I’m getting more and more people asking me about the need to get a dedicated master made for vinyl releases – maybe because I’ve posted videos like the one above – for more details check this link:

Red Hot Chili Peppers – ‘I’m With You” vinyl sounds better than CD

But I’ve got news for you – you don’t need to. It’s a myth.

A great master for CD can be a great master for vinyl, too.

Regardless of what you may have been told, most vinyl these days is cut directly from a CD production master – and it’s been that way for years.

Vinyl masters will probably use a higher-resolution file format, for example 24-bit and perhaps 48 or even 96 kHz sampling rate, but if the CD has already been mastered these will probably be available from the original mastering engineer for little or no extra cost.

And even if hi-res files aren’t available, a great CD master will give decent results, even at 16-bit 44.1 kHz.

So where does the myth come from ?

Why do people think a separate master is needed for vinyl ?

The main answer is (yet again) the Loudness War – but not for the reasons you might think.

I often read people saying that you can’t cut super-hot “loudness war” audio to vinyl, for fear of the needle skipping and jumping off the record.

But that’s wrong. In fact, the exact opposite is true !

There’s no reason not to put “loudness war” style music on vinyl – to use a well-known example, the vinyl and CD releases of Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” sound very similar indeed.

But very dynamic bass can cause this problem – and the solution is actually more compression – to reduce the dynamic range.

The original reason George Martin first started experimenting with overdubbing and heavily compressing Paul McCartney’s bass (on “Paperback Writer”, for those that are taking notes) was to stop the needle jumping, so they could match the “louder” sound of American releases of the time.

Yes, you read that right – The Beatles were part of the original loudness war !

Hang on, though…

Now, it IS true that if the average level on vinyl is consistently too high, the record may not sound as good and the lathe may even be damaged, so for this reason it’s the average level (or “loudness”) that determines how “hot” the record is cut, rather than the peak level.

But that means that with “hyper-compressed” loudness-war music there’s plenty of headroom left above the average signal on the vinyl for peaks and transients, which is why some people choose to make more dynamic masters for vinyl release – like the RHCP example above.

But it’s only necessary if the original master was stupid-loud in the first place.

If your CD master has what I consider optimal dynamics – DR8 or more overall – then it’s perfectly suitable for a flat transfer to vinyl. At least, assuming you don’t have any wild sibilance, hugely out-of-phase content, or all the bass panned to one channel !

And even if you do, the cutting engineer will take account of that as a matter of course during the cut – it doesn’t require a separate mastering session. Some engineers may make a few other subtle tweaks, if you agree, or even make it sound different, if you ask them to – but it’s NOT a technical requirement.

The optimal level for a vinyl cut depends on the RMS or VU level, and on the running time and speed (33 or 45 rpm) – whereas on a CD, the only absolute technical restriction is the peak level.

Summary

The short version is – there’s no “need” to get a separate vinyl master done, but it’s an option if you’d like to. The main advantage will be to get a more “dynamic” sound – more contrast between loud and quiet – but only if your CD master is “loudness war” loud.

The most cost-effective way to get a great-sounding release on vinyl is simply to send the hi-res master files directly to the cutting engineer. They will choose the best settings to get good results from the vinyl format based on the sound of your material, as part of the normal price. For a well-mastered album, it’s simply a case of choosing the correct level and perhaps a few minor tweaks – no extra mastering is required.

And in fact, it works backwards, too ! If you master with a great vinyl release in mind (using a VU meter?) then the chances are your music will sound superb on all the most advanced 21st-century formats, as well.

How’s that for irony ?
Getting well-balanced dynamics in your music is one of the keys to great sound – and you probably need to use compression to achieve it.

In mastering, multi-band compression can be an invaluable tool – to find out more, click here.

Why custom mastering for vinyl isn’t necessary is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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The time has come to let you know about something I’m really excited about – my new product, the Home Mastering Masterclass.

Probably the easiest way to tell you about it is to give you a sneak preview of the introduction video – so that’s what I’ve done ! Take a look at the video above, if you haven’t already – and you should be right up to speed.

What is the Home Mastering Masterclass ?

The idea is to give you a set of “fly on the wall” screen-capture videos while I master a selection of songs on my home setup. They’re from a range of different genres – rock, pop, dance, metal, acoustic soundtrack and jazz, using a range of software packages and plugins, including the popular Ozone plugins by isotope, for example.

I’ll share exactly what I’m doing, how and why – and you’ll learn a mass of useful tools and techniques along the way.

I’ve also been talking to the people whose music I’m mastering – just as I would in a real mastering session – and recording the conversations, to give you some insight into how they were recorded and mixed – and why. I can say already that the recordings are almost as interesting as the actual mastering videos in some cases, and there’s a mass of extra information in these, too !

