Vinyl Manufacturer Mastering/Audio Delivery Guidelines

Published on December 12, 2023

Please find links to various vinyl manufacturing plants / brokers and their guidelines and advice for (pre)mastering digital audio for delivery to them. GZ Media (full detailed mastering specs) – http://www.gzvinyl.com/getattachment/a310ba68-c81e-49d2-a51a-b87375f71cb4/How-to-prepare-audio-master Breed Media (small FAQ) – https://www.breedmedia.co.uk/faq/Deepgrooves (general FAQ including audio delivery) – https://deepgrooves.eu/vinylfaq/ Record Industry (audio specific FAQ) – https://www.recordindustry.com/support#faq Press On (scroll down …
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Joe Caithness Mastering : Video Game Music credits

Published on September 3, 2020

Here is a list as of 03/09/2020 of my Video Game Music mastering (and more) credits.A few bits most likely missing and many, many unannounced! Absolver – Vinyl – Laced RecordsBlack Future 88 – Vinyl – Laced RecordsBloodborne – Vinyl – Laced RecordsBorderlands – Vinyl – Laced RecordsBorderlands – Digital – Laced RecordsBorderlands 2 – …
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Joe Caithness Mastering : Affordable and effective vinyl/turntable care (with links)

Published on May 22, 2019

Hello there, over the last few years I have been trying all kinds of vinyl care / turntable maintenance products well within the affordability of anyone who, well, you know buys vinyl! None of these links are affiliated with Joe Caithness Mastering in any way, these are just things I have personally had good results …
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Joe Caithness Mastering’s “Guide to Digital Audio for Musicians” Part 1.5 : The Two Types of CD production

Published on October 5, 2018

“What the hell is the difference between CD replication and CD duplication?” This is a question asked by almost every client who comes to me to master for a short run of CDs. The rule of thumb is that if you’re making small amounts (usually up to 100 or 200) of CDs on a “make …
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Spotify releases new specifications for loudness and mastering

Published on October 1, 2018

From the Spotify for artists website: ( https://artists.spotify.com/faq/mastering-and-loudness#will-spotify-play-my-track-at-the-level-it’s-mastered ) “Ensure your master stays below -2db True Peak (TP) to be optimised for the lossy formats we use (Ogg/Vorbis and AAC), which, like all lossy formats, do not handle loud peaks well.” “Generally, you won’t benefit from mastering louder than -14dB integrated LUFS due to Loudness Normalization. There’s …
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Joe Caithness Mastering’s “Guide to Digital Audio for Musicians” Part 1 : CD Audio

Published on August 23, 2018

Welcome to part 1 of my new series of blogs to help musicians from a non engineering background understand some of the things they will encounter with audio formats. First up is CD Audio. First of all, so we have an understanding of how CD Audio differs to other consumer formats, we will look at …
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Joe Caithness Mastering’s “Guide to Digital Audio for Musicians” Part 0.5 : Language and Terminology!

Published on August 24, 2018

Sometimes communication breakdowns around language in music projects can slow down your workflow and generally kill the vibe. And by that, I don’t mean that you’d be working with people who speak different language for which you’d have to rush to Translation Services Singapore and go through that ordeal. I’m talking about the lingo, the …
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Vintage Digital Series #3 :Junger Audio DO2 Digital Dynamics Processor

Published on October 29, 2017

I’m back on my vintage digital hype after a long break, mostly due to being deep into work doing masters and trying to fix various bits of obscure transfer gear I’ve picked up recently, maybe we’ll talk about that again soon but for now I’d like to tell you about something I picked up a …
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Mastering Engineers are not Audiophiles

Published on May 10, 2017

People often ask me about posh HIFIs out of the blue in the pub or on social media. Presumably this is because I post all about electronic music boxes and talk about frequencies and stuff. It took me years to work out why I was associated with people who spend money endlessly tweaking audio players …
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Vintage Digital Series #2 : TC Electronic – M5000 / MD2 Mastering

Published on November 23, 2015

Hey there, it’s been a while since I dropped in on this whole “Vintage Digital” thing. It’s kinda funny, I get some funny jibes and then some people genuinely intrigued when it comes to this stuff, I can’t deny that I do keep looking to pick this stuff up super cheap on eBay, but at …
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