Survival of Digital Masters

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ryosuke63
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Survival of Digital Masters

Post by ryosuke63 » 01 Aug 2013, 03:06

I know this answer will vary from label to label as they've all used their own unique setups in the studio, but for those who mastered Eurobeat completely digitally in the 1990s, how have the masters held up? I don't really know anything about how the tracks were made at that time (what software was used, mostly) but how are the masters able to be accessed after all this time? I imagine that if the individual tracks from the multitrack masters weren't all exported to exceptionally high-quality WAV, they would still be contained within some kind of project file. How can those masters created on ancient software be accessed on today's machines?

For that matter, on the subject of quality, what frequency range and bit-depth were the tracks mastered to (another question that I know the answer to which will vary from label to label).
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eXtaticus
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Post by eXtaticus » 01 Aug 2013, 18:33

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thejti
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Post by thejti » 03 Aug 2013, 02:51

eXtaticus wrote:It was in the late '80s that a lot of labels started switching from using analog tape to digital tape. The audio was generally stored in CD-quality (as the technology to master, release or play back anything higher simply didn't exist at that point) in a WAV-like format - but as digital code on magnetic tape. All instrument tracks (guitars, bass, vocals, etc.) would have been recorded on separate rolls of tape - and during the mixing process, these were played back or looped through a central mixing desk, and recorded onto a single roll of tape.

This process created the original, untampered masters of the songs that were sent to the publishing company - who then cut master vinyl templates or glass CD masters to print replicas of. All audio was stored digitally, meaning that it could be copied infinitely without losing any audio quality. Labels probably kept their original masters of their own recordings as backups in their studios - and this also goes for the original recordings of the individual instruments ("multi-tracks" or "stems").

Moving into the late '90s, magnetic disks and hard drives became more commonplace for storing digital audio - and eventually, all necessary audio for a project file could either be synthesised in-software in real-time, or stored as a WAV file on a computer's internal hard drive. Of course, there's no reason why the audio on a digital tape can't be converted to a newer format without losing any quality - so all that the labels had to do was dump the data from the tape onto the computer, and save it as a WAV file.

This means that a lot of studios probably have WAV backups of their original master recordings and multi-tracks sitting around on their computers - and there's no technical reason why these WAV files couldn't be distributed infinitely.

And as long as the tapes were kept in good condition, (which they will, because they only ever needed to be used a couple of times - and it's extremely high-quality tape) these WAV files will be totally error-free and exact.

In addition, you can almost guarantee that these files would have been at least 16-Bit, 44100 Hz, LPCM, Stereo - full CD quality, in other words.
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ryosuke63
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Post by ryosuke63 » 03 Aug 2013, 21:13

eXtaticus wrote:In addition, you can almost guarantee that these files would have been at least 16-Bit, 44100 Hz, LPCM, Stereo - full CD quality, in other words.
An incredibly major technical step down from the analogue masters used previously. I hope their reasoning in doing that was that they needed to cut costs by a ton*, because there's not really much excuse for that otherwise.

Thanks for the explanation. The only thing I have to ask is how do you know that's what the labels did? [Citation Needed], in other words.

*And that's assuming the digital setup was even cheaper than the analogue norm at the time.
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Post by eXtaticus » 03 Aug 2013, 23:10

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ryosuke63
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Post by ryosuke63 » 04 Aug 2013, 00:41

eXtaticus wrote:Because ALL labels worldwide were doing that. Not just eurobeat; it was a worldwide technology shift towards digital.

And I'm not going to get into an "analog vs. digital" argument with you. CD-quality is the best you'll ever need, and if anyone wants to dispute that, I will unleash science upon them.
The "everyone else is doing it" argument doesn't really mean anything, but I understand what you're trying to say, generally. That isn't proof for your detailed explanation of their post-analogue mastering methods, though.

And I'd like to see you argue analogue vs. digital. I guarantee you won't say anything I don't already know. For my purposes, my ears can't tell the difference between 192kbps/44.1kHz/16-bit MP3 and 96kHz/24-bit/WAV. I don't have a pro setup, just good Sony MDR headphones, but even on one, the difference isn't much. It all comes down to how the recording is mastered, more than anything. How well it was mixed, how it was pressed/recorded - things like this are what matter most.

That said, I dare you to tell me that analogue does not absolutely dominate digital in technical superiority - regardless of humans' inability to tell a difference. But please, do tell me how a CD is better than a 2" reel.
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