Annoyed

[Linear]

OK.

I had a band in that just finished their EP. We mixed down to 1/4" because that's basically the only format I can easily mix to. Plus if you have an ATR102, why would you use anything else?

So the tapes were supposed to be couriered to the mastering house this morning, and then I get a panicked phonecall from the bands manager who tells me that the mastering house won't accept a tape - they want it on DVD.

Note that this mastering house, located in Glebe and ending with the letter X are currently advertising 'Ultra Analog Mastering' with a picture of an ATR102 in Drum Media.

So I called the engineer in question, and had a debate about how long it would take to set up a tape machine (swapping heads, aligning etc). For some unknown reason, the inconvenience of tape would add an hour and $175 to the mastering cost. Plus, they don't ever master from the tape anyway - they dump the whole lot into their hard disk system and master from that. I'm no mastering expert, but I find this rather questionable.

Suffice to say, I won't be recommending anyone I ever meet in the future to EVER go to this mastering house. I think it's a complete joke, because now the tapes are getting sent back to me to dump down to a WAV file (something that really should be done at a mastering house).

Yes, I'm annoyed because the band and manager are asking me 'why did I mix down to tape?' I tried to tell them that most mastering houses ~should~ be able to accept this most fundamental of formats, and this is the first time I've heard of this.

Anyway, I'm annoyed so I just had to vent. Note that stuff sent to the mastering house hosting this forum have never had a problem accepting 1/4" tape.

Chris

[rick]

it costs a lot to have all formats available, we cost more then those guys
and we do a different job
what happens here is if somebody "surprises" us with a format we were not expecting , then we go through the motions to do whatever it takes to get to the source of the sound the "masters". at our expense usually !

that said my 1/2" atr heads are in america getting a tweek so if somebody rang up this week i would be checking on the format for the job when i took the booking ( as we do with every job anyway) and avdvise that it may be a problem

it sounds like your issue is with the "ultra analog" slogo and i think you will find you are not alone in wondering what that is all about.
it must mean something you and i are not aware of !

[Chris H]

I have heard of some A to D converters being called ultra analogue. That must be it???

[chris p]

Hee hee, I get it - "ultra" as in "beyond (in time or space)" according to my venerable Macquarie Dictionary.

So "Ultra analog" actually means "beyond analog in time", which means completely digital! I must remember that one. Check out the LCD screen on my ultra-analog watch.

[Howard Jones]

Did you advise your clients that this was the only format you could provide to them?

[Linear]

Did you advise your clients that this was the only format you could provide to them?

It was discussed. Note that it's not the only format I can do, but the preferred format.

I'm interested to know if people feel it was wrong of me to assume that this mob would be able to deal with an analog master. I would check if I didn't know the mastering house, but I was aware of where it was going and had stuff sent there before.

Note that I never spoke to the mastering house directly, it was organised by the manager. Apparently they quoted the job based on a DVD master, which I wasn't aware of until today. She admitted she didn't really know what it was all about, so it only came up when they were expecting a DVD and got a tapes.

My problem though, is if you're advertising 'ULTRA ANALOG' with a picture of a tape machine, why is it such a big deal to accept a tape master? And really, should the setup and alignment of the tape machine be a 'cost' to the customer? I certainly don't charge people to align my tape machines, I do it before they arrive. Thus I thought $175 was a bit rich to 'set up' their tape machine for 1/4".

Anyway, I've done the transfer and am waiting for the courier so I've calmed down a bit. I'm still annoyed though.

Chris

[Howard Jones]

Tell us what your other formats are. If your main recording medium is tape, it makes sense that you would not charge for aligning your machines.

For mastering, tape is (these days) pretty much a non-standard format for which they obviously feel they need to charge. You'd better ask them for details about their policy as this is only conjecture and I'm not here as an apologist for them.

This from the Turtlerock website:

"At Turtlerock we can handle any format if we are given adequate notice, however we may have to lug them out of storage and get them realigned for your job. Please phone us if you are unsure of which formats you have - our engineers can usually figure out over the telephone what you have in your hands, if that is not possible we can tell at a glance what the formats are and which machine will be required."

The Ultra Analog claims look like advertising hype mixed with inexperience/carelessness on the part of this mob in how they promote themselves. Ultra Analog is probably meant to refer to the prodigious analogue processing they appear to have at hand. Using a picture of a tape machine definitely gives the wrong idea, though.