The Quality Gate

A pre-delivery gate sorted by cost to fix, not by another listen.

Related

True PeakHeadroomStems

The problem

Most delivery failures are boring. Two extra seconds of silence, a click at the edit, true peak a fraction over, the vocal vanishing in mono, empty metadata, an unclear rights chain. Re-listening does not catch them because attention is on the music. A checklist is not a badge of professionalism; it moves attention from the music to verifiable items.

The order

Sort by cost to fix, starting with structure. Is the duration right, are the head and tail clean, does the loop point join, are the fades complete. Then artifacts, edit clicks, DC offset, denoiser gurgle, stereo phase, clipping, noise in the tail. Then measure loudness with a meter rather than ears, integrated to the platform target, true peak one dB in reserve, short-term level steady. Then the mono check, whether the bass and lead survive a sum. Finally metadata and rights, title, creator, ISRC, version, model terms, sample licences, voice consent.

Using it

Run the same list in the same order for every delivery, mark pass or fail per item, and record who checked and when. The person who made the track cannot be the only checker. Any item you cannot verify is a fail, not a should be fine. After any change, rerun the whole list, because fixing a click can introduce a new fade problem. Keep the list in the project folder and archive it with the delivery. Keep the list short; past twenty items people start skipping.

What to listen for

In the twenty-six minute Bach Toccata and Fugue, check the tail, the fades and the timeline of a long file. In the funk loop, check the click at the loop point and the kick in mono. In the Beethoven Fifth tutti, check clipping and the illusion created by density. In the organ hymn, check whether the sustained pedal collapses in mono.

Sources

• 交付前检查项，依母带与交付通识归纳，未抄原文
• 真峰值与响度测量口径，依 ITU-R BS.1770 与流媒体交付规范核对

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.