Why have I made it ?

Because you’ve asked me to.

Well, maybe not you, personally, but every day I get emails, tweets and Facebook messages from people wanting to know more about how they can do a better job mastering their own music at home.

Some people actually asked me to master their songs for them, and then share what I’d done and why. This is a great approach, but there was always a huge amount of extra detail and information that I couldn’t share – simply because there wasn’t enough time to write it all down for them !

That’s where I came up with the idea of making screen-capture recordings for them, and that’s where the idea for the Home Mastering Masterclass comes from. These videos were the most efficient way I could think of to share as much information as possible quickly – and allow you to hear exactly what I’m talking about, too.

For less than the price of mastering a single song plus a follow-up Skype consultation, you’ll get seven mastering tutorials, my interviews with the artists, and an “Essentials” video where I’ll share with you my philosophy of mastering, including the “Three Ms”:

1. My mastering workflow
2. The requirements of mastering monitoring and
3. How to get into the “mastering mindset”

By the end you’re going to have a really comprehensive understanding of what, why and how you can get the best results mastering your own music at home.

Of course for the very best results I still recommend you come to a professional – but if you want to do it yourself, this set of videos will help you do the best job possible !

Great ! When will it be released ?

Soon…

Or more accurately – when it’s ready !

I can’t promise exactly when they’ll be done, because it depends on my other work demands but more importantly, I don’t want to rush things. If you’d like to be notified as soon as the final product is available though, add your email address to this box, and click Submit.

Announcing the Home Mastering Masterclass video package is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Here’s the theory

People are listening to music on iPod earbuds, they’re listening to it on laptop speakers, they’re listening to it on mobile phone speakers.

So that’s what we should use to make our final mix and master decisions on, right ?

Make it sound good on what end users are listening to it on – the lowest common denominator. Simple, right ?

Wrong

Here’s the problem

That theory is nonsense.

Here’s why

Have you ever heard a really great sound system ? One that’s incredibly accurate, that’s incredibly revealing, that’s incredibly expensive ?

Your music sounded great on it, right ?

Wrong again…

• The better the reproduction system, the more music that sounds bad on it.
• The more revealing the monitoring, the more revealing it is - of flaws and problems.
• The more accurate the playback is, the harder it is to make something sound great.
• The closer to perfection the speakers are, the closer to perfection your mixes need to be.

Only a handful of albums sound outstanding on the very best playback systems in the world.

Whereas crappy playback systems hide all those flaws.

Most people listen to their music in the background, while they’re doing other stuff, talking on the phone, with the kids playing in the background – so why do we bother with dedicated studios ? Why not mix on laptop speakers, sitting at the kitchen table ?

Because all that stuff is distracting, it adds noise, and it masks details.

The same thing is true of crappy speakers. Their poor frequency response, substandard imaging and high self-distortion hide all the details in your mix and master. They also hide the damage you can do with over-compression, excessive distortion, digital clipping - and plain old bad mixing.

If all you use to judge your mix is a cheap pair of earbuds or a set of laptop speakers, you can do huge amounts of damage – without realising it.

If you aren’t listening on the best quality system you can get, you might as well have your fingers in your ears.

Hang on, though

If all that’s true, why do so many people swear by NS10s ? Why were those crappy auratone speakers so popular ? And why do so many engineers still check their mixes in the car ?

Because those are still useful perspectives. They can still tell you useful stuff.

The best-sounding mix in the world can fall apart on a crappy speaker. And despite everything I just said, people do listen to music on some of the lowest-fidelity systems imaginable. On mobile phone speakers, FFS !

So every so often, you need to do a reality check, and make sure that amazing subby baseline is actually audible on small speakers. You need to make sure that those vocals still cut through on laptop speakers. And that you can still hear the drums when you’re doing eighty on the motorway.

But those are the worst-case scenarios, and if they’re all you mix for, you end up with worst-case mixes. Who knows how it will sound on a best-case system ? Or even just a half-way decent one ?

When you make your real decisions, your final calls, your best choices, do it on the best gear you have – for the best-case scenario. Then you get best-case mixes, that still work in the worst-case scenario.

Mastering engineers have been doing it this way for decades. Because it works.

Mastering and mixing for the lowest common denominator ?

BAD idea.

Image by Jonathan Powell

Mastering for earbuds ? BAD Idea is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Dither is one of the most widely misunderstood elements of the digital audio chain.

People don’t know what it is, they don’t know when to use it, and they don’t know how.

