Boards of Canada Holy Grail & Who Mastered MHTRTC

[soundxplorer]

This is really cool! Thanks for doing this.

What kind of baffles me are the gear references. On one hand there's Pultec, which is a legendary passive tube EQ commonly used (in one form or another) in mastering, but there's also the UREI gear, while great for tracking and/or mixing, that couldn't be less suitable for that application, especially the 1176 limiter.

Would be nice to find out what it was all about.

That particular sheet looks like what I would expect to see at a vinyl duplication plant, so I would refer to that as Mastering for Duplication. Just a guess because it specifically mentions four sides/two discs. I used to work for such a company, we manufactured CDs, cassettes, and vinyl.

At this point the source music is already "mastered" in the way most people think of that term. They (Bola) have already made a master DAT tape containing the songs with final processing to make them sound how they wanted. And when you manufacture the CD product, it's strictly digital 1-to-1 transfers from that point on, so nothing will change.

But when you duplicate analog products (vinyl or cassette) there is often the need for further processing. It's usually very small EQ adjustments or limiting to prevent distortion. Reducing bass, de-essing etc. because vinyl and analog tape have different qualities. At this stage it should not be considered a creative process to change the way the music sounds, but just small changes made to fit the music onto that specific media. That's what this sheet looks like to me, and it mentions the format as "DAT Running Master". The running master is the copy approved to "run" on the duplication lines. So that's what would be sent to the manufacturing department to cut/stamp/press the vinyl.

[2020k]

WHOA. We've assumed all these years that they've mastered their own works. Thank you for this!!

It's safe to say that Hi Scores, and MHARTC are definitely mastered by Bola, right? I updated for Hi Scores and MHARTC on the BOCpages, but nowhere else.

Are we under the assumption that Twoism is recorded by them as well?

Also, if you could give us scans of those mastering pages and postcards that'd be wonderful, so we can contribute them to BOCpages as well.

[Geogandhi]

Yes the words "colour box" can be so misleading. Mastering should and is normally just a means of getting the levels consistent for reproduction or broadcast. The sound really should be finalised within the mixing stage and if any effects are used on the master channel in modern DAW scenarios are really considered production rather than mastering. Of course some mastering tools can give the audio a little something that can't put your finger on "glue, warmth" etc etc but this is usually very subtle and to most people listening on todays preferred devices, you'd never know the difference. That said I don't want to dumb down mastering, it's so important to do it well and there is alot riding on it if you care enough about the music.
I have various tools I use in my mastering chain but again, they should be more considered production and done pre mastering if I was to send out to be mastered.

[NineRubberCops]

Does anybody remember this find? I watched the video he linked years ago and found it really interesting but now he seems to have vanished off the internet entirely. I didn't save the video and wanted to know if anybody else did. Boosting this to see if someone can help me find the BoC-adjacent lost media.

[Cohesion]

Does anybody remember this find? I watched the video he linked years ago and found it really interesting but now he seems to have vanished off the internet entirely. I didn't save the video and wanted to know if anybody else did. Boosting this to see if someone can help me find the BoC-adjacent lost media.

Hey, yeah I remember it. The guy's channel was called DeafByRecords and I'm pretty sure he had a bunch of rare Boards stuff like the Aquarius 7" as well. I remember him deleting his social media accounts last year for political reasons I think? There's a post on bocpages about the MHRTC test press: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTZjJ1WtueQ/?img_index=3

[NineRubberCops]

Does anybody remember this find? I watched the video he linked years ago and found it really interesting but now he seems to have vanished off the internet entirely. I didn't save the video and wanted to know if anybody else did. Boosting this to see if someone can help me find the BoC-adjacent lost media.

Hey, yeah I remember it. The guy's channel was called DeafByRecords and I'm pretty sure he had a bunch of rare Boards stuff like the Aquarius 7" as well. I remember him deleting his social media accounts last year for political reasons I think? There's a post on bocpages about the MHRTC test press: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTZjJ1WtueQ/?img_index=3

Omg I didn't know about this Insta post thank you so much! I'm glad Mike's little doodle didn't become lost media. Also because I couldn't remember the second album he suggested in his postcard and wanted to give it a listen.