What does "Mastered By NIMBUS" mean?

I see it in the inner rings of many CDs...including some DCC Gold CDs.

 

Nimbus is the pressing plant. DCC used their US facility.

 

I got quite confused when buying the Aqualung DCC and reading 'Mastered at NIMBUS' on the inner ring, worrying about the same mastering was used as for the domestic CD (the pre-remaster) by mistake. I recovered very fast when listening to the DCC for the first time, assuming the remark has something to do with the production of the CD.

 

A fascinating company. Here's a history:

http://www.optical-disc.com/nimbushistory.htm

Incidentally, in the mid-80's Virgin owner and founder Richard Branson decided to build a CD manufacturing plant inside his flagship Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street in London. This had glass walls, so that customers could watch CD's being manufactured.

Nimbus, in which Branson had a minority shareholding, argued against the move, but Branson went ahead. It was a costly folly, and one of the few mistakes he acknowledges in his autobiography.

I have no evidence of it, but I assume the Virgin-Nimbus link was why some UK CD's in my collection say both 'Mastered by Nimbus' and 'Virgin Megastore' - because the discs were from Nimbus but the CD's were pressed at the London store.

 

In the early days of the CD, mastering a CD was called "pre-mastering" by some people.
In this interpretation, "Mastering" was cutting the glass master. And I guess that "Mastered by" was more appealing than "pressed by".

Weren't Nimbus the guys who, at the end of the 80's, claimed that most CDs were rotting and had a life expectancy of around 10 years?

 

According to The American Record Guide (Vol 62, #3 March/April 1999 Page 58) CD Corrosion article, the company guilty of CD corrosion was Philips and DuPont Ltd, in Lancashire. The problem was a defective lacquer coating made with silver instead of aluminum. The label most associated with this problem was Hyperion, but it also affected EMI, Albany, DG Archive, ASV, Cala, Collins, CRD, Danacord, DG, IMP, Oiseau-Lyre, Pearl, Testament, RPO, and Unicorn.

Those with classical interests are probably already familiar with all these labels. Many are very high quality players, who did their best to replace any discs. Most of the discs say PDO near the inner hole.

Nimbus is not mentioned. I have many Nimbus discs, both their own label and those they mastered for others. I've had no problems and in fact they are generally considered a very reliable and authentic company. Their biggest business gamble was the recording of their catalog using MS single-point miking at some distance, designed for optimal playback using the Ambisonic surround system. Many critics pointed out the excess ambience of Nimbus recordings, which also touted minimal (if any) editing. Basically, they bet on a system that didn't make very deep inroads in the consumer playback world. I've never heard a Nimbus disc properly decoded. That said, they have some very good recordings, especially of British composers such as Elgar, Britten and Vaughan Williams. William Boughton's conducting of Elgar's Enigma Variations is still on some best all time lists.

Independence is risky.

 

My Jurassic Park CD soundtrack bought in Spain back in December 1993 is mastered (pressed) by Nimbus. I think MCA hadn't bought Polydor, Polygram and all Philips related companies yet, so they didn't have a pressing plant in Europe.
During the 80s MCA Records was marketed by WEA (Warner Bros. Records overseas) and so were their CDs made. By early 90s they parted ways with WEA, so they used Nimbus and Sonopress Germany for manufacturing their discs.
My Nimbus pressed Jurassic Park CD seems to be hard (after all those years) as stone.

 

You may be thinking of this 1990 Nimbus finding:

http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/cddestruct90.html

BTW, the Nimbus plant in Virginia was about a 45 minute drive west of us. Many local bands would bring in their studio tapes to us, to press a run of CDs for them (we were distributors, not manufacturers), so we would give them Nimbus' number. Nimbus was very kind to local artists. They would do limited runs, that were reasonably priced. This always surprised me, since these small jobs might be thought of as more trouble than they're worth. We must have referred quite a few bands their way, as they sent us a pack of brochures to give to independent artists looking to have professional CDs made. They were also cool about giving tours and taking time to answer technical questions.

 

I thought Nimbus was the company whose ink was eating through the top layer, damaging the data underneath.

Derek

 

I've got quite a few of the mid to late 80s UK pressed Nimbus CDs - original Tangerine Dream Virgin issues, some of the original Cocteau Twins 4AD issues, Heart S/T first issue, Cutting Crew, T'Pau... All still play fine today.

Ink wasn't what I heard about them. It was the lingering slight tackyness of the acrylic top coat that the ink was silk-screened on. To this day, if I try to rub the top surface of a Nimbus disc with a cloth, it's still just ever-so-slightly sticky - plays hell with fingerprints because they can't be rubbed off.

 

Among the 3000+ CDs I have (mainly european pressings), only a 3CD set from Hyperion Records was affected by CD bronzing. I had bought it used in the early 90's and noticed the problem last year. The last third of the discs could not be played (increasing skipping).

I sent an email to the PDO factory, they asked me to sent in the defective discs. I received replacement discs two weeks later

http://www.classical.net/music/guide/bronzedcds.html

 

Hi Claude,

That's matched my experience. Suffice it to say, I'm not prepared to get into a discussion about which medium lasts the longest, but with CDs from the year of introduction, I've lost only one so far, and it was physical damage (accidental). I've got a number of Hyperion releases and all sound great so far.

 

I have only a couple Nimbus discs made in the 80s and early 90s. A few UK and a USA made one. No problems to report.

Of the major labels, Virgin and EMI used them until EMI got Swindon UK running full steam and acquired Virgin. most of the USA made Nimbus discs I see are indie labels or CD-ROMs.