In the past few months, we've had several requests for masters to be sent over the internet to the manufacturing plant. DDP is the perfect format for this. Many plants will give you FTP information to send the DDP master to their facility or a login to a webpage that you can upload the file. I like this trend and recommend this for clients that have chosen replicators that accept DDP masters.
A glass master is made at the replication plant in a specialized clean room, not at the mastering studio. A glass disc, 240mm in diameter and 6mm thick, is used as a substrate to 'etch' the image of the digital data as pits and lands that will ultimately be the ones and zeroes that the CD player will read as audio information. Some audiophiles insist on real-time (1x) creation of a glass master for highest audio quality.
DDP stands for Disc Description Protocol. It is a format used to send technical information about the structure and contents of optical discs (CD, DVD, HD-DVD) to a replication plant. It was developed by Doug Carson and Associates, Inc. in 1989 and DCA, Inc. still owns the format.
A master is a data storage device that transports the final recorded product to the replication plant. The two most common formats today are Red Book PQ-Masters and DDP Masters.
The last creative step in the recording process and the first technical step in the replication process.