This post aims to fix that, and make it really simple. But before we get started though, let’s quickly answer a few of the questions.

What is dither ?

Dither is low-level noise added to digital audio when reducing the bit-depth to prevent quantisation distortion.

Quantisation what ?

Imagine a really quiet audio signal, just poking its head above the quietest signal your digital recorder can resolve. It’s so quiet, it’s only using the last available bit.

Without dither, all the encoder can do is choose to have that bit switched either on, or off. So instead of an accurate reproduction of the original signal, you get a gritty, grainy, gated fizz instead – you’ve added quantisation distortion.

And dither helps… how ?

In the simplest case, you just randomly switch that last bit on and off. The result is white noise – hiss – simple dither.

Now add in your very quiet signal again, and instead of having to constantly decide whether to switch that last bit on and off for the incoming signal, all the encoder does is add it onto the random dither value, and encode that instead.

The result is a better representation of the very quiet signal. It’s bathed in dither hiss, but it’s no longer gritty, grainy or gated – it’s just a very quiet sound covered in hiss.

That’s what dither does. The gritty grainy gated fizz is quantisation distortion – and you can remove it by adding dither.

(Actually strictly speaking, you’re not really removing it, you’re just de-correlating it from the input signal – but I said I was going to keep this simple…)

In fact, dither actually allows the system to resolve sounds below the theoretical noise-floor, unlikely as that might sound.

Can we really hear the difference ?

All this stuff is happening to only the very quietest elements of the mix, though – so surely it’s too quiet for us to hear ?

No.

The results can be plainly audible at normal listening levels on many musical signals. Like mp3 artefacts they’re subtle, until you notice them – but after that they’re not subtle at all.

Quantisation distortion makes things sounds brittle, gritty, and collapses stereo imaging. In comparison the correctly dithered versions sound fuller, warmer, smoother and more “analogue”.

So when do we do it, again ?

It’s necessary whenever you reduce a digital signal to a lower bit-depth – for example from 24 down to 16-bit – but also, whenever you process a sound using fixed-point arithmetic.

Let me say that again.

Whenever you process a sound using fixed-point arithmetic.

So if you only ever work in one audio application, which works exclusively with 32-bit floating-point DSP, and always saves it that way, you’re OK. Oh, and all your plugins need to do it the same way, too. And they need to do it right. And they need to do it in a way that’s 100% compatible with your DAW. And not have any bugs.

Now that’s not an impossible scenario, by any means – but the question is, how do you know everything is working right ? If any plugin isn’t working as intended, your audio could get messed up without you realising it at any point. If you use that plugin on multiple tracks, it could be happening multiple times in a mix.

Don’t Panic

The good news is, there are several things you can do to avoid this problem

1. Work at 24-bit as a minimum

Quantisation distortion at 24-bit will be much less audible. Notice I’m not saying completely inaudible, though. Depending on the material, sometimes you can hear it even at 24-bit. Especially if things get processed over and over again.

2. Always use dither

This is a catch-all. If you always use dither when bouncing or saving fixed-point files, you won’t get quantisation distortion. (Well, you might, with a really badly-written plugin – but hopefully that’s a very rare scenario.)

Hang on !

There are people who’ll tell you this is a bad idea too, though.

Because remember, every time you dither, you’re adding a little extra noise to the signal.

And (again, depending on the material) sometimes that extra noise can change the sound slightly, too. Especially when you take into consideration all the different “flavours” of dither – almost every manufacturer has its own variety – Waves, POW-R, Apogee…

Relax – its just noise

All this debate is a red herring, though. Just stick with simple “triangular” dither, and you’ll be fine. After all, it’s just noise – and very quiet noise, at that.

All your favourite recordings from the 50s to the 90s were bathed in hiss – and they still sounded great. And that hiss was at a much higher level than any dither. Yes, dither may have a TINY effect on the sound – but you’re going to make much bigger changes with almost every other process you can apply, at any stage. Stop agonising.

When it comes to the final mastering stage, reducing down to 16 bits for CD burning, by all means pick your favourite fancy variety of dither – but before then, just switch on something simple and worry about things that really matter.

Dither is just hiss, and hiss is your friend.

Whereas quantisation distortion is one of the most unnatural, irritating, insidious, digital-in-a-bad-way forms of audio nastiness you can inflict on your music.

Don’t do it it.

When in doubt, dither.

Image from Wikipedia

When in doubt, dither is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Update – Check out the end of this post for an exclusive offer !

The TT Loudness Mater is no longer the only (or best) way to measure the dynamics of your music.

One of the most popular posts on this site has always been “How to avoid over-compressing your mix” – an introduction to using the TT meter, plus an introduction to the ideas of “dynamic range”, or “crest factor”.

