Optimizing for iTunes

[orpheus_2]

The reality caught on our string quartet's new release: CD is dead, this time we go for digital distribution only (especially iTunes)...this time around I'm not sure how to do the mastering. In the CD era, there were no gaps between tracks, but rather a few secs of room noise connecting between them. iTunes is primarily song based, people shuffle the tracks around, many are not buying the whole album, and iPods (or other players) determine the gaps between tracks. How do I master now? Fadeout fadein technology now?

[daeron80]

Something I learned the hard way - there are many mp3 players out there besides ipod, and many of the cheapest ones (i.e., crappiest ones) are all too common. Cheapo players are bad about starting late and ending early. IOW, if you hard head and tail it, some listeners will miss the first few hundred ms and/or the last 2-3 seconds. Yes, seconds! Leave at least 500 ms of silence (or room tone/non-program material) at the head and 3 seconds at the tail, or you'll get customer complaints that the music got "cut off." They'll perceive it as a defective file.

A short fade in/out of the "silence" doesn't hurt but isn't essential. If two cuts are designed to be heard without a total drop to silence in between, I wouldn't fade. Just make sure you separate the tracks on a zero cross point.

I'm kinda surprised that a string quartet would need to go all lossy. When I buy music, if all I want is the tunage, sure I buy mp3s. But if I want it because it's a good sounding record, I still buy CD. Generally that means pop/rock mp3s, jazz/classical/early music CDs. Maybe I'm just old.

[orpheus_2]

Originally Posted by daeron80

A short fade in/out of the "silence" doesn't hurt but isn't essential. If two cuts are designed to be heard without a total drop to silence in between, I wouldn't fade. Just make sure you separate the tracks on a zero cross point.

I'm kinda surprised that a string quartet would need to go all lossy. When I buy music, if all I want is the tunage, sure I buy mp3s. But if I want it because it's a good sounding record, I still buy CD. Generally that means pop/rock mp3s, jazz/classical/early music CDs. Maybe I'm just old.

Hi and thanks a lot! Can you maybe just explain what you mean by "separate the tracks on a zero cross point"? To avoid clicks?

Yes, we go p3 only, and shall BURN some copies if needed. We do mostly 20th and 21st century music, and our audience seems still to prefer getting acquainted with intriguing unknown music well played in large quantities. So, it seems in the current situation we've got to drop the CD or produce a lot less

[daeron80]

Zero cross points to avoid clicks - yes, where the waveform crosses from positive to negative or vice-versa, amplitude of zero. PEAK has a feature that forces all selections to fall on zeros. In PT, you have to zoom in to the sample level and pick one.

[orpheus_2]

Originally Posted by daeron80

Zero cross points to avoid clicks - yes, where the waveform crosses from positive to negative or vice-versa, amplitude of zero. PEAK has a feature that forces all selections to fall on zeros. In PT, you have to zoom in to the sample level and pick one.

Thanks David, that's what I thought it would be.

BTW, I was surprised to hear of your experience you described - with cheap players. What I found that sucked (on iPod, iPhone, and Sansa) was too much of "room noise" at the end of the last movement of string quartet, symphony etc. Mastering engineers traditionally seem to have been leaving 10-15 seconds in such situations

[daeron80]

I discovered it when doing audio books and other spoken word products. People would be unable to hear last half of a sentence of a chapter sometimes. So the CD versions would flow right on but I would use PEAK to batch add .5 s to the top and 3 s silence to the end of each chapter. No more complaints after that.

[orpheus_2]

BTW - what do folx with cheap mp3 players do when listening to Pink Floyd? There are no breaks whatsoever, yet there are songs? I bet they must be missing some colossal moments.

[orpheus_2]

One more question regarding the optimization for iTunes - it is about silence.

I made a master, and tested the .mp3 files that I converted from the CD. Lo and behold - there were 2 seconds silence added to each file at the end (that's a default space between pieces in TOAST, but I thought it would be ignored when encoding mp3s. I tried both TAO and DAO, but silence was always there. What would be the suggestion to avoid this?

[daeron80]

TAO and DAO? Stands for...?

If you're making the mp3s from a CD, the CD must have the 2 s space, which is regarded by the reader as part of the track. You might get better results by encoding the files that were used to burn the CD.

[orpheus_2]

TAO-track at once
DAO-disk at once

in CD burners jargon. DAO is supposed to be the only solution when submitting mastered CD for replication/duplication.

You are right about submitting aif.-s instead of a CD. However, my distributor for digital vendors accepts CDs only (!). That's why I dithered everything when rendering to 16 bit.