Apple Announces APPLE DIGITAL MASTERS

Today Apple announced that "Mastered for iTunes has officially been rebranded as Apple Digital Masters. Now every audio advantage of these high-resolution masters is available across iTunes and Apple Music — for both streaming and downloads. And with an updated Apple Digital Masters badge" 
This doesn't mean much more than Apple changing the name to Apple Digital Masters, but on the positive side they will be promoting these superior quality downloads and streams much more aggressively. The concept behind this - data compressed files being created from 24 bit masters with headroom and much less brickwall limiting - is valid and does result in better quality data-compressed downloads and streams.
DES Mastering has been an authorized Mastered for iTunes facility since its inception, and the rebranding doesn't change that. If you want your music to carry the new Apple Digital Masters badge, DES can get you there.

APPLE MAKES NEEDED CHANGE TO SOUND CHECK IN ITUNES

Sound Check is a very convenient feature in iTunes that normalizes the playback volume across all songs, so you will not have a song that was brickwall mastered blasting out 5 times louder than a song that was mastered with more dynamics intact. This is extremely useful if you have created playlists that include songs from different eras and genres that have widely varying volumes, or if you are just playing your library in shuffle mode.
Until now, a problem with Sound Check occurred if you were listening to a complete album in album mode. Artists/producers often purposely mix some songs on an album at lower volumes to create an emotional effect through dynamics, or volume differences (that's why dynamics are referred to as "expression" in music, the dynamics express emotion). And if the album includes both electric and acoustic songs, the acoustic songs should be perceptually lower in volume or they will diminish the  electric tracks. But with Sound Check turned on, it adjusted the level of the all the songs to a common volume, destroying the effect the artist/producer intended.
The good news is in an iTunes update sometime around the end of July, Apple made an unannounced change to Sound Check. Now, if you are playing iTunes in album mode with Sound Check, the original volume differences between tracks on the album will remain intact, with the overall volume of the album being brought down so the loudest song is at the AES recommended volume for streaming.
It's not perfect yet; it doesn't seem to read the volume of the loudest song properly, so if you switch from song or playlist mode - where Sound Check is adjusting the volume of each song - to album mode, the album mode is louder than song/playlist mode. Not up to full volume as without Sound Check, but just enough to be a little annoying and require a volume adjustment. But that's a very minor detail that should be ironed out soon, the point is the dynamic flow of the album is preserved without having to go into preferences and turning Sound Check off.
If you're not familiar with Sound Check,  open iTunes, go to the top left "iTunes" pulldown menu and select "Preferences". At the top of the preferences window select the "Playback" tab. You'll see a checkbox to turn Sound Check on. Also, be sure "Sound Enhancer" is turned off. And, if you want to hear the album exactly as intended, turn "Crossfade Songs" off as well.

SPOTIFY FINALLY LOWERS ITS VOLUME! THE LOUDNESS WARS ARE PRACTICALLY FINISHED!

Sometime around May 20th, Spotify finally lowered its volume normalization to approximately -14LUfs, -3dB lower than their previous level and generally matching the levels of TIDAL and YouTube. This is big news. Spotify was the last holdout, extending the loudness wars by being 3dB louder than other streaming services,  pressuring musicians, labels and mastering engineers to make needlessly hot masters to compete loudness-wise, even if it didn't suit the style of music. With this move Spotify, TIDAL and YouTube now use playback reference levels within a dB of each other, with Pandora, ReplayGain and Apple Sound Check being -2dB lower at -16LUfs, exactly conforming to the recommendations of the Audio Engineering Society for streaming loudness.

This means there is no longer any pressure to make hotter masters to compete volume-wise on Spotify, or any other streaming service; you can now have your mastering engineer create masters at an average integrated loudness of -14LUfs and it will work perfectly across all streaming services. (YouTube is actually +1dB hotter at -13LUfs, so if max loudness on YouTube is important to you, you might push everything to -13LUfs, knowing that Spotify, Tidal and others will turn it down a dB. But if your music is fairly dynamic that extra dB really won't make a difference, and 1dB less limiting will certainly make a difference!)

Even though the -14LUfs level is still 2dB hotter than the AES recommendation, this is a HUGE step forward, allowing an extra 3dB of peak-to-average headroom compared to Spotify's previous level, and a whopping 6dB improvement over the most ridiculously loud CD's.

The Good News and the Bad News
The good news is that with the death of CD and now with the willingness of streaming services and media players to comply, at least within a couple dB, with the loudness guidelines set by the AES, there is now no need to push volumes on your production in order to be competitive with other music. The result will be much more open, punchy, expressive music, and music more pleasant to listen to without all of the distortion and artifacts caused by hyper-limiting. These new levels are essentially the same as when music was mastered for vinyl, and that's one of the reasons people love the sound of vinyl from the 50's through the early 90's. It's partly the analog sound of the record and the cartridge, but a huge part of it is that the clarity, emotion and punch of the music was not destroyed by being over mastered.

