*.txt files are discussions I've been archiving from the the sonic, ddesign, and daw-mac mailing lists and rec.audio.pro newsgroup and a few other places. I've generally edited out the bulky headers and sigs. I used to update these every once in a while. (Alas, I don't have time to do so anymore.) The latest update is shown in parens. (Sorry the articles aren't always in any particular order...)
Some of these threads contain posts that are at times critical of some products... please remember these are just one person's opinion, and that many folks swear by the products discussed here, so when reading these remember there is a larger context...
| Read this article by Bob Katz, which warns of the dangers of overcompression. Read it now. Read it before you read anything else. The decreasing dynamic range of CD's is something that's concerned me for a while now, and I'm glad that mastering engineers are talking about it and educating their clients about the problem. |
| Mastering Houses | |
|---|---|
| recommendations.txt - every once in a while, somebody asks for names and numbers of good mastering engineers... here's the nets collected two cents (10-7-95) | |
|
MUST VISITS (highly informative) |
DRT Digital Domain |
| Mastering Houses | Hotdish Frankford/Wayne Rocket Lab Ultimate One (Hong Kong) Trevor Sadler Final Edit Mastering |
| Restoration and Mastering | Quintessential Sound Omega |
| Mastering & More | HotWax Nilson Creative Media Corp. The iNTERLAB Overtom |
| Digital Audio Workstations | |
|---|---|
| digid-vs-sonic.txt - Digidesign vs. Sonic Solutions, what's right for you? (12-26-95) | |
 Sonic Solutions |
usp-dangers.txt - Dangers lurking in the Sonic Solutions USP (12-26-95)
sonic-digid-fusion.txt - Integrating Digidesign stuff with Sonic Solutions stuff (12-26-95) ABG (dealer page) |
|
digi-init-dae.txt - Problems
with Digidesign INIT's and the DAE (12-26-95)
audiomedia-issues.txt - issues concerning the Audiomedia card (12-26-95) audiomedia-noise.txt - getting the SCSI chatter out of your Audiomedia audio (12-26-95) |
| PC-Based |
 Sadie |
 Spectral |
 Digital Audio Labs
|
| Audio Hardware and Software | |
|---|---|
| D-A, A-D, sample rate converters, digital meters, etc. |
 |
 dB Technologies |
 |
analog2digital.txt - thoughts on A-D converters (12-26-95) connections.txt - interfacing digital audio equipment (9-6-95) jitter.txt - with some general DAC issues (12-26-95) overs-and-metering.txt - and clipping and distortion etc. (12-26-95) |
 T.C. Electronics |
m5000.txt - tidbits on the T.C. Electronics M5000
(12-26-95)
l1_vs_m5000.txt - which is better? (a moot point since they're totally different animals, but still interesting discussion) (12-26-95) |
| DSP Plug-ins, editing software, etc. |
 (Makers of
Peak, way cool editing software) |
 Waves |
 Arboretum
|
| Analog Domain |
 Laboratories |
|
| Misc. Processing | valley.txt - Tidbits on Valley DSP's (12-26-95) |
| Other cool stuff |
|
| CD-Recording Hardware, Software, and Media | |
|---|---|
| cdr-drives.txt - CD-R hardware and software (12-26-95) | |
| CD-Prep Software |
 Toast |
 Golden Hawk
|
| CD Writers | Yamaha | cd-9xx.txt on Sony's writer (also known as cd-2xx by Sonicians) (1-3-96) |
| Media |
cdr-media.txt - CD-R media (including the yellow vs. green controversy)
(12-26-95)
cd-art.txt - printing and silkscreening on CD-R's (9-6-95) |
| Don't forget... |
hard-drives.txt - trials and tribulations of hard drives
for digital audio (9-6-95)
backup.txt - backing up large soundfiles (10-7-95) audio-from-cd.txt - converting audio on CD to soundfiles (10-7-95) |
| The Art (?) and Science (???) of Mastering | |
|---|---|
| Artistic Choices |
bass.txt - how to stop bass which sounds cool on great monitors
from going blech on cheesy boom boxes (9-6-95)
compression.txt - use of compression in mastering (10-7-95) dithering.txt - techniques for reducing quantization distortion (12-26-95) equalization.txt - use of equalization in mastering (12-26-95) mastering-adv.txt - advice on "problem solving" in mastering (9-6-95) mastering-importance.txt - colorful exchanges on the importance and role of the mastering engineer (9-6-95) noise-be-gone.txt - tools and tips for dehissing, declicking, decrackling, etc. (12-26-95) normalization.txt - to normalize or not to normalize (and issues related to matching apparent volumes) (10-7-95) pitch-shift.txt pitch shifting and time stretching/squishing (12-26-95) stereo-image.txt - improving the stereo image during mastering (9-6-95) |
| Technicalities |
1630-vs-exabyte.txt - (and vs. CD-R) What's the best
mastering format? (12-26-95)
error-correction.txt - (in CD's, DAT's, etc.) (12-26-95) filter-formulas.txt - conversion formulas for filters specified with differing units (12-26-95) golden-ears.txt - do these lessons in listening work? (12-26-95) redbook.txt - CD format standards (12-26-95) hidden-track.txt (12-26-95) |