Over the years since I wrote the post and have been promoting the meter, it’s come in for some criticism for the way that it calculates the DR measurements, and even the idea of measuring “loudness” or making recommendations about it at all.

But just in the last year, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has agreed official definitions of loudness measurement – the “loudness unit” (LU) and both short and long-term “loudness range” recommendations. These are now being adopted internationally as standards – and are even becoming law in the US as a means of regulating the loudness of adverts between programmes.

This means that regardless of whether you think measuring loudness is valid or useful, it’s happening – and in the future, the playback volume of almost all streamed and broadcast music is going to be based on similar measurements.

All music will be standardised to an average playback level, so the “loudness” of your music will have no effect on its playback volume, in many situations

What will have an influence on the way it sounds though, is the use of dynamics.

And understanding how this works, and how to read the new meters that measure these new standards, will be crucial to getting the best results

If your music is crushed up against the 0dBFS digital limit, it might read as little as -6 or -4 LU on the new meters. These values are roughly equivalent to DR6 and DR4 on the TT meter. During playback their volume will be adjusted down to the recommended ITU average of… -23 LU !

(This may sound surprisingly low, but is designed to take account of the much higher peak levels of some broadcast material – for example feature films and classical music.)

So if your music reads -4 LU on the new meters, it will have only those 4 dB to use as headroom above the -23 LU average – for any contrast, for light and shade and dynamic impact.

Whereas something that the TT measures as having DR8 or more will read something like -8 LU on the new meters, and will have all of those 8dB (or more) available to help make it sound great at the new standardised playback volume.

This is what we’ve been talking about all along – the “red herring” of crushing your music in an attempt to make it loud will be completely cancelled out on playback

Music with more dynamics will have more punch, impact and power – in a word, it’ll sound louder !

Learn how the new meters work

To see how the meters work in practise, and how their readings relate to the TT meter, check out the video above – it demonstrates two of my favourites from the new batch of loudness meters that are being released, plus a recap of the TT meter and comparisons between them.

Both the just-released TC Electronic LM6 and Nugen VisLM are excellent, but both cost over $500. However there are also several much more affordable options. One I mention in the video is the free (PC only) KVR AC-R128 meter, which only gives numerical readouts – but there’s also a plugin I didn’t know about when I made the video, the Toneboosters EBULoudness plugin, for both Mac and PC. I haven’t tried it yet, but it has a “history” graph similar to the one in the Nugen VisLM, although still without the “range” indicator that I like so much. It only costs $14 though, so has to be worth a look !

I also tried the Waves WLM meter, although it’s not featured in the video – this also features a comprehensive set of tools for measuring ITU loudness – including the ability to automatically recognise dialogue – but lacks the intuitive graphical displays of the Nugen or the TC meters.

The final option in the video isn’t an EBU-based meter at all though, it’s quite different – and it might be my favourite of all them. It only costs $9, and I strongly recommend you give it a try

What is it ? You’ll just have to watch the video and find out : )

Happy metering !

Update – exclusive offer

I’ve arranged a fantastic 25% discount for Production Advice readers on the Nugen VisLM meter that I demonstrate in the video.

All you need to do to take advantage of the offer is click this link:

http://www.nugenaudio.com/shop_exclusive.php

and use the discount code “solved” (without the quotes) in the shopping code to save a whopping $120 !

The offer will only be available this month, so if you want the very best loudness meter money can buy at a bargain price, grab it now !

The best loudness metering plugins money can buy – and my favourite alternative (for only 9 dollars !) is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
Subscribe to the newsletter for great content from the archives, special offers and a free interview - for more information, click here

So as the dust starts to settle on this year’s Dynamic Range Day, I have a moment to revisit “Mastered for iTunes” – hopefully for the last time !

Why do I need to ? Because since my recent posts about this subject, I’ve been criticised for them. Some of it’s justified, but much of it isn’t, and I wanted to answer some of the comments.

The story so far

So first of all, if you haven’t already read my summary of what “Mastered for iTunes” is – and what I think of it – please read this post:

Mastered for iTunes – the saviour of great sound?

(Short version – I applaud Apple’s initiative; I’m excited by the implication that lossless audio from Apple may be just around the corner; and I fervently hope that MFi will ultimately lead to an improvement in audio quality – but the early signs aren’t enouraging.)

Now, the other two posts I’ve made about MFi are both more critical of the way the idea is being publicised, and they focus particularly around the suggestion made by some engineers that we should be making special “tweaked” masters to compensate for way that AAC encoding changes the sound of our audio.

