Very "Alice in Wonderland" like. In fact, the quote is right on the money: "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
My Jurassic Park CD bought on December 24th 1993 is manufactured bu Nimbus in England, and looks and plays like the first day.
Barry is correct in that "Mastered by Nimbus" simply means prepped and manufactured by Nimbus. Has little or none to do with the studio mastering work. Just another CD presser from the old days. What ever mix/studio mastering has to do with what was supplied to them by the record company.
Most of the 1st press Joy Division and New Order CDs were manufactured by Nimbus UK (although Unknown Pleasures was PDO France). Back in the 80s Factory Records was very forward looking when it came to new technology. Tony Wilson loved CDs as he had an early CD autochanger in his Jaguar (hence the Car CD carry cases with 1St Press CDs). Factory also released albums on DAT tape and the shortlived format CDV was used for a few CD Video releases.
I know it's a case by case basis, but in general, I think Mastered by Nimbus discs sound pretty good vs other editions.
Nimbus included the "Mastered By Nimbus" info in their catalog bands, due to the fact that Nimbus designed and built in-house their own Glass Mastering equipment; including the CD Cutting Lathe. At that time, most CD replicators bought off-the-shelf systems, due to the complexity of the equipment. So, Nimbus wanted to advertise that they used their on designs, in producing CDs. Over time, Nimbus even spun off a CD Mastering Lathe side business. Now, "how do I know"? I was a Nimbus Ruckersville employee for 16 years. Eight years in the Glass Mastering department, and eight years in the PreMastering department! Fun stuff. I remember well the time I spent there. Even remember quite a few Steve Hoffman DAT tapes, for I believe DCC Compact Classics, coming through my department. We transferred to Sonic Solutions work stations, and the resultant masters were usually cut at 1X speed (One of the reasons that many people liked the sound quality of our CDs, as most of our runs used 1 X cutting), during Glass Mastering. I also remember having to throw away most of our master tapes, when we shut down, when production moved to Mexico. Sad... Stimpy
My pleasure. It's always nice to share some knowledge. While we had the PreMastering department, we always worked very hard to never alter a client's content in any way. Always straight digital transfers, cut ar 1 X. Even analog content was transfered to Sonic Solutions, PQ'd, and transferred to 8mm Exabyte tape, for cutting. Never any added EQ or compression... We pressed CDs for quite a few very good labels; including as mentioned, DCC, plus Chesky, Water Lily, Mapleshade, & Nimbus Records (of course). At the time we shut down, we had 10 audio pressing lines, and over 20 DVD lines. We pressed Disney, Dreamworks, & Warner DVDs, and Microsoft XBox games. Our one site alone, was the largest producing independant plant in the world. It really sucked that I was paid to listen to music, watch movies, and play games for a living! It was the best job that I'll probably ever have!
http://i1004.photobucket.com/albums/af164/sieradzkim/PCAG/1984.jpg Great info Stewart, thanks for this. Nimbus in the UK had also problems with its discs in the early days (aka "sticky label" issue). PDO is known of a bronzing issue, despite the CD mastering was good. Don't forget about (non-exist any more) EMI CD duplication plant in Swindon and Disctec (later Disctronics). These were the first four UK CD producers. The CDs from the EMI plant in Swindon has never suffered from any problem. They produced a very good quality discs. I like Nimbus discs because these discs have a lot of history behind (i.e. they produced the first CD in the UK). Nimbus refused to purchase Philips's CD mastering system. As Stewart mention above, Nimbus (Gerald Reynolds and dr Jonathan Halliday) has designed and built in-house own glass lathe from scratch. In the early '80s, a two Nimbus plants in the UK supplied domestic and European market with its CDs. Below is the picture of dr Jonathan Halliday holding the first UK Nimbus pressed CD. Nimbus introduced its first playable CD in May, 1984. There is a lot more story to tell about Nimbus, but generally a major UK bands pressed their first pressing CDs by Nimbus.
Its unfortunate that PDO gave such a bad name to the UK CD industry. I only have to look at my U2 CD collection that I paid good money for in the 80s and early 90s, mostly destroyed. Other CDs of mine destroyed include Hendrix, China Crisis, Heaven 17, Eurithmics, Madness. The list goes on.
wow - I had no idea that the problem was that extensive - and of course, I don't live in the UK. Sorry to hear that.
Yeah, Virgin, Island and Polydor did a lot of their pressings for the UK/Irish market through the UK PDO plant.
A rare example is this: David Sylvian-Weatherbox. All cds mastered by Nimbus but "Secrets of the beehive cd is very bad in terms of sound. (sounds like bad recorded tape). Previous original cd also Mastered by Nimbus is the best version of this album on cd. Why they did not use the old mastering??
Apart of Virgin Records, the most suffered discs were classical labels. Here is the list of the possibly affected classical labels. It is a shame, however company claims they realize the problem far later than occur.
They manufactured CDs from the tapes received from a record company. I don't think they were able to change anything in original mastering (do not includes "Nimbus Records" releases).
I can't speak for any other companies, but Hyperion will replace any CDs that have been affected by 'bronzing'. I has a few myself that were replaced by them free of charge. I suspect the whole episode has proven to be very embarrassing for them. Details here... http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/bronzed.asp
Don't clean those old nimbus discs that have fuzzy sticky residue on the top with water or other liquid, the print is cheap and can peel off easily when rinsed and also I got a small amount of water underneath the top of a nimbus cd I cleaned with water. My messiah force- the last day cd is now completely ruined due to this.
