Reference and premaster CD information and pricing.

Antarctica can create a premaster or reference CD from your DAT or other media. The premaster (or PMCD) is ready for glass master production, containing all of the proper subcode information. A reference CD is useful as a test disc or "one-off" and offers an appealing alternative to cassettes for publishing demos and similar projects. Below is a more detailed description of the differences between a reference and PMCD.

For mass-duplication of a CD a glass master must be made. This is usually done at the CD pressing plant, and until recently all glass masters were made from the 1630 digital format. The 1630 is a digital tape recorder based on the 3/4" video tape format. What this meant was that any analog reel, DAT, or CD had to first be transferred to the 1630 machine. Of course this took time and therefore was an added cost typically around $200.00.

With the increased availability of CD-R recording systems most duplicators now accept the Premaster CD-R (PMCD) format which allows the 1630 to be bypassed. This will enable you deduct anywhere from $150.00 to $300.00 from the duplicator's bill. You also have more control over the exact layout and sound of your CD.

The important point is to be sure you are getting a PMCD and not a CD reference. There are many inexpensive systems capable of producing CDs that will play in your home system, however just because a disc will play at home does not mean it has error rates that are within acceptable limits for glass master production. This is due to the fact that CD players have error correction built in. A duplicator will be unable to produce a glass master directly from a CD-R that is not up to PMCD spec. If they receive such a CD they have two options: either to ask for a correct PMCD, or to perform an analog transfer of the CD to a 1630 machine. Unfortunately both of these options cost you time and money.

In order to produce a PMCD the laser in the CD recorder must not turn off between songs. The recorder and software must support "disk-at-once" mode which means the laser turns on and stays on from the beginning of a disc to the end. Some CD recorders and software packages do not support disk-at-once mode, utilizing instead a mode known as track-at-once. As you might guess, track-at-once mode is not acceptable to produce a PMCD. This is due to the fact that the areas on the CD where the laser shuts off will be seen as errors.

At Antarctica we use the Yamaha CDE-100 recorder with Emagic's Waveburner software running on Macintosh ProTools systems. Our systems are rock-solid, Digidesign approved, and capable of producing PMCDs of the highest quality.

CD pricing is shown for CD creation only. Digital editing, sample rate conversion, compression, etc. is billed at $70.00 per hour with a one hour minimum charge. For more information see our Digital Editing page.