I work in the professional audio recording industry.
Mostly CD/DVD Mastering, which is the final creative/technical/QC step that a professional album release goes through, before it goes to the duplication house.
*I take all the finished stereo mixes that an artist, group, or producer leaves a recording/mixing session with & process them, to give the mixes a kind of polish...that
"professionally produced record - sound". Mastering is also where the overall volume of the tracks is
leveled out to a relative volume level & where the overblown
loudness level of current commercial audio CD's & MP3's, (
etc) comes from.
*Once all the tracks are processed, I edit the disc together, putting the songs in playback order, adding fade-in's/fade-out's/cross-fades & any other specialized editing needs, then timing the spaces or cross-fades between tracks & finally adding the track start & end flags (PQ codes).
*A reference disc of the master is burned for the client to listen to & proofed out before the final master is written.
*Once it is approved & all listened to for QC,
double checked & saved, a Master Disc (
or DDP file) is written & then data verified.
*CD-R masters are run through error & pit-depth test's & a PDF file of the error report & PQ codes are printed out and put in a folder with the sealed & guaranteed master, to be sent out to the duplication facility.
It is the final part of the recording process, that makes a CD or Vinyl
(or even MP3:evil: ) release sound
"professional". And is the reason your friend's band's home recording is 8-to-12dB quieter than the commercial CD you took out of your player to put his in.
(This loudness difference is not necessarily a good thing BTW, just the current trend:? ...To get most modern music that loud, you have to destroy the dynamic impact of the musical performance itself with compression & limiting, which can not be undone & the result is just plain boring to listen to for longer periods of time. Not to mention totally unnecessary...since absolutely every music player out there has a volume control & each listener is going to adjust it to their preferred listening level anyway:?: )
I still do some recording & mixing sessions, but mostly mastering now, I've been in this line of work for about 20 years now, I started out when the only computers in the studio where out in the lobby, sitting on the receptionist's desk!!
I cut my teeth editing 1/2" & 1/4"-analog tape, I've even done
"window editing" on 2", 24-track tape!! Where you cut a
window into the 2"-tape, editing only 4-to-20 of the 24 available tracks on the tape.
Not your grandmother's tape-editing!:lol:
But I've been about 80% high-resolution digital for well over 10 years now, so it's not like I'm some analog dinosaur or anything.
Anyway, that's what I've been doing for a while now.....but I actually
just got hired on at a major label mastering studio in LA, to do a huge, audiophile archiving project!!!
I'll be doing 1/2" & 1/4" analog tape-to-high resolution digital transfers of their
entire catalog from the 1950's to the 1990's!!!! A lot of the older, more obscure, master tapes are labeled incorrectly, or not even labeled at all, so I'll be doing some detective work as well, tracking down the artist's, song's & album title's, to document it in the Meta Data of the high-res digital audio file & in their proprietary data base for future reference & release, etc...
I literally just got the job this past weekend!!! It is a pretty big step up from what I've been doing for the past few years in terms of
"professional positions in the audio industry" & more money than I've made in my entire adult life, so I am pretty damn excited about it!!!
The past few years have been pretty
lean & hard, so the timing for this is just right as well....it's been a long time coming!!
On top of all that, I'm going to be moving to LA within the next few weeks for this job &
I'll be able to get my Medicinal MJ card very soon!!!
(the friend I stayed with this past weekend has his card & lets just say I was impressed!!)
Which means I'll get to enjoy the
worry-free smoking....
(of some of the best of the best in the world)....of one of my
favorite plants!!
I think me & LA are gonna get along together
juuuuuuuuust fine!!!!
This has been such a great start to the new year!!
I hope you all have the same kind of luck I have this year in whatever it is you desire to pursue!!!
Sorry for the long winded answer
like I said, I
am a bit excited!!!
Cheers!
WS
