Lurssen
Mastering Console for Mac/PC and iOS now lets musicians create
"Mastered for iTunes®" specification compliant audio masters for digital
distribution services like iTunes®, Spotify®, Pandora® and more
September 1, 2016 - IK Multimedia, the leader in mobile music creation, is pleased to announce an update to Lurssen Mastering Console
for Mac/PC and iOS that adds "Digital Delivery Mastering" - a feature
that lets musicians and audio engineers prepare their mastered audio
files for popular digital distribution services to comply with Apple's
"Mastered for iTunes" specifications. The update is complimentary for
current owners of Lurssen Mastering Console for Mac/PC, and is an
included feature in the HD engine in-app purchase in the iOS release.
Five new style presets for Hard Rock/Heavy Metal music are also included
in this update.
Digital Delivery Mastering - "Mastered for iTunes"
For
musicians and engineers mastering music for digital distribution and
streaming services like iTunes, Pandora and Spotify, Lurssen Mastering
Console now ensures their music is compliant with Apple's Mastered for
iTunes specification - an industry first. Lurssen Mastering Console's
new Digital Delivery Mastering (DDM) feature provides mastered audio
files that comply with specifications for sample rate, bit depth and
peak levels, ensuring that audio translates perfectly for compressed
formats like AAC.
Apple's
Mastered for iTunes specifications states that files have to comply
with high-resolution sample rate and bit depth requirements and that no
clipping at or over 0.0dBFS should be present in the digital masters
being submitted. As the tendency in contemporary digital music
production is to go for super loud masters, distortion can be created as
a by-product of extreme use of digital peak limiters pushing up the
level. Even though the file's maximum peak level is not exceeding 0.0
dBFS, digital overshoots can still occur when the file is de-compressed
back to PCM format for playback.
This
is where the new Digital Delivery Mastering option for Lurssen
Mastering Console comes in. It offers an additional layer of protection
against peak overshoots that could be generated when decoding the
compressed format for playback. This can cause clips that may go
unnoticed while mixing and mastering with regular sample peak meters.
The additional layer of protection is achieved by the peak limiter at
the end of the mastering chain working in a specific way. This
guarantees that the compressed file is safe from distortion when played
back from digital distribution services such as Apple's iTunes, Spotify
and Pandora.
The
Digital Delivery Mastering option is part of the HD Engine in-app
purchase, and can be enabled independently from the HD Engine in the
settings menu. It is also included in the free update for Mac/PC users.
Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Style presets
Lurssen
Mastering Console provides mind-blowing results in record time through
an intuitive set of controls and settings. "Styles" presets created by
Gavin Lurssen, Reuben Cohen and the team at Lurssen Mastering, Inc.,
define the gear chain and provide the settings for virtually every genre
including Rock, Country, Americana, Pop, EDM and more. In this new
release, five new styles have been added for creating Hard Rock/Heavy
Metal mastered files. With these additional presets, users can now find a
mastering starting point for virtually every style and genre of music.
