CJ: I'm actually on the fence...neither dems nor repubs impress me these days in full. So I sort of came up with my own scheme to save the world if I'm elected....and that scheme would be, to give the people their country back without being punished for the sins of past leaders. LOL! :)

Cian: Yeah, that is correct. The cat numbers are *usually* label only as they can keep track of CD units sold. Like for example, if you buy a CD, the UPC or EAN code gets scanned at the store. This sends a report to the higher powers so they can track that per unit. Now, that said, you CAN get your own bar code. Stuff like that is great for soundscan etc so you can prove units sold to a label. Remember in that other thread you had going, we talked about radio marketing etc?

The radio marketer is going to count on numbers sold per his work to push your material. Part of that, will be from units sold in CD format. So when he posts to soundscan that you sold 15,000 CD's due to your bar code scans being legit, the label figures..."ok, this person sold 15,000 units without our help...pretty cool, let's look deeper into this person." Add in the ISRC scans that the marketer will also use (as this raises his/her credibility to be a legit marketer) and it can really gain interest. Say you sold 15,000 CD's...which is pretty good for someone with no label support (or heck, it's good even with Indy label support these days) and say you showed 100,000 downloads of single tunes on iTunes or something....your stock just went up ten-fold. Imagine what that would be with real label support?

The CD units would probably go from 15,000 to 1.5 million, the 100,000 single downloads could turn into 3 million downloads. So the potential there is huge for a DIY guy...but you have to have the numbers to support it and this is where these codes can be beneficial. So yeah, you can get your own bar code scan number. For you it would be an EAN which is a 13 digit number. For those in the US and Canada, it's a 12 digit number. Hope this helps. :)

-Danny

Thanks guys. Although CJ why isnt sonar a mastering program?? What do the pro-pro's use then?

 
Forgot to address this....though I'm not CJ, as there is only one man, myth and legend with that name around here, lol...I can give you my take for what it's worth.
 
Sonar IS a full blown, and VERY strong mastering program. However, it's capabilities are not geared towards "mastering a suite of material."
 
I do all my mastering in Sonar. But...I do all my editing and "full song suite preparation" in Wave Lab or even Studio One 2 as it supports DDP format right out of the box. The mastering stage has lots of variables, Cian. Allow me to try to elaborate briefly if possible.
 
There are guys that are REAL mastering guys, and then there are guys that I like to call (quoted from my friend Tony) "little m mastering guys." The big guys are going to go through the process way differently. Like for example, when I master a song, it doesn't matter if the song is 30 seonds or 3 minutes. It will take me the same amount of time. I have to edit it and manually control peaks, DC offsets, noises, hums, oscillations, pops, clicks...you get the picture. This gets done in another program because Sonar just doesn't have the tools to handle this type of editing.
 
From there I save the file as "name of song PM" which stands for "pre master". Then I can bring it into Sonar and master it. This happens for every song I master. When I'm done in Sonar, it goes to another editor where it's finalized and if there is an entire album that needs to be mastered, this is where the album comes together and is created.
 
A "little m" mastering guy is not going to do this. He's going to open Sonar or something with oZone or something else, do a few eq changes, a brick wall limiter and be done. You can do all that in Sonar and then burn right to CD all inside Sonar. But in the REAL world, it's not something you'd want to do if you were to sell it to the masses. It should be done right using all the tools needed to perform a real mastering job. Guys like CJ and myself take extra special time and consideration when mastering audio. We treat it as though it were our own...and when you do it that way, it takes time and you need the right tools to get the right results..
 
Sonar's biggest downfall is it doesn't really support album suite mastering. For example, Wave Lab, Sony CD Architect and Studio One 2, all sport suite mastering with all the tools to literally master and create a complete Redbook Audio CD. From the places to put in codes, PQ sheet timing, UPC, EAN, track substitutions where you can remove a track and add in an edited track without touching a thing....these programs are just made for the mastering aspect of audio.
 
Sort of like...you can go out a buy a bicycle and use it as a mountain bike...but you'd be WAY better off buying a mountain bike that was created for that use, know what I mean? Hope that makes sense....that's the best way I can explain it. :)
 
-Danny

Aahh, yes you've have made this clear Danny, thank you sir. You're pretty on the ball with this kinda stuff as I'm sure you've experienced it first hand. Right I guess I'm a small "m" then by the sounds of that! How are you proceeding with your own stuff, where will you give notification when you manage to wrap it up (whenever and how ever long that may be!) here, website?

Cian

You're quite welcome, Cian. Always do my best to help out when I can with this stuff. :)

As for my own stuff, I usually keep to myself and honestly don't try to exploit myself other than the little tid bits of info I share here when I feel it's best to use myself as an example. If I were to really tell you some stuff, lol...you'd start cracking up. :) But I'll probably announce some stuff on my site (which is in need of a serious update that will happen when the release is close to being done) and might say a little something in the coffee house or something for those who may care about what I'm up to. I've just never felt I've had enough friends on here to mention much about my career other than in passing where now, I feel a bit more comfortable due to the great friends I've made in the past 3 years. I'll still probably keep things low key if I say anything at all...but we'll see how I feel when the time comes. I got as many haters as friends on here too...so, you know...it's best not to upset anyone. :) Thanks for your interest though brother.

-Danny