(Bear in mind – the hype about this process was how we first found out about “Mastered for iTunes”, not via the recently released Apple guidelines.)

If you want to read the posts, here they are:

Mastered for iTunes – sonic revelation, or meaningless sales hype ?

Mastered for iTunes ‘sounds closer to the the CD’ – I’m calling BS

These are the two posts that have attracted the most criticism. I’ll go through some of these points and address them.

1 – I only demonstrates my test on one song – that doesn’t prove anything

True !

Hands up – absolutely, and in the heat of the moment when making my “null test” video I completely ignored this, and used words like “proof” – I should have known better. Small sample sizes can never prove anything.

On the other hand, I’ve yet to hear an example of “tweaked” MFi audio that lives up to the hype…

2 – Apple never said MFi sounded “closer to the CD”, they said it sounded “closer to the source”

Well yes… and I never claimed they did.

The “closer to the CD” comments were made by the engineers who worked on the RHCP album, after my original post.

Many sites picked up on my “null test” post, and some people interpreted it as if I were saying that Apple were trying to deceive us – but that was never my intention. I added updates to the original post to make my point clearer.

On the other hand, Apple do have a section in the iTunes store called “Mastered for iTunes”, featuring albums like “I’m With You” and “Beyond Magnetic” which actually disregard Apple’s own guidelines. These clearly state that “clipped” samples should be avoided – but here’s the output summary of Apple’s own “afclip” utility from the song “Hate Train” from “Beyond Magnetic”, developed to help mastering engineers avoid this pitfall:

total clipped samples Left on-sample: 105510 inter-sample: 286969
total clipped samples Right on-sample: 130525 inter-sample: 360890

Whereas the whole second half of “Bredan’s Death Song” from “I’m With You” reads an intersample peak level of +1dBFS.

Until very recently this release was one of the first you’d come across in the MFi section of the store.

And even Coldplay’s “Mylo Xloto”, mastered by the legendary Bob Ludwig – who has often spoken out against the loudness wars – fails to take maximum advantage of the extra quality offered by the new 24/96 masters requested by Apple. It’s DR values are indisinguishable from the CD, sadly – although they are at least more reasonable than many recent releases.

Bob has even confirmed in an interview that unlike the engineers I mention above, he has no special approach to mastering for an AAC encode:

The creative part of the mastering process hasn’t changed one bit with the Mastered for iTunes program. Ludwig said he masters his music exactly the same way. The change comes after the creative process is finished — that’s where Mastered for iTunes comes in.

This makes perfect sense to me, but confirms my instinct that the benefits of Apple’s new MFi guidelines at this stage will be minimal on most music.

3 – Null tests don’t tell you anything about the way things sound

True. (Although they can give you clues.)

But again, I never said they did. I used a null test because my ears told me something didn’t sound right first, and the test simply confirmed this – ie. that there was a bigger difference between one pair of files than the other.

4 – My null-test was invalid – I don’t have the original files

The suggestion here is that to do a “scientific” comparison, I need access to the original 24/96 masters.

Actually, no. Because again, I wasn’t testing Apple’s claim that their new AAC encoder sounds closer to the source, I was testing the engineer’s claims that their tweaked masters sounded closer to the CD. So all I need to make that comparison is the CD, and their final files – which I have.

But while we’re on the subject:

DO Apple’s new encodes sound “closer to the source” ?

Well, perhaps theoretically – but in my tests, not much. Not in their current 16-bit, 44.1 kHz form, anyway.

I took a few 24/96 masters from my own archive and encoded them using Apple’s new “droplet” utility, and the standard iTunes encoder from my own CD down-sampled and dithered versions.

There was a difference, yes – but I doubt if most people will hear it. So how do I know there really was a difference ? Because the null test shows it. But unlike the EQ tweaks revealed by testing the MFi “tweaked” masters, this null revealed differences so small I could barely hear them at normal listening levels.

Of course, it may be that the files I used just happened not to reveal any differences – but they all had plenty of >20 kHz frequency content, which is the only area that could make a significant difference.

More likely is that whereas as mastering engineer, I’ve chosen the very best sample-rate conversion and dithering software I can find, there’s plenty out there that isn’t as good – and Apple’s version may well sound better than these options.

That in itself is enough justification for supplying hi-res files as Apple suggest – but won’t make much difference to professionally mastered audio.

Conclusion

Apple’s “Mastered for iTunes” initiative is great, and I’m behind it all the way. Sadly, I’ve yet to hear an MFi release that even begins to realise the potential of the idea, and several that change the sound in pointless ways – in my opinion.

