[mb-users] Digitally (re-)master AR attribute

[Age Bosma]

Chris Bransden wrote:
> On 03/10/06, Age Bosma <agebosma at home.nl> wrote:
>> Chris Bransden wrote:
>> > IMO it's always the same process. whether or not it's "digital" or not
>> > depends on the time it was done (i imagine all CDs have to be
>> > digitally mastered, no?), and they probably don't even bother
>> > mentioning it for most current releases as it's pretty much a given.
>> >
>>
>> That might go for CD releases yes. But as far as I know not for LP's.
>> LP's are non-digitally mastered at some stage. A different person then
>> goes digitally mastering it to put it on CD. A different process which
>> is likely done by a different person.
>> That's why I think it's important to make the distinction in case of an
>> LP on CD release.
> 
> but why do you need to specify if it was digital or not? CDs will
> always have been been digitally mastered, vinyls analogue (actually
> i'm sure at least some modern vinyls use digital technology during the
> mastering but i've never seen one say so much on the cover),
> 

You've got a point but we store CD's and LP's in MusicBrainz. If they 
are stored separately than there isn't really a need to specify the 
difference but what if they aren't separated in the db? In that case we 
might end up with two 'mastered by' ARs without being able to 
distinguish the two.
To overcome the problem we might even need two attributes for the 
'mastered' AR: 'digitally' and 'analogue'. It might not matter to 
specify it for a new CD release but it doesn't hurt to specify it either.

Yours,

Age