest in using the iTunes Music Store or Amazon.com music store to make money off of your recordings?

Well then, you'll need ISRC codes for your music.

What is an ISRC code you ask? ISRC stands for International Standard Recording Code and it's a 12 digit alpha numeric code to identify a recording.

It's important to distinguish at this point the difference between a recording and a song. A song could have many versions, radio edits, remixes, acoustic versions. However a recording is a single version of a song. If I recorded the song "Blogs Rule" and released it on an album or as a single I would assign "Blogs Rule" an ISRC. Then if someone wanted to include that recording on a compilation disc, that ISRC would go with it to that compilation. Now, if someone wanted to do an extended dance remix of the song then a new code would have to be generated for that new recording.

Quick aside here, the term ISRC code drives me crazy it's like saying ATM machine, it's redundant. Why would we say International Standard Recording Code Code? We wouldn't, but alas, there isn't much choice in the matter, just saying ISRC sounds wrong and I need to learn to live with it.

Back to the matter at hand.

Think of this code like you would a bar code on a can of soup at the grocery store. When that can gets scanned, a computer somewhere knows that the store now has one less can of soup than it did a few minutes ago. It's the exact same thing in the world of digital music distribution. Except replace the can of soup with a song and the bar code with an ISRC code. So you can see why it's important to have these codes, because you can't digitally distribute a song without one.

So how do you get them?

Most independent musicians have to go through a middle man to get their music into the iTunes Music Store, the Amazon store or any other digital music retailer. These companies which include, TuneCore and CD Baby, will assign codes to your songs if you don't already have them. It's all part of the sign up process or the process of adding new music to your account, easy, right?

Another option would be to register to get your own code so you could then generate more codes for all the recordings you're releasing. This might be the place to show you what an ISRC code looks like.

US-XXX-10-YYYYY
(The dashes are not part of the code, but help distinguish the sections of the code.)

US is the country code, of course if your recording is being sold outside of the United States you would have a different country code, BR for Brazil, DE for Germany and so on.

Next is the XXX, this is the most important part of the code, it's known as the Registrant Code. These three digits are what you are assigned when you register, in the United States this is the website to visit to find all the application information to register. There is a one time fee of $75 to be assigned a code, so I would say it only makes sense to buy one if you're a small label who will be releasing a lot of music.

10 is the year code so of course in 2011 that number will switch to 11.

YYYYY is the number identifying a unique recording. Usually the first song released in a new year will be numbered 00001 the next song would be 00002 and so on until the end of the year.

A final option in getting ISRCs for your recordings is to have your mastering studio assign codes for you. I actually have a US ISRC code and I assign a code to every song I master. It's easy to do and saves clients some effort, it's a nice thing we can do that has no additional fees attached.


Additional links:
ISRC wikipedia page
USISRC.ORG

Why are your mixes .mp3 files?

The most common mistake I'm seeing right now are mixes that have been file compressed. File compression is what occurs when you create an .mp3, .aac, or .wma file.

What is file compression? Well, according to this wikipedia article:

In lossy audio compression, methods of psychoacoustics are used to remove non-audible (or less audible) components of the signal.

Think about that - REMOVE NON-AUDIBLE (OR LESS AUDIBLE) COMPONENTS - do you want ANY of your audio removed? You've just spent how much time and money making a recording and you want a piece of software to just chop some of it off? I sure hope your answer to that question is "no".

Here's a spectrum analysis of a CD quality song, what you see here are a bunch of colored lines indicating the intensity of frequencies from the low end on the left to the high end on the right. This song is utilizing all of the frequencies we can hear from 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz (or 20 kHz).

(click photo to enlarge)

Here's what the same song as an .mp3 file looks like:

(click photo to enlarge)

See that white line with the number 12.07 kHz? The colored lines have a sharp drop there, that's because there is no audio above 12 kHz. I'm pretty sure you want to keep that portion of the audio spectrum, don't you?


How do we avoid this happening to our mixes? Well if you know what you're doing then it will never happen, ever.

I am fluent in Pro Tools so I'll speak to my knowledge there, but the process is generally the same whether you use Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Nuendo or some other DAW.

When you bounce your mix out of your DAW you will want to create .wav or .aif files. The bit depth and sample rate will vary depending on those settings for your session. If your session is at 24 bit 48 kHz then feel free to bounce your mix at the same settings, however, never select anything less than 16 bit, 44.1 kHz as this is the audio CD standard and you won't want to go below this. Oh, and make sure the output is set to "Stereo Interleaved" that way you get a single file on your drive, but it's a stereo file. The other acceptable option is "Multi Mono" which as you might guess creates two files a .L and a .R for the left and the right channels of audio. This is fine, but I find it easier to keep up with a single file rather than two.

Now you have a folder with some mixes. How do you get it to your mastering session? If your mixes are 24 bit an audio disc is out of the question so you could put them on a USB drive, burn a data disc, or FTP them to the studio. If the mixes are 16 bit 44.1 kHz you can just burn an audio disc. Ahhh, but how do you plan on making that audio disc? Do you have a dedicated CD burning software? Something like Nero (pc), or Toast (mac)? One of these would be preferred, and if you use them you will generally have no problems at mastering. The problem comes when clients try and use one of two main pieces of software that will transform their mixes without them even knowing it.

They are iTunes and Windows Media Player. Let's take iTunes as the example since the same basic thing happens in WMP. In order to burn an audio disc in iTunes you have to import your files into your iTunes library. When you do that, iTunes converts your files to match the import settings that are selected in the preferences of the application.

Here's where you find the Import Settings in iTunes:

Under the iTunes menu select "Preferences" this is the window you see:

(click photo to enlarge)

When you click "Import Settings" you see this window:

(click photo to enlarge)

The default option when you install iTunes is the .aac encoder. Not unlike .mp3 compression .aac will file compress anything that you import into iTunes.

Once you've imported your files into iTunes you can burn a disc and think everything is fine, because, hey, it's an audio disc that means it's 16 bit 44.1 kHz, right? Wrong. Once a file loses that audio in the file compression stage it can never be brought back.

If you have to burn an Audio CD for mastering and your only software choice is to use iTunes, you'll have to change you're import settings to either the AIF encoder or the WAV encoder, also make sure that the "Settings" for import are set to 16 bit and 44.1 kHz. This will ensure that you import CD quality files into iTunes.

You should always strive to maintain the highest level of audio quality from start to finish of your project. Hopefully this helps achieve that goal.

An Introduction

I decided to create a blog, obviously. I've been thinking about different things I've learned and more importantly things I've seen done wrong over my 10 years in the world of mastering. So, this is where I plan to write about the mistakes that my clients have made that cost them time and more importantly, money.

I master music. If you know what that means then you, my friend, are in the minority.

To understand mastering it might be helpful to understand the process of making a recording of a song.

Step 1: Record all the separate parts of a song, this might include a drum kit, a bass part, some guitar tracks and vocals.

Step 2: Mix the tracks. In simple terms mixing is the process of taking all of those parts you just recorded and adjusting the volumes until you are happy with how the song sounds.

Step 3: Mastering, this is the final creative step in the process of recording a song. Again in simple terms mastering is taking the stereo mix and doing some adjustments to make the song sound the best it can. I'll sometimes compare it to what you have control of on your car stereo. Volume, bass and treble. It's a little more complex than that, but not much.

I'd love to cover everything right here, but what fun would that be? I've got plenty of stories and plenty of tips to help make your recording successful, well sonically that is, marketing is beyond my scope.

My hope is to use simple terms that can be easily understood by the novice engineer to help them make my life, and that of other mastering engineers easier.