"Iain Churches" wrote in message

I have recently been involved in a string quartet
recording. It has been a challenging project.
Everyone was delighted with the performance
and the sound on the production master which
was sent to a CD plant in the UK for 1:1 duplication.

When a run of 500 copies is required, a glass
master normally needs to be made for replication.
The client gave permission for this to be done by
the CD plant, on the understanding that no audible
changes were to be made, as the production master
was exactly what was requiired.

I asked to be informed when the finished discs had
been received. Yesterday, I received a phone call
from a very disappointed cellist.

She said, "Every nuance of our performance has
been destroyed. We sound like the musical equivalent
of ballet dancers in jack boots!"

This morning, I had the chance to compare a
portion of the envelope from our production
master (the left-hand side of the pic) with the finished
CD (right had side)

Take a look:
It's not pretty!

http://www.kolumbus.fi/iain.churches...Comparison.png



Yecch!

Obvioiusly, the vendor lied - they did not give you a 1:1 reproduction run
or anything like it.

The sad of the story is that they obviously did extra work over what was
actually required.

They either hate classical music, or they thought they were doing you a
favor.

The may have been stimulated to rework your master since the peak levels
were so low. Obviously, they could have raised the peak levels up into the
3-4 dB range or even -1 dB or anyhing below digital FS without trashing the
content so irrevocably and grotesquely.