The bad news is, all of the music that has been ruined since the first stupid-loud CD came out in 1995, and everyone else jumped off the cliff right behind it to be competitive in the loudness wars, will still sound just as awful compared to newer, more dynamic productions. All that will happen to it is it will be turned down to the normalized loudness of the steaming service or media player, so it will no longer be louder than other songs, but all the damage done to that music to make it loud will still be there.

For over 22 years, the answer to "Why does that music pop when it comes up on the CD changer?" has been "Because it's louder than the others". Now the answer to the new question of "Why does that music pop on Spotify/TIDAL/iTunes?" is "Because it's more dynamic than the others". This is a great day!

There is one group that will be big losers in this, and that is the plethora of people claiming to be "mastering engineers", along with mix engineers who tell you they can also master, but who know nothing of mastering other than to make it loud. The art of mastering, the actual sweetening process, will once again be what mastering is all about. Does the person mastering your music even know what Integrated, Max Momentary and Max Short Term loudness is? Does he have the meters to measure this? Does he understand the important interaction of those? Does he know what True Peak means, and does he even have a True Peak limiter? Does he know how to master at proper True Peak levels so data-compressed formats don't distort? Does he understand crest factors so that your music does not needlessly get turned down on streaming services even though your integrated loudness is correct? At DES Mastering we have been on top of this since around 2011 when the new loudness measuring methods were being developed, and attended the original AES seminars and workshops that helped established the new standards for broadcast and streaming loudness. And we have the tools and the knowledge to create masters for you that will take full advantage of this breakthrough in sound quality!

CONTROL YOUR SIBILANCE AND PLOSIVES!!!

Sibilance (plural 'sibilants') is the piercing high frequency 'hiss', if you will, created mostly by s and t sounds in vocals.  (Sibilants normally live somewhere around 7kHz.) There has to be a certain amount of sibilance for it to sound like an s or t, but everyone's voice has different amounts. For instance, my wife has a friend whose voice produces such extreme sibilance I can't stand to listen to her talk, it absolutely pierces my ears. Plosives are on the other end of the spectrum; they are the 'booms' created by aspiration, which is the forceful release of breath on certain words, hitting the diaphragm of the microphone.

Sibilants and plosives can sound bad enough in your mix, but they will be highly exaggerated in the mastering process, especially due to the excessive limiting most people demand in order for their music to be loud. And Lord knows, being loud is what's important these days above all else. Yes, the mastering engineer can help these to some degree, but the mastering lab is not the proper place for the these to be addressed. The proper place is while the vocals are being cut. Of course the tracking engineer can resort to de-essers and notch filters, but before any of that is used they should first work with mic selection. Many condenser microphones, which is what most recordists will grab first for vocals, have a certain amount of a presence peak. Sometimes this is due to the nature of the design of the mic, but often it's a trick being played by the manufacturer, especially in cheap condensers, to give the the false impression that the mic has a wonderful 'air' and brilliance, when instead it's just an exaggerated top end that you could simulate with eq. So if you use one of these mics on a vocalist who already has exaggerated sibilance in their voice, you have a mess on your hands. The lazy recordist, if they're aware of the problem, will just throw a de-esser and/or notch filter on the track and be done with it. But as i've said before, you should strive to use as little processing as possible in every step of your recording and mixing. So taking a little time to get up and down and trying different mics to find the one that at least doesn't exaggerate the problem is the proper thing to do. Ribbon mics most often have a creamier, smoother top end than condensers, and also don't ignore quality dynamics like the Shure SM-7 (used on many or most of Michael Jackson's vocals, for instance) or the Sennheiser 441 (used on TomPetty and Stevie Nicks, for instance). Then even if you do still have to use the processors, you're using them less. 

The plosives are caused, as I said, by aspiration hitting the diaphragm of the mic, so that is a simpler matter to fix by just working with the placement of the mic first so the breath blast doesn't hit the diaphragm, and then using the good ol' pantyhose pop filter if that doesn't completely solve it. 

If the problems didn't get addressed during tracking, the next preferable fix would be during the mix. If it is just pure sibilance, and you are working with a ProTools type digital recording system, it's best to take the time to find the sibilant in the vocal track, make an edit on either side of it, and then lower its volume. But the problem is that sibilants have such extreme energy that in some cases they will also cause a splatter of high frequency distortion from either overdriving the mic preamp or the a/d converter or both. In that case you have a much longer duration splat than than the actual sibilant itself was, and you'll have to resort to some de-essing or 'spot' eq'ing. 

