The other day I was working with an engineer in the studio who accidentally erased a piece of a guitar solo. When I walked into the control room he was blankly staring at the Sony 48 track remote. I asked what was going on and he said, "Where is the UNDO button on this machine?"

Wouldn’t it be great if life had little UNDO buttons along then way? How about:

SPEEDING TICKET
Undo Ticket F3 Court date is the same day as my first paying Pro Tools gig.
Save F5 Register for topless traffic school, may be worth it.
Print F6 Copies of ticket to put under friend’s windshield.

DIVORCE
Undo Alimony F3 Or I won’t be able to make my Pro Tools payment.
Save F5 So I can remember how lucky I am to be away from her.
Print F6 Fake money on 2400 dpi printer for alimony payment.

GUITAR SOLO
Undo Erase F3 Or I will lose my job & can’t make Pro Tools payments.
Save F5 That solo was crap, maybe he will do better now.
Duplicate F7 Make repeat loop of crap solo & burn CDs for friends.

GIRL PICKED UP IN BAR
Undo Night of Horror F3 I have the shakes so bad I can’t use my Pro Tools.
Save F5 She did have nice nipples, ALL 8 OF THEM!
Print F6 Girls like that should have Hazardous Warning Labels.

And you get the drift.

Tempo Charts

I have received a few e-mail questions about where to get tempo charts that convert tempo to milliseconds for setting delays. You don’t need a chart. You can almost figure it out in your head. Just take 60; divide it by the tempo, then move the decimal point over three places to the right. This will give you the quarter note delay time in milliseconds. An eighth note would be half as much, a quarter note triplet would be two third of the quarter note value (one third of the half note value). A dotted quarter note would be 1.5 times the quarter note value. The rest of the values can be figured out from there. We don’t need no stinking tempo charts.

Remember When

Remember when large studios started complaining about project studios stealing their business? Well, we have now reached the payback point. I’ll use CD burning in my comparison.

Back in 1989 a 1x CD burner cost $50,000 and blank discs were $85 each. You also needed a $30,000 Sony digital audio editor, and two $15,000 apiece U-Matic 3/4 inch video decks to prepare the audio. If the artist wanted a few CDs to give to the band or play in his car, they cost him $300 each. This was a major investment and the studio hired a competent engineer who had lots of experience mastering. If the CD failed to cut properly it would take one hour to re-cut and cost $85 for a new blank. If you contemplated buying your own equipment to make ten CDs the average cost per CD would be $11,085. It was much cheaper to pay $300 each and have someone else do it.

By 1995 a 4x CD recorders could be had for $5000 and the price of blank CDs dropped to about $17 each. Small mastering houses started up and paid about $10,000 for a hard disk based work station such as Sonic Solutions, SADiE, or Sound Designer. They would produce the desired CDs at a cost to the artist of about $40 each. This was still a substantial investment in equipment. Usually the guys who started this type of operation were experienced mastering engineers who worked for someone else and wanted to break out on their own. They could supply quality service and a good product for their customers. If the CD failed to cut properly it only took 15 minutes to re-cut5 the CD and cost $17. If the artist wanted to buy the equipment to cut ten CDs himself, the average cost per CD would be about $1,540 each. Still a better deal to let someone else do it.

Here we are in 1999 (in case you forgot to set your calendar ahead). There are now 30 Gazillion places to get your CDs made. A 4x CD recorder costs about $300. An 8x CD recorder costs $600. They come bundled with free CD recording software. Digital audio hardware and software to turn your PC into a Digital Audio Workstation is under $1000. Blank CDs are 49 cents each. The total investment to start your own CD duplication business is under $2,000, and you don’t have to know what you are doing, as there is not as much monetary risk as there was five years ago. If the CD failed to cut properly it would only take 7 minutes and cost 49 cents. If the artist wants to make the CDs himself he just buys the CD recorder, plugs it into his PC and the ten CDs will average about $30.

Now the same thing is happening to the mid level guys that happened to the big guys ten years ago. The next lower level of home CD duplicator guys are stealing all of the business. The big difference here is the level of experience in the different situations. To get the highest quality product, you need the experience of the mastering engineer to help you out of the rough spots. The mastering engineer has mastered hundred or thousands of albums and knows what the sonic qualities need to be to compete with the high budget record company releases.

If you want a bunch of good quality CDs, this is what you should do. Go to a real mastering facility run by a guy who has the experience and knows what they are doing. Have them do EQ and leveling and spacing that is needed to make your project stand out in the crowd. They will cut you a CD reference disc that includes all of the enhancements. If you want to eventually get 500 CDs pressed at a CD plant, let the professional make the CD master that goes to the CD plant. This will guarantee that the CD will not be rejected on technical grounds by the CD plant.

With the CD that you have approved, you can go to one of your friends, or the guy down the block and have him make 10 or 20 CD copies for you using your CD as a master. It is, however, up to you to make sure that the guy down the block does it right. The copies should be digital clones of your original. Are you sure they are? The Blank CDs used should match the drive used to burn them. Some generic CD blanks have low error rates near the center, but can become unplayable toward the end of the program. Are you sure he is using the good CD-R blanks, or just the cheapest? Maybe you would be better off letting the professional guy cut you additional copies. They may cost a little more, but you know that when you send it to that big record producer you met, it will play back on his CD player.

Not Just CDs

A friend of mine has a little post production studio in Miami. He made a pretty good size investment in Pro Tools, professional digital video decks, Digital consoles, ISDN lines, acoustic treatments, and professional multi-track machines. He wanted to fill the niche just below the high-end audio post houses. He was a songwriter, a good engineer, a good musician and a great drummer. Clients came to him to get their jingles cut and their sound design done for their commercials. Business was good. Recently each of his clients decided to buy their own Pro Tools systems and put them in an empty office at their own locations. Each client grabbed the closest staff person who was willing to learn Pro Tools and make them the in-house engineer. The quality is lower, it takes them longer to do, and my friend has lost is biggest clients.

Until clients realize that quality has a value, and a price, this trend is going to continue. Your edge is that you know that quality makes a difference and when that producer hears your CD, it is going to sound ten times better that all of the others he just listened to.

Russell Bracher (he said if I mentioned his name that I could stay at his house when I’m in LA), another friend of mine has a motto: Buy Cheap, Buy Again! I think he is right.