SUMMARY OF SPECIFICATIONS

DIGITAL CUTTING MASTERS:

• Scenario #1 (PREFERRED): Vinyl production masters are derived at the mastering stage by the mastering engineer, stripping out all limiting used for loudness and restoring natural dynamics to the audio. The delivered vinyl master loudness should target at -18 LUFS.
• Scenario #2: One digital file per vinyl side is delivered to be used for lacquer master cutting.
• Scenario #3: UMG studios can create cutting masters from any source.

Files must represent the final, approved sequence for each side. These digital cutting master files will be used by the mastering engineer to cut a master lacquer for each side, which will then be sent to the plating facility for metal master creation.

Sample Rate: 44.1 KHz, 48 KHz, 88.2 KHz, 176.4 KHz, or 192 KHz
Bit Depth: 16 bit, 24 bit, or 32 bit

ANALOG CUTTING MASTERS:

When lacquers are required to be cut from an analog tape master, a sequenced analog cutting master will be delivered to the mastering studio, which includes alignment tones, full sequencing with track start markers, and head and tail leaders for all sides. Tape boxes must contain full documentation of what is contained on the analog cutting master (including artist name, album title, and individual song titles with timings) and the box should include scans of the original tape boxes for reference.

FILE NAMING CONVENTION

Describe all Production Masters using an easy-to-follow naming convention. Apply it consistently to all files (and when applicable, to all folders and storage media) to connect and identify all deliverables.

Please remember to identify at a minimum where applicable:

• artist
• song title
• production master release format
• audio file format, sample rate & bit-depth
• identify all approved production masters
• File and folder names cannot begin with periods or underscores, or include any special characters such as dashes, spaces, forward slashes, back slashes, accents, or other characters such as &, @, #, *, ?, <, >, “, |, :, etc.