If you are working with a vocalist who has extreme sibilance (I certainly hope my wife's friend doesn't sing or do voice work. If so, I pity the poor engineer), then the best thing to do (after mic selection, which won't solve all of the problem in these cases, but will help) is to add a little de-essing and/or filtering while you're cutting the vocal, and then a little more while you're mixing. This will be MUCH more transparent than trying to fix it all in one step or the other. 

As I said at the top, your mastering engineer will have de-essers and filters to add to the mix to at least help control these problems, but that's the worst solution, as he will not be applying these to just the vocal but instead across the entire mix. And if the vocal has had a considerable amount of reverb added to it, the mastering engineer will be able to kill some of the initial attack of the sibilant or plosive, but the trail in the reverb will still be there, which might draw even more attention to problem than just leaving it alone. If it had been properly addressed during tracking and mixing, the reverb trails will be clean. 

Mastered for iTunes at DES Mastering

There are over 250 million iOS devices in the world today connected to Apple’s vast iTunes ecommerce system. Considering the ubiquity of such a digital audio-ready footprint, there’s a fairly strong chance that just about any commercially-released music title will, at some point, be heard on an iPod, iPhone, or iPad. The resulting market of music consumers who want their content with them to enjoy on-the-go, at home or anywhere dictates that professional mastering engineers should plan and monitor the output of their efforts to provide the very best listening experience possible on iOS devices.

Mastered For iTunes - What is it?

During the first quarter of 2012, Apple implemented their new high-resolution encoding process for creating AAC's. (An AAC is what you download from iTunes, and is the iTunes version of an mp3, both being data-compressed audio files.) In order to take full advantage of the improved quality of this new encoding, Apple has released a set of guidelines and tools to assist mastering professionals in delivering optimized source files for this new high-resolution encoding and ecommerce process, allowing the mastering engineer to audition the changes that take place during AAC encoding prior to committing your mix to processing. Apples’s goal is to build awareness of best practices that will help to ensure that consumers have a great listening experience on their mobile hardware. When these guidelines are followed, the music is considered to be "Mastered for iTunes". DES Mastering supports Apple's efforts and has the full set of tools and the knowledge to prepare finished masters for release into the iTunes environment with the best possible quality. 

It All Starts with Tracking and Mixing in High-Resolution

If you have been following our blog, you know that I have emphasized over and over the importance of tracking, mixing and mastering in high-resolution, meaning 24 bit, and preferably 96k, but at the very least at 48k/24 bit. Apple is now requesting that their music partners submit their source files at 96k/24 bit as the ideal in order to take full advantage of their new encoding process.

As we have pointed out in previous posts, this does not mean that you should sample rate convert your 44.1k/16 bit files to 96k/24 bit. This will do nothing for you. Even if you use the best mastering-quality SRC, the resulting 96k file will sound exactly like the 44.1k file, and from most commercially available SRC's the 96k file will actually sound worse than the original 44.1k file due to artifacts and distortions created during the sample rate conversion. 

So once again, here are the important points:

If possible, track and mix at 96k/24 bit. At the very least track and mix at 48k/24 bit. 

If you are mixing 'in the box', do not perform any sample rate conversion. The mix files should be the same sample rate that the project was tracked at. Again, upsampling a 44.1k or 48k mix to 96k will gain nothing, and will potentially lose quality. 

Do as little processing to the overall mix as absolutely possible, and preferably none. This means little or no eq, compression or limiting applied to the stereo master buss. This doesn't mean that you should not eq or compress individual tracks as you see fit - just try to leave the stereo buss clean of any processing. 

Leave headroom in your mix. if you are doing a proper 24 bit mix, there is no reason for the hottest peaks in your mix to exceed -3dBfs, and ideally they will sit at -6dBfs. 

For more detailed info on this see Mixing in Preparation for Mastering Part 1 and Part 2.
Have a professional master your project. Whether you use DES Mastering or not, you should have a mastering professional finish your project. You may have the best mix engineer in the world, but that does not qualify him as a mastering engineer. It is a completely different skill set, and a completely different way of using seemingly familiar tools. Your project should be mastered in a proper mastering room, not a control room, by a mastering engineer, and preferably one who knows how to create the best possible mastered files for downloadable formats. 

The Best Encode Begins with DES and soundBlade

Encoding for any lossy format such as AAC or mp3 benefits from the highest quality source file possible. This is because the end result of the encoding process is a data compressed file that affects the audio quality. To achieve the best encoded result, it is important to start with the highest quality sound possible, such as that derived by DES Mastering using the Sonic soundBlade mastering system. The Sonic Studio Engine (SSE) used in the soundBlade system enables key processing to deliver pristine sound that is free of artifacts that can be caused by other lesser audio engines. Just because a manufacturer works "Pro" into the name of their product does not make it a mastering-quality platform. When Apple creates an AAC from a soundBlade master it will yield the most desirable output suitable for publishing on the vast iTunes ecommerce platform. 

