March  2008

CD’s Re-Pressing
Open Letter to our Esteemed Clientele

For the past 30 years my family's commitment toward the artists we represent and the jazz community in general was to make sure that every single recording we have produced will stay in print.
This policy is still unmatched nowadays by any other jazz label.
Unfortunately I must admit that nowadays is becoming more and more difficult to honour this engagement, especially for those titles that sell just a few units per year.
To make it very clear. In order to re-press a CD from the back catalog today the industry requires a new glass master and a minimum order of 300 pieces.
If I had to follow this procedure for titles that sell 5-10 pieces per year, IREC would go out of business in a few months.

All our new releases and the most important titles of our back catalog are pressed at
IMS Manufacturing (the former EMI pressing plant) in Caronno Pertusella  (Milano).

Just recently we ran out of stock on 46 titles (33 on Soul Note and 13 on Black Saint) out of our 600 and more recordings.
Here below, please find FYI a listing:

• 120016, 120017, 120042, 120044, 120049, 120069, 120071, 120072, 120078, 120092, 120138, 120163, 120207
• 121008, 121039, 121042, 121044, 121065, 121081, 121084, 121108, 121134, 121135, 121169, 121193, 121198, 121205, 121219, 121223, 121232, 121242, 121253, 121277, 121285, 121292, 121313, 121329, 121330, 121348, 121378, 121391, 121399, 121409, 121412, 121428, 121490

We cannot afford for the above mentioned titles to have a new glass-master and press at least 300 cd’s.
Therefore I have decided to offer these titles by burning copies on CD-r.
We have made an initial pressing of 25 pieces per each title.
The company burning the CD-r' s is PhonoPlast (www.phonoplast.it) and they have been in business for more than 50 years. They are certified ISO 9001-2000 and they are authorized by SIAE (the Italian Rights Society). The cd-r' s are not the cheap one you find at the supermarket but they are the top brand coming directly for the TDK plant in Belgium. They are also very expensive (more than twice as much as a duplicated cd). The sound quality is exactly the same as the original master, the booklets & inlays are the original ones and on top of that  we have made new label copies to make the all thing even more attractive.
Rest assured that I would never offer to my customers a final product that would not meet their expectations.
At the bottom of this letter, you may find also some technical support from our long time associated sound engineer Aldo Borrelli.

I understand that this decision might upset or disappoint some of our customers
Please don’t ever think for a second that we want to take you for a ride or to cheat you.
Not at all. All I want is to make sure that those 45 recordings will be still available.
It's a struggle for me as well as this has been basically a labor of love of all my family.

The choice to buy or not to buy them is just up to our clientele and I'll accept my customer's reaction regardless.
I have been thinking also about making those 45 titles available only as digital downloads but the sound quality of the mp files is so poor that I don’t feel comfortable to follow this direction. We are testing this with three of our most recent new releases but we are very disappointed with the results.
 
Thank you for your attention and best regards,
 
Flavio Bonandrini
 

BLACK SAINT, SOUL NOTE & DDQ
 
Since 1975 ... JAZZ & Beyond ...

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Letter from:

PHONO-PLAST S.r.l.
Industria della duplicazione
CD ROM – CD AUDIO – FLOPPY DISK – VIDEOCASSETTE VHS Strada prov.le 181 n°11 – 26833 MERLINO (LO)
Tel. 02/906265.1 – r.a. – Fax 02/906265.36
Partita IVA e Cod. Fiscale: 08603640155
Web Site: www.phonoplast.it
E-mail: phonop@phonoplast.it

The replication of audiovisual material is achieved in two fundamental ways:

1.) Pressing;
2.) Burning.
3.) Pressing is a mechanical copy obtained from the master source. Burning is procedure for serial copying.
The source of an audio CD is a recordable, mastered CD, called a pre-master. Pre-masters are obtained in pre-mastering studios. The pre-master is used for copying or for making a glass master. The glass master is a copy obtained from the pre-master source. Burning is a process that reads the original digital material of the pre-master and makes copies by means of a burner.

The glass master, by means of a galvanic procedure, is used to produce mechanical copies from the original source. There are five stages in the production of a glass, master:

1.) Glass master preparation ready for laser beam recording;
2.) Laser beam recording from the source CD or tape;
3.) Development and metallization ready for electroforming;
4.) Electroforming making the stampers from the glass master;
5.) Stamper finishing polishing and punching the stamper.

It’s only logical that the burning process avoids all mechanical problems, given that a pressed CD is a fourth-generation copy, while a burned CD is a first-generation copy. In both cases a series of precautions and procedures is undertaken in order to guarantee a high quality copy from the original pre-master. In burning, certified-quality CDs are used, and the duplication is done at optimal speed in order to guarantee the correct transferal of digital data. ISO 9001:2000-certified companies perform regular checks to guarantee a product that conforms to the Philips/Sony standards, and that also conforms to the so-called red-book and orange-book standards.

Sincerely,
Aldo Borrelli