CD Manufacturing

As with vinyl, the quality of your master is easily the most important factor.

The master should have been fully edited and EQ’d in a professional studio, with the tracks as you want them to sound. They should be in the correct order. Please indicate track running times. If you have “segued” the tracks together, please provide accurate start times for each track so it can be encoded correctly.

Masters for CDs require “verification” and PQ encoding. This enables CD players to recognise track start locations. If you are a PPL member, you should also let us know the ISRC number for each track.

The EQ’d master is sent to the CD replication plant for Glass Mastering.

Booklets Inlays & On-Body Printing

All our printers now go straight to plate from PDF files. All artwork must be correctly laid out and formatted, sized to our specifications, include all crop and fold marks, and should be “High Quality Print” PDFs.

We use a number of different printers, all of whom have different artwork requirements. Please contact us before you complete your artwork so we can provide the appropriate specs and grids from our chosen printer. Please note that colour proofs are only really useful for 4 CMYK colour artwork, as they do not accurately reflect pantone colours.

• • Include a catalogue number on the CD on-body, and the CD inlay.
  • All CD releases MUST carry a barcode. We can supply barcodes either as TIF files or numerically.  You can find more information about including barcodes on your artwork here.
  • The outside of the inlay should include a country of origin statement (“Made in UK”, “Made in France” ). This is a customs requirement for many countries who may import your records. Currently we press CDs in The United Kingdom but please contact us when you are about to complete your artwork to confirm the country of manufacture.
  • Make sure images only contain the colours you intend to print. If you are working in four colours, make sure all colour images are saved as CMYK.
  • CD on-body printing is produced by a silk screening process. Do not include any bleed, and make sure the centre hole area is empty.
  • Layout booklet as “Printed Pairs”.
  • Many territories now require shrink wrapped CDs.
  • If you are inexperienced at laying out artwork for print PLEASE use a professional designer. A little outlay in design at this stage can save you large re-proofing charges later.