Null tests and clipping-detection utilites are far less important than what our ears tell us of course, but so far they are backing up what my ears tell me – that “tweaking” masters for AAC encoding is misguided and ineffective, and despite the hype and it’s genuine potential, “Mastered for iTunes” is a concept that has so far failed to make any real impact on the quality of the audio we’re hearing on mainstream releases.

Mastered for iTunes – null and void testing ? is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Apple’s new “Mastered for iTunes” has been causing quite a buzz recently – and causing lots of confusion.

I’m going to try and explain it all as clearly as I can.

[Update edit: I started out sceptical, but after new clues have been discovered about Apple's plans for "Mastered for iTunes", I'm actually very excited by the opportunity it presents - check out the "Stop Press" update at the end of this post.]

There are four five ways that the term “Mastered for iTunes” can be interpreted.

1. Mastered for iTunes is a set of utilities and guidelines

The easiest to understand and least controversial definition of “Mastered for iTunes” is described on this page on Apple’s site, here:

Mastered for iTunes – the guidelines

Basically it’s a set of guidelines for people to follow, to ensure you get the best quality versions of you music files available in the iTunes Music Store. Apple also include free utilities that allow you to preview how your files will sound once they’re encoded.

The guidelines are great – they encourage you to submit the highest quality files, and suggest how avoid falling into common traps that affect the quality – for example avoiding clipping and not over-cooking the music’s level because of the so-called “Loudness Wars“.

At the moment, the final files are still 44.1 KHz, 256 Kbps AAC files – so, they’re perceptually encoded files, using lossy compression – basically like high-class mp3s.

Whether you’ll hear a real difference from submitting a 24/96 version of your music is debatable – my quick tests suggest the answer is “not much” – but Apple also hint that in future they will use the high-quality masters to offer better downloadable versions in future, which can only be a good thing.

So far, so good.

2. Mastered for iTunes is a section of the iTunes Store

Here’s where things get a bit messier. Apple have also created a specific section of the iTunes store for files that have been mastered according to the “Mastered for iTunes” concept.

Mastered for iTunes – in the iTunes store

BUT this section includes examples that clearly don’t follow the guidlelines!

So for example, titles like Metallica’s “Beyond Magnetic” and the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “I’m With You” are both clear “loudness war” casulties – mastered at a ridiculously high levels and lifeless and full of distortion as a result.

They may have been supplied as hi-res files, but when the vinyl sounds better, you know something’s gone wrong.

3. Mastered for iTunes is being used for hype, hot air and BS

Talking about “I’m With You” brings us to the area where this all gets really murky.

Because no matter how good the new “Mastered for iTunes” files are, they’re still made using lossy compression. A certain amount of detail is thrown away, so they sound different to the source.

Some engineers go so far as to say that AAC encoding actually changes the sound. And in fact, that you need to “compensate” for this in the mastering. They’re making new masters to account for this, that they claim sound “closer to the CD”.

This is nonsense. I made a YouTube video about it – to hear it for yourself, click here.


BUT

4. Mastered for iTunes is also an opportunity

Just because the masters for “I’m With You” sound less like the CD than a straight rip, doesn’t mean they had to be that way.

There’s nothing wrong with the option of making an iTunes master sound different to the CD – in fact, there’s the opportunity to make it sound better.

Imagine if the “Mastered for iTunes” version of “I’m With You” had sounded more like the vinyl !

In that case, I’d have no reservations in declaring the process a huge success. The disadvantages of the lossy encode would be completely outweighed by the improvement in sound.

This would be nothing to do with high sample rates or bit depths, but everything to do with great mastering. It wouldn’t sound “closer to the CD”, it would sound better – because it would have more dynamics, more depth, more space, more punch – just better.

Maybe there are already “Mastered for iTunes” titles out there that already achieve this goal – if so, I’d love to hear them.

5. STOP PRESS – Update: Mastered for iTunes will use a new lossless format

Since I wrote this post, Tom Davenport has unearthed some very interesting new information over on Gizmodo:

Apple is secretly upgrading your iTunes library

In a nutshell, Tom believes Apple are going to use the new HD-AAC format to allow us fully lossless access to files that have been “Mastered for iTunes” at some point in the future.

You should read the full article for all the details, but this is huge – and it makes it all the more critical that musicians, labels and mastering engineers take advantage of this future format upgrade.

What’s the point of lossless 24/96 masters if they don’t sound great ?

The good news is that according to this post, Dynamic Range Day supporter Bob Ludwig has already done this, with Coldplay’s “Mylo Xloto”, for example.

It still sounds pretty squashed to me, unfortunately, and I don’t see a difference in the measured DR values, but this is what we need – engineers making new, better-sounding masters for future higher-quality formats.

