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Album Master files

Let's say you just finished mastering an album in Pyramix, Sadie, Sequoia or Garageband and exported your high resolution master files to a folder.

But then you'll probably need some more formats for uploading to media or sending of to clients. So the next step is to convert your master files to various formats. This recipe will do that for you.

Depending on what you need, those would probably be one or more of these:

High Res

We expect you'll use the highest quality during mastering and your export is allready an 176.4kHz and 24bit wav file. But if it's not, the recipe creates that for you.

You also probably had a good look at the audio levels during mastering, and since most audio streaming services take care of loudness normalisation. It is considered best practice not to normalise and leave that up to them. Therefor the HighRes versions will be kept unchanged.

Specifications:

  • PCM WAV file
  • 176.4kHz
  • 24bit
  • audio levels unchanged
Red Book

Way back when people where still listening to cd's, Red Book was the standard format. Eventhough cd's are long gone, many audio players still prefer this format.

Since these file are usually not processed/adjusted the recipe also takes care of the loudness of the album. The loudness will be normallised so that the loudest file is at -14LUFS. Other files will be are relatively adjusted so that the loudness differences between tracks will not be altered.

Specifications:

  • PCM WAV file
  • 44.1kHz
  • 16bit
  • loudest track at -14LUFS
iTunes

The iTunes format is produced using the afconvert command line tool as described by Apple. This is only available on MacOS but installed into the OS by default. When the recipe starts it will try to access afconvert and give you the option if it is available.

Specifications:

  • Mastered for iTunes Plus AAC LC
  • 44.1kHz
  • 256kb/s
  • loudest track at -14LUFS
FLAC

Specifications:

  • PCM WAV file
  • 44.1
  • 16bit
  • loudest track at -14LUFS
MP3 Reference

A low resolution / small file version for the client approval. Mp3 is still the most wide supported audio file format and with a medium bitrate these files can be easily be send around and play everywhere.

Specifications:

  • MP3
  • 192k
  • 44.1kHz
  • loudest track at -14LUFS

Instead of creating all those deliverables one-by-one, this recipe takes the whole lot and creates all files you need (or let's say checked in the dialog).

When the processing is done, hover over a file to see more details. In the file list you can see what file was the loudest and used for the -14LUFS reference of the album normalisation.

The list of filetypes and the specifications is up for debate. Also, we are considering to add a log file and DDP support, but don't see a lot of people using it anymore. So let us know what you think about this recipe or propose an improvement.

Download

This recipe is not installed by default. You can get it here:

Album Master Reciperead more & download

If you need help installing recipes, take a look at the adding-recipes support page.