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Sunday, 14 December 2003

Making CDs ::

I’ve finished my pass through my tape archives, restoring and remastering some old recordings. Last night I burned some CDs with cover art, to send to friends.

Some ramblings on tools and techniques...

Bias SoundSoap

Usually did a great job at removing tape hiss without otherwise coloring the signal, and super-easy to use. There’s a pro version now.

Logic Platinum

I learned a lot about how to use multi-band compression/expansion to fix frequency imbalances and remove hiss in the few cases where SoundSoap didn’t work out. I was surprised that my 10 masters came out sounding sufficiently consistent that I didn’t have to redo any of them (or maybe I was just lazy!). Effect automation made it easy to even out the levels and add some reverb tails to the pieces that ended a little abruptly.

TC Spark XL

Its mastering plugins are reportedly very good, though I didn’t try them -- I had a smooth workflow going in Logic and was happy with the results. Spark XL worked well for creating the CD master, letting me fine-tune the lengths of the silences between tracks (and if I’d wanted to crossfade between them, I think it would have done well at that). Unfortunately I couldn’t find a way to avoid a 5-minute process of creating a new disc image before every CD burn, no fun for even a small duplication run...

Roxio Toast 6 Titanium

The Roxio website is very frustrating in its lack of technical information. I didn’t want to pay for Jam, I hadn’t yet remembered that Spark could burn a CD master, and it wasn’t clear what kind of control Toast would provide. And it’s absurd that the software in a box is $99 in stores (I ventured to the Palo Alto Apple store to see), $79 direct from Roxio -- and Roxio sells a downloadable version for $89. Being impatient I gave up and bought the download. It was very easy to tell it to burn 12 copies of the master I’d made in Spark, though at one point, something locked up and I got a coaster. Maybe I had too many devices on my Firewire bus, or maybe I needed to download an update.

TeachingArts.org : Dimensions for CD cover art

essential

Microsoft PowerPoint

I can’t believe I’m using this as a page-layout program, but I don’t seem to have any better alternatives, and I don’t do this often enough to be interested in buying one. The line spacing of the 9-point text is a little off. But it was easy enough to get everything lined up properly on the pages.

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2003 > December

Decency Act >>

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