Tell the world you want this

So is “Mastered for iTunes” the saviour of great sound after all ?

No.

Apple have given us the opportunity, but it’s still up to us to make the most of the new guidelines and future format upgrade to get great sound.

I’d love this to become a reality – for the “Mastered for iTunes” label to come synonymous with Great Sound – and even better sound when Apple eventually increase the quality of their download format.

If you agree – spread the word !

Post social media updates, start forum threads, support Dynamic Range Day – let people know we want “Mastered for iTunes” to really mean something.

Mastered for iTunes – the saviour of great sound? is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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[Edit: Some people are getting confused about exactly what "Mastered with iTunes" means, and what it is - for all the details, click here.]

So, the “Mastered for iTunes” concept has been getting a lot of press in the last couple of days, and there’s a claim that’s being made that bugs me.

Specifically, it’s being said that the “Mastered for iTunes” versions ‘sound closer to the CD’.

Not true.

Test-ably not true.

Don’t believe me ? Watch the video. It proves this claim is untrue, by using a technique know as ‘null testing’ to highlight the sonic differences.

As I say in the video, people may well prefer the “Mastered for iTunes” versions, and there’s absolutely no reason not to make a specific master for a particular release format – but to say that it sounds ‘closer to the CD’ is just wrong.

Let me know what you think in the comments !

Update

Just to be clear, it’s the specific mastering processing that’s supposed to be “optimised for mastering” that I’m calling out here – the sonic choices made by the mastering engineer.

Apple have release an excellent set of guidelines on Mastering for iTunes, and I’m delighted to see a clear discussion of issues like the loudness wars, sample rate conversion, dither and clipping.

BUT the fact that the new Apple encoders can correctly handle high sample rates, and should make a better job on the conversion, STILL doesn’t mean that the files will sound ‘closer to CD’.

In fact, since at the end of the day we’re still getting a lossy encode, it’s my opinion that the advantages of higher bit-depths and sample rates will be completely outweighed by the AAC encoding.

If Apple really care about giving us high-quality audio, they should offer lossless formats… but that’s a whole other blog post !

Update 2

A few people have asked me where the claim that “Mastered for iTunes” masters sound “closer to the CD” comes from.

To be clear, this isn’t something that Apple themselves have said, to my knowledge.

The phrase originally came from Scott Hull’s comment on the first post I wrote about Mastering for iTunes, discussing the RHCP release:

http://productionadvice.co.uk/mastered-for-itunes/

September 2, 2011 at 4:14 am:

“The goal of the unique AAC master of the Chili Peppers album was to make it sound as close to the CD as possible. The ears involved in the process felt it was a success. Pick up the CD and compare to the AAC file with your ears. It’s really damn close. Keep in mind, I’m not addressing whether or not you like the sound of the CD. It was RR’s goal to make the Itunes file as true to the sound of the CD as possible despite the data reduction. A lot of time, effort and careful listening went into this project. This was not just media hype.”

And, here’s Rick Rubin saying that AAC encoding needs to be compensated for:

http://read.mtvhive.com/2011/09/01/rick-rubin-explains-what-mastering-for-itunes-means/

The video in this post was was prompted by the Ars Technica article recently:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2012/02/mastered-for-itunes-how-audio-engineers-tweak-tunes-for-the-ipod-age.ars

- which included quotes like

“The problem? The AAC compression algorithm is “quite quirky.” Without compressing a song, and carefully listening to it, then comparing to the uncompressed master, there’s no way to predict how the sound will change. Vlado Meller, another engineer at Masterdisk, described mastering for iTunes “like polishing your Bentley in total darkness, then turning on the lights to see where you missed.”

“There are no accurate real-time tools to help you hear what the algorithm will do,” VanDette said. “It was not uncommon to revise tracks three, four, even five times until I got something that compared well with the CD.”

Slightly different words, but the same spin. And still not true.

Mastered for iTunes ‘sounds closer to the the CD’ – I’m calling BS is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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The most popular post on my site right now is this one:

How to make your music loud

The video above is a “sequel” to that post, in a way, because it demonstrates many of the techniques I talk about in the original post.

(I’m not saying you should make your music really loud, by the way – far from it. But if that’s what you’re going to do, I’d prefer you to make a good job of it : )

The video was inspired by an email from Brendan Zacharias, a musician and producer who recently bought a copy of my eBook and video package Mastering with Multiband Compression.

(Multiband compression can be an invaluable tool for getting loud, punchy mixes without crushing the life out of your mix – to find out more, click here.)

Brendan was having problems matching the level of his songs, “Graphite” to a commercial release, even though he was following the guidelines in my eBook.

