What is a production master CD and what is a reference CD?
A production master CD is a Red Book formatted audio compact disc. It contains unique pause or cross fade information between each track. For example; it might be best to have a 1.3 second pause between tracks 1 and 2 where as the the gap between tracks 2 and 3 requires a longer 2.4 second pause, perhaps track 6 needs to cross-fade into track 7, etc. This along with track order helps to create the “flow” of your album. Production master CD’s are burned at optimum speed using a high quality burner onto high quality blank media. Any meta-data such as ISRC codes, CD Text or UPC codes can be embedded. A PQ sheet for the duplication plant is included. A reference CD is essentially an exact copy of the production master CD. Creating the initial production master CD is a timely process but once assembled burning a copy for reference is rather simple. Pricing for reference CD’s reflect this.
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