Help With Sonic Studios PreMaster CD

[DEXTERITY]

Greetings,

I would greatly appreciate any help as I am a premaster CD newbie. I just purchased the software and have a few questions (I'm familiar with peak).

If I have a 74 minute mix of continuous music do I simply select track start at the beginning of each song I want to index (create a new track)? In the end I should end up with about 43 tracks on the final CD with no pauses.

After reading the manual, I'm a little confused as to if I need to do anything else like define regions, in points (dont know what these are), indexes, pq marks or srps. I'm a little lost as to all the above terminology as in peak you had to create a region for each track you want (a much lengthier and annoying process).

Also, I'm not clear as if I should leave dither on or off?

Also, is creating the CD text as simple as typing in the track names or do I need to do more? I don't need a DDP master at the time so I'm simply burning a redbook cd.

I hope the above makes sense. I would definitely appreciate if someone could walk me through the basics. I need to create "tracks" that a cd player will read and cd text

thank you in advance.

[Jerry Tubb]

Originally Posted by DEXTERITY

If I have a 74 minute mix of continuous music do I simply select track start at the beginning of each song I want to index (create a new track)? In the end I should end up with about 43 tracks on the final CD with no pauses.

If it's continuous program with no gaps, just drop in "Track Start" Marks where you want each track to well... start. Don't forget the "End Mark" at the very end of the last track.

After reading the manual, I'm a little confused as to if I need to do anything else like define regions, in points (dont know what these are), indexes, pq marks or srps.

I wouldn't worry about much of this stuff yet just to burn a simple disk.

In Sonic:

Segments = Regions

In & Out Points are more for advanced editing

SRPs are used much like "Markers" in Pro Tools, to help remember certain points.

PQ Marks are automatically created when you drop in your Start and End Marks.

Also, I'm not clear as if I should leave dither on or off?

If Audio Files are 24 bit, then you'll need to use dither when going to a 16 bit disk.

Also, is creating the CD text as simple as typing in the track names or do I need to do more? I don't need a DDP master at the time so I'm simply burning a redbook cd.

After you've dropped in the Track Marks and checked their placement, bring up the "Mark Info" window. You'll enter the CD-Text there in glorious golden letters. Be sure CD-Text is checked in the "Delivery" preferences, as well as dither and bit depth prefs. PMCD will "bounce" to a DDP image first and then burn a disc.

Happy to Help - JT

[MAzevedo]

Originally Posted by DEXTERITY

Greetings,
If I have a 74 minute mix of continuous music do I simply select track start at the beginning of each song I want to index (create a new track)? In the end I should end up with about 43 tracks on the final CD with no pauses.

Just drop a start mark in the EDL where you want each track to start. It's that easy. You might also want to change the splice offset in the track info window to zero. Offsets are used to push start marks a little early and end marks a little late to allow some 'wiggle' room for CD cueing, but if you have a continuous program any offset will give you a bit of the previous track ahead of where you are dropping the marks.

After reading the manual, I'm a little confused as to if I need to do anything else like define regions, in points (dont know what these are), indexes, pq marks or srps. I'm a little lost as to all the above terminology as in peak you had to create a region for each track you want (a much lengthier and annoying process).

In (and out) points and SRPs are advanced editing tools, they are really handy but not part of the indexing. All track marks are indexes, and all indexes are PQ marks. An end mark is index 0 of the following track, and then audio starts on index 1. The CD spec allows up to 98 (2-99) sub-indexes within each track, however this functionality is rarely used. Generally you just will need to worry about end marks (index 0's) and start marks (index 1's).

Also, I'm not clear as if I should leave dither on or off?

If you are doing any fades, you should dither. If you have 24 bit sources, you should dither. If you have 16 bit sources and aren't doing any gain changes, either by changing a segment's gain directly or by fading it in or out, then you should not dither.

Also, is creating the CD text as simple as typing in the track names or do I need to do more? I don't need a DDP master at the time so I'm simply burning a redbook cd.

Just fill in the blanks in the mark info window, and make sure "CD-TEXT" is checked in the delivery window. Whenever you make a CD in Sonic, it will write a DDPi to disk and then cut the CD from the DDPi. You can just delete the DDPi after, but writing a DDPi is always part of cutting a CD in Sonic.


Good luck.

[DEXTERITY]

wow, thank you very much for all the help. I really appreciate it! you guys cleared up a lot of question I had.. One more thing in regards to the track start and end. Do I only use track end at the end of the very last track or at the end of each track?

In regards to 24 bit, if my pro tools session is recorded in 24bit should I bounce to 16 or 24? and should I add dither via premaster cd? thank u

[MAzevedo]

Bounce out of ProTools at 24 bit, dither in Sonic.

You only need an end ID at the end of the disc. If you want a track to have a pregap (ie - the countdown time between tracks) you can use an end ID to define when the track ends and the gap before the next track begins. In your case, where the program is continuous with no gaps, you would just want an end ID at the end of the disc.

[DEXTERITY]

thank you very much for your time and help!

[DEXTERITY]

I could use some more help if you guys don't mind the more I work the more questions I come across. I won't bother listing them all lol, but most importantly how do I get the required 2 second gap at the beginning of my file so I don't get an error message? I can't find a way to insert it before my first track. Thank u

[MAzevedo]

I'm not sure what you mean. Just put a start ID at the beginning of your audio, and Sonic will automatically put the 2 sec. pregap on track 1. Sometimes Sonic will get testy if you have any audio before the first ID, are you trimming your file back to the start of the audio?

[DEXTERITY]

The audio started at zero seconds and thats were I put the start ID. However, the error code didn't go away until I pushed the entire file back to a start time of two seconds. trust me I'm lost. i hate learning new software although this seems relatively simple compared to peak and pro tools and a lot less time consuming then peak.

[Thor]

Highlight either of the EDL panels (so one is blue, not grey). Hit Cmd-A to select all (all segments should turn yellow). Hit Shift-F1 to bring up the Move Segment panel. Edit the value so that it shows 00:00:02:00, hit Enter.

That will move all your data (segments with audio, Start and End marks with Metadata) so that it starts at the end of the (mandatory according to CD spec) 2 second pregap.

Takes about 1-2 seconds to do, a minute to describe

Cheers,
Thor

Originally Posted by DEXTERITY

The audio started at zero seconds and thats were I put the start ID. However, the error code didn't go away until I pushed the entire file back to a start time of two seconds. trust me I'm lost. i hate learning new software although this seems relatively simple compared to peak and pro tools and a lot less time consuming then peak.

[DEXTERITY]

Thanks Thor.