Digital music distribution is unbeatable in many ways – but sound quality is not one of them. This, at least, is what many people believe, although it’s actually not true. That’s because compressed formats such as Vorbis, AAC and MP3 also sound quite good when we professionally prepare digital masters to serve as the basis for encoding. Not to be forgotten here is high-resolution audio, the quality of which is far superior to CD audio, for example.
The album as a musical concept is becoming less important in the world of streaming, as people now listen to music from personal playlists that often include all different types of music genres. While the decline of the album means that artists have lost a form of depiction and communication, sound engineers have in fact been given new freedom.
This means that we can allow your individual tracks to stand out in all their glory because we don’t need to perfectly align them with an overall album context. Albums produced in this manner are less consistent than traditional albums – but they also contain distinct individual tracks that have a major impact on both listeners and the music market.
In order to ensure that the full potential of your production’s sound can be enjoyed by listeners even via digital distribution channels, you need to employ a specially adapted strategy and this is where we come in. We create a dedicated digital master for electronic distribution. We distinguish here between masters for three different types of distribution: masters for productions that will ultimately be distributed by high-resolution audio providers, masters that will be used as basis for encoding and subsequent streaming or downloading, and masters created in line with the Apple Digital Masters protocol.
We deliver production masters for high-resolution audio distribution in in the specifications defined by the provider in question. The desired resolution generally corresponds to the native production format, which is also the most sensible option. Here, we use the data from high-resolution CD processing , which is then rendered to CD quality 4416 in the mastering workflow.
Providers alter our music programs with their own algorithms. In order to ensure we can deliver the best master for encoding, we pay close attention to the various specifications defined by the different platforms while also focusing on best practices.
It is also possible to create a single digital master that will be accepted by all providers. We, however, prefer to supply you with production masters that meet the exact specifications of the provider in question – assuming of course that this is what you want.
We create special production masters to ensure that your production will sound as close as possible to the full-resolution original when it’s distributed by Apple Music. These masters feature high-resolution audio in line with the Apple Digital Masters protocol.
Back in 2014, Master & Servant actually became one of the first studios in Germany to be certified by Apple Incorporated USA as an official technical provider of music productions “Mastered for iTunes” (now known as Apple Digital Masters).
Yes, definitely. The key component of Apple Digital Masters involves a clearly defined interwoven workflow that starts with the work in the mastering studio and extends to uploading, encoding and technical delivery by the provider. This process leads to superior quality in terms of compression and encoding. In addition, it ensures that the D/A converters used by consumers will run in an ideal operating range. This results in downloads and streaming with less distortion and compression artefacts.
Our Apple Digital Masters can also generally be used for all other types of high-resolution distribution other than Apple Music. You also receive a high-resolution archive copy of your production on the basis of the ADM data. The Apple Digital Master can serve as a source for all future formats and applications, and creating an optional ADM master of your production makes sense for several other reasons as well.
Your music production is unique, so feel free to tell us all about yourself or the artist, the nature of your project and the circumstances surrounding your music production. Your personal views and ideas are also very important to us, as they allow us to become better acquainted with your project. Just complete our form and we will send you a quote or an initial overview of what we have to offer.