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Looking for a good Cd replication company?


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Hey guys,

Currently, I'm recording a 5 song EP and I'm lookin to get it mastered,

designed, and replicated. I've checked out discmakers.com and Oasis.com

and would like to hear your experiences if you've worked with them.

Also, if there's other companies you would recommend with great prices,

I would really appreciate it.

 

Thanks in advance!

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im in the same boat as you...mastering is taken care of

now I just need the inserts...designed the cover, need the rest done

 

do you have your inserts done up yet?

and if so how did you go about getting them done up and what sort of programs did you use to get it done?

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I have worked with both mentioned Discmakers & Oasis as well as Healey Disc in Canada for manufacturing.

 

I recommend Discmakers. Of course, it goes without saying that either of the three (Discmakers, Oasis, Healey Disc) are reputable, professional, and roughly the same pricing structure. Discmakers seems to offer the widest range of services that would benefit the indie artist. They are espcially helpful if you don't have a pro level graphics resource.

 

If I were releasing product where the order placed was in the 5-10,000 unit ballpark, I would go with Crest National Media. Few are doing that many of course, so I use Discmakers when doing a single 1,000 unit order which may not be re-ordered for nearly a year.

 

Discmakers offers basic mastering for $50 a song (I think). It will be competent, but more or less a cookie cutter affair. If your mixes were done by a seasoned mixing engineer, you could probably get away with their mastering. If you did the recording yourself, it's a freshman or sophmore effort as far as your recording and mixing skills are concerned, and you didn't have a stellar mix room environment (room treatment, monitoring quality, etc) you would likely benefit from having an experienced mastering engineer who will go over your tracks with a fine toothed comb.

 

Most recording projects risk going straight into the crapper when it comes to mastering. If you cheap out, you run a much higher risk of being disappointed by the sound of your resulting CD. Budget $100-200 per song for mastering and you can probably hire a qualified Mastering guy. John Vestman specializes in Mastering for indie artists on a limited budget. Go to his website. He has a ton of good stuff on mastering that is very helpful to check out. I don't know the guy personally. In fact I compete with him a tiny bit, because I take occasional mastering gigs too. I have never heard anything bad about him either.

 

If you want to spend a bit more, contact Technovoice in Studio City, Ca and talk to Bob Lanzner or Charlie Watts. Those boys are total badasses and are in the Grundman/Ludwig league. I do mastering and they are my 'go to' guys when I'm not skilled enough to get the results needed for a project.

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Gtrbass, Thanks for your help. Yeah, I've noticed that there isn't a big difference in price between discmakers and Oasis. I was just wondering if there were any other professional CD manufacturers with reasonable prices.

I'm planning to press 300 copies mixed and masteer. Might take it somewhere else to get it mastered but Im definitely looking for a company to replicate and package it.

 

Thanx again for your help.

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One thing to consider. A 300 unit CD run will probably mean duplication on CDR's rather than replication from a glass master. There is a difference. The quality control is much higher on CD replication. A replicated CD will play back on any system out there, but some CD players (older ones) have a hard time with playing some CDR's.

 

If it's just a 5 song EP/Demo that you intend to use for promotion (give away) more than actually sell as a product, it's probably fine.

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If I'm not mistaken, the 300 run deal is for replication. I plan to sell this EP at live shows, and I know the importance of getting it "replicated" instead of "duplicated"

 

Would you recommend going with a package deal since Im looking for more than one service?

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Fling,

 

How is Discmakers a ripoff? I've dealt with them several times over the years and was never displeased with their quality, professionalism or costs. They seem reasonable. $1.29/unit is not a bad price for 1000 unit run.

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What's the difference between replication and duplication?

 

 

I believe replication takes an actual glass print or copy of the cd. It perfectly replicates the data and there is no sound loss from cd to cd. Duplication is no different than burning a cd in your living room. The quality is not guaranteed to be spot on. I dunno...that's the basic gist of it.

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I believe replication takes an actual glass print or copy of the cd. It perfectly replicates the data and there is no sound loss from cd to cd. Duplication is no different than burning a cd in your living room. The quality is not guaranteed to be spot on. I dunno...that's the basic gist of it.

True replication requires the making of glass masters, electroformed fathers, mothers, and subsequent offspring, assuming you need a lot of stampers...which most indy releses do not...when we used to run Pink Floyd re-issues, we had to e-form a lot of stampers :cool:

and actually, some of the new high speed duplication machines are very accurate. I am in the process of finalizing buying one that does CD/Blu-Ray... (almost bought a non-blu-ray a while back since the price difference was huge...SONY=MONEY, but when the industry agreed to adopt blu-ray, I decided to bide my time.)

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