Here's something I'm curious to do a quick poll on: how long do people generally take to master a track? Doesn't matter for now how you define "master", am just curious. Am expecting wildly varying answers, and there's no "right" answer to it.

BenMMusTech
 And who listens to 16 bit CD anymore anyway? I don't!.

Nor me, or very rarely. But I went to an album launch gig for a record I produced recently, and it's all been a no-budget all-hands-on-deck thing, so I worked on the merch stall for the night to help out. And we sold a few dozen CDs, in a small place with a crowd of about 100. Sold maybe 20 vinyl, but I already knew there's still a niche market for vinyl. But I'll admit the CD sales really surprised me. They're doing far more vinyl on online orders, but at the shows since, CD has generally done better. Who knew?

I don't think there's anything wrong with mixing and mastering inside the same project as long as you use a separate mastering bus and are disciplined enough to disable the FX bin until you are ready to master. It is very helpful to be able to quickly & easily hear how a mastered final result might sound before finalizing a mix.  In fact, I think this ability to quickly toggle back and forth is incredibly helpful in learning how the mastering process impacts the final result.  You can actually learn how tweaks in the mix translate during mastering.
 
Anyway.... as to the subject of CD's:  Yes, CD's are mandatory if you are a serious pro artist.  Most labels won't even consider any arrangements without physical product to distribute, and in many parts of the world there is still a good demand for physical product.   Personally I wish everything would go electronic, makes it easier on the artist and engineer/producer, but we are likely a long way away from that.
 
Sonic
 
 

SonicExplorerin many parts of the world there is still a good demand for physical product.  

True. A discovery I made with another band is that CDs are a small market in the UK specifically, but they're still huge in mainland Europe. As far as I can work it out, this is because there are still loads of old cars on the road that have CD players, and people buy them mainly for that use.

BenMMusTech
You obviously didn't read my post, because it's about rounding errors and internal dynamic range. Those bits aren't wasted in the mixing and mastering process. And who listens to 16 bit CD anymore anyway? I don't!.

I did... and that was the reason I have written my post, with some reference to what going on in the real world
I mean in the real world there is no 32bit DACs and no floating point DACs. So the upper format physically used by audio devices is 24bit fixed point (otherwise something should convert on the fly) and even that is more then top converters can really reproduce. But I have mentioned that for mixing and mastering 64bit is a good idea.
 
Not to mention there is no known prove there is a single person in the world who can distinguish between original 24/32/64 and (properly prepared) 16bit signal, on any equipment. But well, at least technically the signal can be different (between 16 and 24, not between 24 and 32/64).
 
I had a friend with SACDs and all related hardware ("special" cables, etc.). I know that is a religion and as such no arguments can help to claim anything else
 
Here, in Germany, if I want to buy music, I order CDs. For some reason digital delivery audio (and books) cost more or equal to the physical delivery. And I listen them on crappy equipment, mostly in my car... But I have to deal with DACs/ADCs and the precision of calculations in other domain.

azslow3

BenMMusTech
You obviously didn't read my post, because it's about rounding errors and internal dynamic range. Those bits aren't wasted in the mixing and mastering process. And who listens to 16 bit CD anymore anyway? I don't!.

I did... and that was the reason I have written my post, with some reference to what going on in the real world
I mean in the real world there is no 32bit DACs and no floating point DACs. So the upper format physically used by audio devices is 24bit fixed point (otherwise something should convert on the fly) and even that is more then top converters can really reproduce. But I have mentioned that for mixing and mastering 64bit is a good idea.
 
Not to mention there is no known prove there is a single person in the world who can distinguish between original 24/32/64 and (properly prepared) 16bit signal, on any equipment. But well, at least technically the signal can be different (between 16 and 24, not between 24 and 32/64).
 
I had a friend with SACDs and all related hardware ("special" cables, etc.). I know that is a religion and as such no arguments can help to claim anything else
 
Here, in Germany, if I want to buy music, I order CDs. For some reason digital delivery audio (and books) cost more or equal to the physical delivery. And I listen them on crappy equipment, mostly in my car... But I have to deal with DACs/ADCs and the precision of calcuThe lations in other domain.

http://www.lg.com/us/supp...272116-speakerreceiver

32 bit DAC above link. And I can hear the difference between my 64bit masters and 24 bit masters - esp when uploading to soundcloud. I can also hear the difference when freezing tracks...because as I said when you add layers of tube and analouge emulations - you need the highest bit depth for dynamic range...its the only way to emulate the sound of analouge. Think about it - when you mixed with analouge back in the day, you never really kept an eye on overs. This is how you achieved that fat warm sound. What happens when you freeze tracks at a lower bit-depth is all the analouge emulation effects get grainy at 32bitfp and at 24bit depth those sonics disappear into the noise floor. But if you set everything at 64bitfp - even 24bit master wave files retain those analouge emulated Sonics.

I believe I could set up a blind listening test to demonstrate this. I admit that when I heard the difference - I used a pair of AKG 712s and to help a listener hear what I hear...you would need similar headphones. Speakers of any kind would not cut it I believe.

But take it or leave it. I know what I've achieved. Listen to any of my mixes from the last year and you will hear fat warm masters created with nothing more than a cheap Motu DAC 10 years old, and an 80 dollar mic for vox. Of course my skills and the secret sauce too.

Ben

Absolutely LOL at being lectured on high quality audio by someone who's putting forward soundcloud streams as evidence of their discernment.
 

when you freeze tracks at a lower bit-depth is all the analouge emulation effects get grainy at 32bitfp and at 24bit depth those sonics disappear into the noise floor.

 
This is such utter babble. Where do you get this nonsense from?
 
The noise floor is the volume of the background noise, which, you know, hopefully is low to begin with. If what you say above has any meaning, then signals above the noise floor, ie: what you're hearing 99% of the time, would have none of these analogue emulation effects. It's an inevitable corollary of saying the noise floor can make them disappear.
 
So you're effectively saying that there's some precious analogue emulation effect that kicks in when a signal is quiet enough to be about to sink into silence, that nonetheless magically imparts character to the rest of this mix.
 
I really hope nobody else is having their time wasted by believing any of this guff.

John 

Some of this discussion is over my head but FWIW I will share that AFAIK Sonar 6 began supporting a render depth of 64 bit fp/export (previously in S5 was 32 bit).  Even though both S5 and S6 had 64-bit mix engines.   And although the final 24 bit mixes were identical when bit-compared, I felt I could definitely hear a difference on playback inside of Sonar when comparing S5 and S6.  Nobody ever did have an explanation for that though.  S6 sounded ..... more...analog or smooth than S5.  My ears are really sensitive to upper frequencies and harmonics so I'm guessing it was something in that realm.  But then again, maybe it was all in my head....never made sense to me how two different versions of Sonar could seem to sound different inside the project yet the mixes summed identically.   ??

BenMMusTech
http://www.lg.com/us/supp...272116-speakerreceiver
32 bit DAC above link.

When you read consumer land specifications (phone, SoundBlaster, etc.), be careful. The are written by ultra-pro specialists in... consumer marketing... Remember $1 earbuds with 20Hz-20kHz on them?
Notice how accurate they describe it:

featuring 32-bit playback and the latest high-performance DAC

Can you see any claim the DAC is 32-bit? Mentioned are "32-bit architecture", "32-bit PCM support", "32-bit digital processing to improve...".
ESS also writes everything carefully, on the "rocket science" level, which consumers are almost guarantied can not understand and "pros" can not get sufficient information for deductive comments (every sequence ends in "proprietary technology" without much details).
 
I let electronic gurus here to interpret the specification, I estimate they claim ("up to") 22bit significance.