Prepare your tracks

The same guidelines for “How to prepare for mastering” applies to an album mastering as well.
Each song included on you album or EP needs to be individually prepared for mastering.

 

Pick the order of your songs

It is advised to choose the order of your tracks before the album mastering session, 
It will affect how much silence will be applied before each track start and it could also change the songs loudness in order to create the right flow between tracks.

 

Metadata

Sending over the appropriate metadata is just as important as sending the song itself,
We need all that information so that your music will be displayed correctly on radio receivers and CD players.

Please supply us with:

- Album name
- Artist name
- Track titles
- ISRC codes* (recommended)
- UPC \ EAN codes** (optional)

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*Isrc Codes

ISRC code is a string of letters and numbers that create a unique identifier for an individual song that helps companies track the sales and streaming of that song.

The ISRC code is embedded into the Wav files and into the CD data tied to your song.

We do not provide ISRC codes, that’s the responsibility of yourself, your label or your distribution company.
However, we program the code into your music, so be sure to include the ISRC codes with your other metadata if you have them

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**UPC \ EAN Codes 

The Universal Product Codes (UPC) is a barcode symbology that is widely used for tracking trade items in stores, Along with the related EAN barcode, the UPC is the barcode mainly used for scanning of trade items at the point of sale.

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Album sequence notes

Please provide us with any sequence notes you may have, for example:

“We want the third song to fade in from silence after 5 seconds”
“We want track 6 to bump directly into track 7 with no gap”

If you have already worked on your album sequence and know how you want the tracks to connect please provide us with a listening file of the sequence you have created containing all your pre mastered tracks in one long audio files so we can use it for reference, Any audio format is acceptable, we will not use this file on the mastering process but for reference only.  

 

Album delivery formats

Please let us know what audio formats you will be needing for your album,
We support all popular audio formats including DXD and DSD.

TanTan Studios are a certified Apple Digital Masters providers so we can provide you with Apple Digital Masters upon request.  

After the mastering process is done, unless requested otherwise, we will deliver your masters in four different formats as standard:

- CD quality Wav files (16Bit, 44.1Khz)
- High resolution Wav files (24Bit, 44.1Khz)
- MP3 files (320Kbps) 
- DDP file* 

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*DDP

DDP (Disc Description Protocol) is the standard format used for delivery of disc premasters for duplication.

DDP files contains all album’s audio files, metadata, order and gap time between tracks.

Before sending over your final DDP file for duplication, we will send over an audio print of the DDP file so you can listen to the album sequence and approve the gap between tracks or request for changes,

We will send the audio print in an MP3 format, to avoid any future confusions the file will be tabled “For listening only, not for duplication”. 

Together with the MP3 file we will also send a PDF file containing all album’s metadata so you can triple check everything. 

After both album sequence and metadata is approved we will send over a DDP file you can send directly to your CD pressing plant of choice. 

Alternatively, we can provide you with a DDP player software to install on your computer (PC or Mac) and review the actual DDP file.