Glass Masters

[Gary Gray]

Hello all,

I'm curious to know if any mastering houses produce glass masters or is that always done at the manufacturing stage?

[Cellotron]

Just to be clear the end product is actually a nickel stamper - the glass disc that is exposed by the LBR is disposed of.

In the 80's and 90's not every CD replication facility had glass mastering in house so they would often get their stampers made off site at a larger facility. These days with things like the AMS units - which are smaller self contained multi-processors that can fit inside of a room - which eliminate the need for clean rooms - its much more common for CD replicators to do glass mastering on site - but there are still a few plants that go to others - as the gear required for glass mastering usually starting in around the $500,000 range. Still - the ability to do glass mastering on site is definitely a huge boon to being able to keep jobs on schedule and turn arounds quick.

I don't know of a facility that just does glass masters - although I guess there might be some out there. Be aware that there are variances among models of presses' so that stampers for each of these sometimes have slightly different dimensions - so its much easier for this to be specified at the plant than sourced from outside facilities.

Anyway - while there are indeed a few CD replication plants with audio pre-mastering facilities in them (Europadisk which closed was one of them, GZ in Czech Republic is one that currently has this), I don't know of any audio pre-mastering studio that has glass mastering in house.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Gary Gray]

Steve,

Thanks a lot, that's very good information. I appreciate your taking the time to respond in such depth.

Gary