Remastering for iTunes

If you have a back-catalog of music that is already available in the iTunes Store, or that has not yet been released on iTunes, you might consider having DES properly re-master your project for iTunes delivery. This would require you to have your original mix files, and those will hopefully be 24 bit and 48k or above. If you submit your remastered music to Apple, they will perform a series of tests, and if they determine that the proper guidelines have been followed and that there is an improvement over your previous release, this will earn you the "Mastered for iTunes" badge. 

If you mastered with DES at any time over the past 3 years, we more than likely still have your project in our archive, and if you delivered mixes in high-resolution, then it will be a relatively simple process to create mastered high-res files as Apple is now requesting; it would not require a complete remastering. Contact us for details. 

Importing Your Hi-Res Audio to the iPhone/iPad

Again with the hi-fi related post! But if you are in music production, I promise the training of your ear is just as important as any knowledge you have of audio gear and recording techniques. And having a quality system to listen to music on outside of the studio is important.
If you're following my posts detailing how to get audiophile-quality reproduction out of your computer using standard iTunes and other media players, in Part 1 you learned that the iPhone/iPod can play AIF and WAV files at 44.1k/16 bit CD-quality and ALAC files at 44.1k/16 as well as 24 bit. As was explained, you can import the full resolution files, or if you're not interested in the improved sound quality of these files for your casual iPod listening, you had the option of converting the large full-resolution files to 128kbps AAC's on import, thereby allowing much more music to be stored on the i-device, but at the lower sound quality of 128kbps lossy-compresssion. The new Apple OS now gives you the option of converting to 128, 192 or 256kbps on import. If you're using very good earbuds or phones, the converters and headphone amp in the iPhone 3GS and above is just good enough that you can discern a slight improvement in sound of a 44.1k/16 bit ALAC and the 256kbps version, but it is not drastic. Since you normally don't use your iPod for critical listening, and are often listening in noisier environments not suited to critical listening anyway, many would rather have more song capacity than the slight improvement in sound. But you can more easily hear the difference in quality between 256kbps and 128kbps. It's audible even on standard-issue Apple earbuds, and on high-quality buds and phones it's very evident. So this new option is perfect for better song capacity on the i-device with only a negligible loss in quality.
To change your hi-res files on import, connect the iPhone/iPad to the computer and launch iTunes. Hi-light your device in the devices list and the Summary page for your device comes up. Scroll down and under Options you'll see an option for "Convert higher bit-rate songs to: " and a pull-down menu with the different bit-rates. Choose the bit-rate you want, then click the Apply button on the right.
Rumor has it that the headphone amp and converters in the iPhone 5 will be a further improvement, possibly the same as are now in the iPad.

Tracking and Mixing in HD - Important News

As I have mentioned in previous posts, there are more and more positive signs that we are moving toward a new push for high-definition consumer audio - meaning 88.2k or 96k/24bit. It's unlikely that any of the bigs will get behind a new hardware format, as they are still stinging from the failures of SACD and DVD-Audio, but it looks like HD audio downloads and streaming are coming on in a big way.
Mastering engineers have recommended 88.2k as being the ideal sampling rate for production if CD's and mp3/AAC's are to be produced, since the sample rate convertor has to do a simple 'linear decimation' to get from 88.2k to 44.1k after mastering (just divide by two) resulting in a slightly better sounding conversion, and in the HD world no one has reliably been able to discern a sound quality difference between 88.2k and 96k. However, it seems there is a major effort happening to make 96k/24 bit the de facto standard for HD consumer audio, so it's advisable that you should be tracking and mixing at that rate. This is not a huge problem, as on an audiophile system you may be able to hear the slight quality improvement between a 44.1k file downsampled from 88.2k vs. 96k. But regardless, the file downsampled from 96k will still sound much better than if the track was produced at 44.1k from the start.
This all makes a difference in the parts you should have your mastering room cut. In the past, of the clients who delivered their tracks to mastering in HD, only a handful were interested in getting the HD mastered versions back - they were only interested in the 44.1k/16 bit master for CD and digital distribution. Now, you should want finished production masters in both HD and CD quality. That way, if the consumer industry does move toward HD audio you are ahead of the curve and have HD tracks ready to offer. Even if that never happens, and we stay in the doldrums of mp3, for your own archive it is best to have your music in as high definition as absolutely possible. The only downside is having to pay for the mastering room to create a second master in HD. This should not be a big expense because if it was done properly the tracks were mastered in HD anyway - the HD versions just have to be exported and written to a data CD-R or DVD-R. Many mastering rooms keep their projects backed up, so if you did deliver HD mixes, chances are good that your mastering room can still create an HD production master for you.