Using old CD's are reference

[u/UnfairWorldliness882]

Can someone explain to me this.

Why the era/format also matters

A 1992 CD master was made for Red Book CD, a fixed 16-bit PCM format with no lossy transcoding step and no concept of "true peak" as a mastering concern at all — true peak/inter-sample overs only became something engineers cared about once lossy streaming codecs (MP3, AAC) made it a real audible risk in the 2000s–2010s. That +0.03 dBTP result isn't the 1992 engineer making a mistake or taking a risk — it's simply a number that had zero relevance to their format, so there was no reason to control for it. This CD rip isn't a broken master; it just predates a concern that didn't exist yet for the medium it was built for. Applying today's dBTP/streaming standards backward onto it doesn't tell you anything about your own file's target.

Yes, I know, I am a bad boy for using AI to help me master but I am trying to figure out if I am going down the wrong rabbit hole when comparing my work I am doing in 2026 to something that was made and manufactured in the 90s? Is it a waste of time to use old CD's pre-2000 or pre-2005 as reference?

[u/dmills_00]

Actually, it mattered even then because the early oversampling DACs were often short of headroom for the inter sameple peaks.

Lossy codecs made it significantly worse, but you could clip the older DACs in the digital domain.

Now (Mostly) nobody was thinking that way back then, and it was the height of the loudness war at least in terms of the tech of the time.

Nothing wrong with using an old CD for reference, if that is the sound you want, but I would indicate that listening for a reference SOUND is different to paying attention to a LEVEL, and the sound is the meaningful one to attend to.

[u/KS2Problema → u/dmills_00]

Actually, it mattered even then...

I would mostly agree with the almost all of the above post - with the exception of the 'mostly nobody was thinking that way back then' part - some people definitely were - but as the understanding that the louder of two otherwise identical sounds impresses the ear more favorably spread through the by-then rapidly expanding production community and the corollary 'clipping-ain't-so-bad' notion grabbed  the lizard part of the lot of people's brains, things got a lot hairier.

[u/dmills_00 → u/KS2Problema]

That's fair, also the realisation had settled in that you could get away with things on a CD that would have the cutting engineer saying rude things if you tried them on a master for vinyl.

Some people were so enamoured that they could, that they never stopped to ask if they should.

1990s "Digitally Remastered", usually somewhere between worse then the original and awful, I am sure there were exceptions but that was the way to bet.

[u/KS2Problema → u/dmills_00]

Sadly, I think you have got something there. Since I was relatively inexperienced, I made a point of sitting in on a handful of vinyl cutting sessions and the complexities and limitations could be daunting - to say the least.

When, relatively early in the 90s, a friend brought his band's newly recorded bluegrass jazz album to me for mastering for CD stamping, I read as much as I could both generally and from the CD facility's own guidelines. (And even called them for a brief chat to make sure I had my i's and t's crossed and dotted.)

And compared to the restrictions and cautions and potential gotchas of cutting vinyl, CD mastering seemed practically 'impossible' to make an error with: keep the level a 'safe' amount under 0 dBfs (although even then that safe amount was argued about) and make sure you listen carefully before sending it off. 

(Maybe we should have made a point of listening on cheap CD players that had less headroom in their analog output stage - but, at least in my circles, there wasn't a lot of awareness of that issue in the early 90s. And, of course, the MP3 era - where lossy encoding could push peak values above 0 dBfs - was only just beginning. But, of course, most of us would have been horrified to even think about spending money replicating a CD with content that had passed through the lossy encoding of the 90s.)

[u/iamYarthox → u/dmills_00]

This. No one listen to levels, we can only read them.

What I’d say to OP is that if you want to avoid the lossy clipping caused by intersample peaks, use a true peak limiter at -1dbFS

Explaining a bit further, think about it like this: when audio is converted to a lossy format (mp3, aac — basically everywhere on the internet unless youre using the lossless option of a streaming service) it will bump the levels a bit, maybe causing it to get above 0db, which will make it clip, thus, distorting the sound on the listener end.

But no one ever disliked a song because of lossy clipping… the vast majority of the mainstream doesn’t give a single F about it. Some great mastering engineers even say that true peak limiting screws the transients and punch of the song. I doubt Bob Ludwig ever used it.

And remember: true peak is only non-negotiable in the audio post domain, especially on broadcast.

[u/Mo_Steins_Ghost → u/iamYarthox]

What I’d say to OP is that if you want to avoid the lossy clipping caused by intersample peaks, use a true peak limiter at -1dbFS

This is the short answer. Bob Katz gives pretty much the same guidance in Mastering Audio.

