Why would I need different types of WAV file?

Vinyl Masters

Vinyl Mastering is our true bread and butter skill here and something we proudly call ourselves experts in. The requirements of a good vinyl pre-master depend on three major deciding factors which are LENGTH, FREQUENCY CONTENT and VOLUME. The best pre-masters are based on the management and interconnected nature of these three elements together to get you the best sounding and most ‘accurate to master’ record on the given size of disc be it 12”, 10”, 7” or even the humble little 5” (yes, 5” records are a thing) - not to mention flexi-disc or picture discs.

CD Masters

If you are planning to release your project on a CD then you need a specific audio WAV that is 16BIT/44.1kHz as this is the only audio type a CD player can read from a compact disc, it must also be made into a CD master in the form of either a physical CD or a digital DDP file set that can be passed to a manufacturer and will contain all the relevant gaps, CD text, ISRC, and barcode info that has (or has not) been embedded. It is normal for a CD master to be loud up to just under 0dB typically, and these filetypes can be quite compressed or quite dynamic as required. You can Google ‘Loudness Wars’ if you want the full lowdown on how and why CD masters have crept up to having such squashed ‘sausage-looking’ waveforms over the years. We are moving away from this now, thanks to the type of digital mastering for streaming and the ‘algorithms’ that monitor and control playback volume. Some people have a preference to MAX VOLUME for the CD version and others want to retain the dynamic and you can go either way it is totally up to you, I recommend dynamic because the volume can be controlled by the owner of the CD but not the dynamics, this is the relationship between the parts of audio in a song and there’s no ‘button’ to bring that back into play on an everyday stereo.

Digital Streaming Masters

If you are planning a digital release on to Spotify, Apple Music, etc then it can be good to understand that we are now heading back into a ‘second renaissance’ of dynamism due to streaming platform’s algorithms penalising uploads that are too loud on average and being ‘unsafe’ for earphone users to be exposed to at their full fury so, the overall playback volume on these tracks gets reduced, ironically removing the punch that the very loud and compressed audio file was giving. Luv-Hertz would supply you with suitably dynamic 24BIT/44.1kHz WAV files as we know and understand this and would exploit the relevant dynamism needed to get good results when played back online comparatively without losing the punch and feel of your work.

Tape Cassette Masters

More and more people are releasing their work onto tape cassettes again. Luv-Hertz still remembers tape from the first time around, so we are very comfortable making an excellent tape cassette master you can use for mass production, confident that it will translate properly onto this classic format and still sound great.

AUDIO FOR FILM APPLICATIONS

Such as a music video project, we would typically provide you with 24BIT/48kHz WAV files as this tends to be an industry standard for audio video applications, but sometimes for DVD or Blu-Ray, 24BIT/96kHz audio may be requested. Luv-Hertz can supply you with anything you need in this regard.

MP3 Files

You may require MP3 versions of your tracks for reference or to upload/embed onto your own website. We can provide these for you and would typically supply you some 320kbps stereo Mp3 files. We can provide smaller files than this if size is an issue and you don’t want the highest quality possible.

M4A Files

We can provide you with M4A files, which are the standard used by Apple MUSIC. This type of audio file is optimized to save space on people’s iPhones, iPods etc. This will give you the chance to audition your audio in advance of it being uploaded and automatically converted by the Apple server conversion process so you can check for any unexpected anomalies that may occur when that audio is converted to this smaller file type and help you to get ahead of the curve, catching any discrepancies before your work is made available to millions of users across the globe.

Unsure of the bit depth and or sample rate of your files?

This chart can help you to identify them using the ‘kbps’ - which means Killa Bytes Per Second

705kbps = 16BIT / 44.1kHz - MONO

768kbps = 16BIT / 48kHz - MONO

1058kbps = 24BIT / 44.1kHz - MONO

1152kbps = 24BIT / 48kHz - MONO

1411kbps = 16BIT / 44.1kHz

1536kbps = 16BIT / 48kHz

2116kbps = 24BIT / 44.1kHz

2304kbps = 24BIT / 48kHz

2822kbps = 32BIT / 44.1kHz

3072kbps = 32BIT / 48kHz

4233kbps = 24BIT / 88.2kHz

4608kbps = 24BIT / 96kHz

5644kbps = 32BIT / 88.2kHz

6144kbps = 32BIT / 96kHz

11288kbps = 32BIT / 176.4kHz

12288kbps = 32BIT / 192kH

320kbps = MP3

Values lower than 320kbps also = MP3, the smaller the kbps the lower the quality/file resolution