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  #1  
Old 05-05-2001, 05:10 PM
Beegster Beegster is offline
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Default DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

What format is the best for delivery to a mastering house assuming they have all of these available. I recently heard that DATs are actually better than CDrs? Does anybody know if this is true? If so, does the masterlink have the same inherant problems? Would a 24bit DAT be prefered to a 24 bit CD from masterlink?/????
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  #2  
Old 05-06-2001, 07:41 PM
Barnabas Barnabas is offline
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Default Re: DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

Good question.

These recent discussions seem to say that CDR would be better than DAT, and better yet would be to send the 24-bit Wave or SD2 files on CD-ROM. The best thing to do would be to ask your mastering house. They know what they want.

http://duc.digidesign.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/002437.html
http://duc.digidesign.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/003839.html



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  #3  
Old 05-08-2001, 05:34 AM
salvomix salvomix is offline
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Default Re: DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

Remember beegster.. It's all 1 & 0's till someone gets hurt. There will be no sound difference between the mediums you mentioned if you go in digital. It's just information. Barnabas is right just ask the guy who is going to master. The place where I master most takes all.
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Old 05-08-2001, 09:12 AM
Beegster Beegster is offline
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Default Re: DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

Quote:
Originally posted by salvomix:
Remember beegster.. It's all 1 & 0's till someone gets hurt. There will be no sound difference between the mediums you mentioned if you go in digital. It's just information. Barnabas is right just ask the guy who is going to master. The place where I master most takes all.
Well, that is actually why I am asking. The mastering house I want to use says that the best is to bring in my PT rig ( they don't have a PT rig or anything that will play SDII files ). Since bringing in my PT rig is not possible he said the 2nd best solution would be a 24 bit DAT ( I don't have a 24 bit DAT ). He told me third best option would be 16 bit DAT not CDr. He was strong in his opinion that DATs actually sounded better than CDrs. Yes, its all ones and zeros, but is one medium more reliable in recording and playing back all those ones and zeros. Just wondering if my mastering guy is out to lunch or if there are others out there that have had the same experience. I was able to rent a masterlink for a few days ( that is a cool machine ). So I think I am going to use that, but I still wonder if the masterlink is more reliable than a 24 bit DAT?????
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  #5  
Old 05-08-2001, 04:01 PM
salvomix salvomix is offline
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Default Re: DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

Bro, how reliable do you need? When you go to mastering you only play it in once... Go with compatibility. If your mastering guy wants dats, give dats. Dig in and dig out it's only 1 and o's. Masterlink is only a stand alone unit made of a hard drive and cdr. Go with what works for you.
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Old 05-08-2001, 04:03 PM
salvomix salvomix is offline
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Default Re: DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

ooh yeah... Your mastering guy may be out to lunch!! Send it to me to master it!
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  #7  
Old 05-08-2001, 09:27 PM
Marc Edwards Marc Edwards is offline
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Default Re: DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

There are a couple of big differences between the fomats:

Error rates : Both DAT and CD use playback error correction. CDROM or HD don't. DAT has a higher error rate than CD (I don't have figures on me).

D/A converter : Obviously the D/A in the mastering house on their DAT will be different to their CD player, unless they are using external conversion (you'd hope so!).

Does that help? Anyone else have more info?
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  #8  
Old 05-09-2001, 12:33 AM
davip davip is offline
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Default Re: DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

What system does your mastering house use? If they use any type of workstation you can probably save your files in a format that they can load. For example many mastering houses use Sonic Solutions which should be able to open 16 or 24 bit AIFF files.
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  #9  
Old 05-09-2001, 07:33 AM
UglyGroove UglyGroove is offline
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Default Re: DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

Yes. Recordings to standard (redbook) audio cd's and DAT's will always contain some errors due to the limitations of the media. Depending on the severity of the errors, they are either corrected (with error correction codes embedded in the data) or masked (using some sort of interpolation scheme).

The best bet is to use a file format such as AIFF. Data files will always be bit-for-bit accurate.
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  #10  
Old 05-09-2001, 08:28 AM
proximityeffect proximityeffect is offline
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Default Re: DAT, CD, Masterlink, what to use?

yes, but what do you deliver the aiff file on? will a CD reader reading your cdr have no error rates?
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