[u/KS2Problema]

Whoever or whatever wrote the italicized part didn't know what the f*** they were talking about. 

Savvy engineers definitely worried about crashing digital zero from pretty much the beginning - because the results from going  over could be so ear-grinding. 

And with regard to inter-sample overs, the 'hidden' overs that don't necessarily show up on conventional meters or obvious overs in a DAW display - I know I started using an inter-sample over aware meter on my mastering bus in the late 90s.

[u/UnfairWorldliness882 → u/KS2Problema]

AI helper. I can't tell if its nonsense. Hence why trying real expert opinions.

[u/KS2Problema → u/UnfairWorldliness882]

No problem - and I wasn't being critical of you, of course. 

AI-enhanced search can be useful but it drives me absolutely nuts when AIs spew out inaccurate answers with bland certitude. 

Most of my use of AI enhanced search has been researching software user interfaces - searches where there are often objectively correct answers that can be checked against the existing software - yet I cannot tell you how many times I have caught Google's own Gemini AI answering with complete and utter nonsense about Google's own software interfaces. 

 And when called on the inaccuracies, the AI's obsequious apologies and excuses are as laughable as they are cloying and obnoxious.

[u/dmills_00 → u/KS2Problema]

It always sounds so bloody confident in its bullshit, bit like a politician.

Very annoying, and I have actually had to argue with people at work who came out with clear gibberish, "But Claude said..." FML

[u/KS2Problema → u/dmills_00]

THIS!

Like a politician. Indeed! 

Although a politician would probably never make a public apology anything like the fawning, ass-kissing apologies I've got from Gemini ChatGPT when I called them on obvious BS. (At least Gemini now has some modalities that cut down on the glad-handing and ass-kissing if you ask for them. I think one of them is called no-fluff or something like that.)

[u/UnfairWorldliness882 → u/KS2Problema]

The AI LLM claimed some of the reference tracks I was using were worse and more poorly made than my track that I was working on. That part made no sense. The reference tracks were mastered by Bob Ludwig and made in a big well known LA studio in an era when record labels spent lots of money on albums vs my dinky home studio and I and fully aware I suck at this compared to Ludwig.

[u/KS2Problema → u/UnfairWorldliness882]

If AIs get the easy stuff so wrong so often, it only makes sense that they'd really bollix up matters of taste and discernment.

[u/CartezDez]

What are you trying to achieve?

[u/UnfairWorldliness882 → u/CartezDez]

I am trying to achieve an Americana track that is modern and reasonably loud but still has the good dynamics. I am using as a reference a release that Allen Sides (and maybe Lenny Waronker?) mixed and Bernie Grundman would have mastered in the early 90s.

[u/YourOwnPersonalSatan]

Its a huge difference in loudness in 90s CDs. I remember going from Panteras Vulgar Display Of Power to theyre next album "Far Beyond Driven" and the loudness increase was fking crazy !! Pull a modern reference track into youre DAW instead. Lately the commercial reference tracks ive used hits around -8 LUF from CD and Digital releases but thats metal. Good luck with youre reference.

[u/Liquid_Audio]

I think using a CD file from the 90s as ref is a great idea. For the most part. It depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

The levels of average peak energy for most releases back then are so much lower than what most things are now from 1998 forward, because of that fucking waves L2 that broke everybody’s brain about loudness.

I think sound impact and emotionality matter far more than peak level metering, and everybody 50 years from now is going to be like “why does everything in the early 2000s sounds so squishy?”

[u/dmills_00 → u/Liquid_Audio]

I really wish that if muppets are going to treat loudness meters as gospel, they would look at Lra and not just the LuFS values....

I mean in the context of short form music it is a stupid number to get sweaty about (Not what it was designed for!), but looking at the Lra value as well might temper the nonsense a bit.

[u/OldConstant1725]

I've only ever seen the +0.3 dBTP warning on streaming uploads and never thought about how that became a concern in the first place.

[u/j1llj1ll]

You need to choose the right CDs. Some (many, actually) were mastered over-loud and thus too heavily limited. And there's plenty of not-great mixes out there behind that as well. This goes for any reference though. There are good and bad examples in every format.

On the other hand .. there's also over-thinking it. Choosing a genre-appropriate reference that everybody loves is never a bad place to start even if it's 'technically suboptimal'. Sometimes technically suboptimal is perfect.