Here’s an excerpt from his email:

I know it is extremely hot, rms getting up to -3 and a DR of 2.7!! so I know this is ridiculously over compressed however, the drums sound nice and clear and punchy, all the bass is present and it just has a nice energy which of course sounds great over a club sound system. Even If I compress my mix to these levels it just lacks that in your face attitude, Is there something i’m missing?

I asked Brendan to send me before and after copies of his track, plus the commercial song he was trying to emulate, and once I’d heard it, I knew I could answer his question – in fact, it highlighted three key issues on making a loud master.

Instead of writing an email reply to him, I thought instead I’d do a video demo, so you can hear what my reply was, too. I sent Brendan a sneak preview of the video, and he said:

Great video, Deffinitely opened a few things up to me which I hadn’t been introduced to before.

I guess the thing which really answered my question the most, and I guarantee most young producers in my position won’t know about this same technique is using the eq to cut the bottom end and then using the gain utility to bring the apparent gain back up.

Most of the other guides and tutorials I have read on the internet have only talked about compressing and then boosting the top and bottom end using an eq. Maybe when writing the post you should really emphasize this point as it may be simple to you, but a completely new concept to others!

So, just to add some extra clarity to this point – bass has a big influence on the apparent loudness of a song, partly because it account for more of the power in the signal – so, it’s crucial to get the right EQ balance before you try to lift the level.

(I’m not just talking about slapping a high-pass filter across everything though, you need carefully chosen settings depending on the song – watch the video to see what I mean.)

The video was made on my home mastering setup, and the plugins I’m using use are made by Melda Production – if you’d like to know more about how (and why) I use them, I’ve made a series of free email tutorials – for more information, click this link:

Mastering with plugins – A free ‘quickstart’ eCourse

And, if you’re interested to learn more about multiband compression, as well as the link above you can check out a free 50-minute webinar I did with Joe Gilder, here.

I hope you find the video useful !

How to master a song loud – and the price you pay (Video tutorial) is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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I’m signed up to the Facebook group “End the Loudness War“. Last week Harman Aaron Loučka posted a heads-up that an example of the vinyl release of the new Red Hot Chile Peppers album, “I’m With You”, had been posted on YouTube.

I headed over to check it out, since vinyl releases often show as having better dynamics (“crest factor”, to be strictly correct) than their CD equivalents in the Dynamic Range Database. I don’t have a record deck though, so hadn’t had a chance to check it out, until now.

The results were pretty clear, and I’ve made my own short YouTube clip to demonstrate the difference. Take a listen, and see if you can hear a difference, and which one you prefer.

This is not a vinyl versus CD thing

Whatever you decide, it’s important to know – what you’re hearing is NOT some inherent limitation of the quality of the CD format.

CD and vinyl do sound different, but with identical masters, they should sound very close to each other. Much closer than this.

These are not identical masters – on the CD, the crest factor is about 6 dB less than on the vinyl, and there are some EQ differences too. (And, the vinyl is playing at a slightly higher pitch)

Yup, it’s the loudness war again.

The loudness war is insane

This means that the quality of the CD version, which is theoretically a far superior format technically, is lower (in my opinion) than the vinyl.

This is insane.

At the very least, they should sound similar, so that people who prefer vinyl can choose it for it’s particular characteristics.

As it is, since I prefer the mastering of the vinyl release, the only way for me to hear this version is to buy a record deck or download an illegal rip of the vinyl. Madness !

Why does the vinyl sound different ?

Of course, it’s sadly no surprise that a RHCP CD sounds like this – “Californication” helped kick-start the loudness war in the first place, and producer Rick Rubin is a serial offender, mistakenly believing that people always prefer a more heavily compressed version – they don’t, as research shows.

What’s interesting is to notice that the vinyl was released a couple of months after the CD. Since they were all mastered by Vlado Meller at Masterdisc, the question is, why does the vinyl sound different ?

Was this simply following the ironically perverse trend of “audiophile” vinyl releases ? Or might it be in response to the generally harsh reception of the album’s sound all over the web ?

We can only hope it’s the later…

For more information on the Loudness War, click here.

PS

As an interesting side-note, notice how YouTube’s lossy data-compressed audio sounds worse for the CD version – more artefacts.

This is further proof that higher-quality, more dynamic music actually survives better when mp3-ed, and makes it even more sadly ironic that the CD master was the basis for the so-called “mastered for iTunes” version.

And, a sadly missed opportunity – since there were separate masters for CD and iTunes, the iTunes version could actually have sounded better…

Red Hot Chili Peppers – ‘I’m With You” vinyl sounds better than CD is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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