DDP

Why is DDP better than a CD Pre-Master?

DDP (Data Description Protocol) is the professional way to master for CD duplication. Most manufacturers agree that DDP is a fully error corrected and ultra-reliable transfer format. CDR Masters have potential problems such as disc error rates and pit jitter.

Red Book discs have no error detection for
the audio data, only limited correction or, if that
fails, concealment.

Delivering a DDP, that has lower error rates than CDR, eliminates mistakes at the manufacturing plant. Only DDP masters provide a verifiable data transfer from the hard drive to the final CD and employ sophisticated error-checking. Our DDP masters are fully error-checked and allow for a full data check before a glass master is produced. A DDP is your best guarantee that your master will be transferred and your CD manufactured with no problems at the plant.

The VP of studio operations at Universal Mastering studios is quoted as saying: "...of the hundreds of thousands of ddps we handle a year, in terms of creating, storing and processing them, we are not aware of one glitch."

With our DDP & CDR/gold disc Masters it is possible to add a UPC code and International Standard Recording Codes (ISRC) for each track which are embedded into the data on an audio CD to identify the owner of each track. Used extensively for royalty payments, ISRCs consist of a series of numbers which are allocated by the BPI in the UK, and regulated worldwide by the IFPI.

For more information see our links page.

The steps of creating a DDP master are:

#1 Recalling the mastering settings and run a real time burn of the files.

#2 Burning the files in slow speed onto a CDR and verifying them.

#3 Transfering the files from the CDR back into the computer

#4 Importing the files into Sonic Solutions and burning a 2X audio reference CD, which is representative of what each and every CD stamped from your DDP master will sound like.