Abbey Road Special Features

Introduction to Mastering

2009-11-11T08:26:50+00:00

The first in a new series of short videos introducing the art of mastering at Abbey Road.

Mastering Audio For High Definition

2009-11-11T08:26:50+00:00

The mastering services available at Abbey Road extend beyond traditional stereo and surround mastering. We offer high definition (HD) mastering for broadcast projects and new formats for the home consumer such as Blu-ray.High-Definition mastering for broadcastBroadcasting in high definition means that you have the opportunity to deliver a surround sound audio stream alongside the pictures.  This can be created either by a full studio mixing session, or by upmixing a stereo source to create a 5.1 or a 7.1 master.  Abbey Road offers both services.For Broadcast purposes, a 5.1 audio stream is generally encoded to a 2 channel Dolby E stream before layback to a video master.High-Definition mastering for new formatsAbbey Road has always been at the forefront of new formats and technologies. In today's world this includes high definition mastering for formats such as Blu-ray discs. Blu-ray is a high-density optical disc format for the storage of up to 50GB of digital information, including high-definition video. As in High Definition broadcasting, you can have multi-channel audio streams alongside the High Definition pictures on a Blu-ray. Unlike standard definition DVDs, the audio does not have to be compressed, because there is more space on the new formats, so you can have a 5.1 or 7.1 audio mix in uncompressed PCM wave format, or to save space, you can use one of the new lossless encoding formats from Dolby and DTS.Example projectsFrom the Basement for the Sky Arts channel. Producer Nigel Godrich.upmixed 2ch master to 5.1, plus multi-channel layback to HDCAM-SR via Dolby E encoder.Kanye West: Late Orchestration5.1 and Stereo mastered, prepared and laid back to tape in Room 13 for SD and HD-DVD release.Robbie Williams: Live at the Royal Albert Hall5.1 and Stereo mastered, prepared and laid back to tape in Room 13 for SD and HD-DVD release.

Classical Remastering

2009-11-11T08:26:50+00:00

Abbey Road's tradition in the field of classical remastering can be traced back directly to the founder of the Gramophone Company. Recordings that span he entire 20th century by artists such as Caruso, Patti, Gigli, Bjorling, Beecham, Barbirolli, Karajan, Callas and Barenboim, are all preserved in the EMI studios group archive. These original analogue recordings, whether on tape or 78 disc, are used to reproduce masters for the modern digital age. They are some of the most significant milestones in recording history, and the know-how that created them has been passed down the generations of Abbey Road engineers since 1931. This heritage, coupled with the huge range of unique equipment at our engineers' disposal, enables us to offer an unsurpassed classical remastering service. Our approach to remastering is to transfer the original analogue source from as good a replay machine as possible to a digital workstation, using the best analogue-to-digital converters. We can then work with issues of tape hiss and extraneous noises, and remove unwanted artefacts to get the recording as close as possible to what was heard in the studio at the time of the recording. We don't enhance or change; this is not the aim of the process. Equalisation may be used sparingly to aid the restoration. The original master tapes would have been edited together from different takes, and although these edits are inaudible on a vinyl disc as they are masked by surface noise,they can be heard on digital masters. Wherever possible we can significantly improve these audible edits with digital editing tools. We have worked on all of the EMI Classics Great Recordings of the Century Series, and the Great Artists of The Century releases. We also contribute to other EMI Classics series: EMI Classics Historical, British Composers, Encore and Gemini. We are currently remastering the Lyrita catalogue, an important collection of reworkings of works by British composers.