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Question for recording artist/engineers

Let's say you have a jazz band who wants to sell cds of their music with the best quality of sound they can achieve at the lowest out-sourced cost or do-it-yourself. If one wants to do a just-in-time type of manufacturing of their cd, how can they improve things?

Currently they are recording at 48k in Pro-tools, mastered in Sonic Solutions by Air Show Mastering, and then they use top of the line cds (Taiyo Yuden) with a Microboards Orbit II Duplicator. This has produced average cds but we want to do better.

What would you engineers do to improve this so it gets closer to audiophile quality? Would you recommend using a different mastering house, different cds, or a different Duplicator? Or would you just bite the money bullet and go directly to a full-scale manufacturer? We are trying not to have that much money tied up in inventory.

If this is the wrong place to post this question, please suggest another message board to post.

Thank you for your feedback and assistance.
lngbruno
piedpiper
753 posts
 
Minimalism will always gain you alot asuuming what gear is left in the signal chain is good. I routinely use a battery powered Crown SASSP that I've heavily modified incorporating a built in hand made minimalist battery powered mic pre feeding a modified Alesis Masterlink through a one meter pair of Maplshade/Insound ribbon interconnects at 88.2k sampling at 24 bit later reduced to redbook standard. All editing is done on the Masterlink. The sound becomes very dependent on the room and mic/musician placement. Sound is superb. Price is very reasonable.
piedpiper
753 posts
 
Again, 96k is a waste of reconversion. 88.2 is just halved into 44.1 without total reconversion. You gain the higher res for recording, signal processing, if at all, editing and archiving with no down side.
flex
292 posts
 
That's not correct Piedpiper. 88.2k is not just halved to 44.1k. Conversions from 96k and from 88.2k to 44.1k both need a low pass filter and rate conversion algorithm. Also the conversion from 96k to 44.1k involves no losses relative to 88.2k to 44.1k. It just needs the right high quality conversion algorithm, which is present in the Sonic Solutions workstation.
piedpiper
753 posts
 
Thanks for the input. The low pass filter makes sense but why wouldn't they just throw out every other sample? Why go with higher sample rate then? Archival only?
flex
292 posts
 
If you throw out every other sample of an 88.2khz signal, you will have a 44.1khz data set, but with all the frequencies over 22.05 khz aliased into the audio band. The low pass filter is used to attenuate signal energy above 22.05khz (Nyquist) before reducing the sample rate.

Not just archival; it actually sounds better to record at higher frequencies and then downconvert to redbook. Current belief about high resolution says it sounds better than redbook mainly because of reduction of the distortions caused by filtering, especially steep brick wall low pass filters. When you start with an 88.2/96khz/24b signal, you still need a steep filter at the downconvert stage, but there are steps in the filter design that can be taken to roll the filter off more gently, keep ripple very low, and dither the 24b signal down to 16b. I can recommend papers if you're interested.
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