GRANDMIX OF THE MILLENNIUM

The 1st grandmix to be sold to the public on CD! (the DMC editions where 'members only')

1st Broadcast: 31 december 1999 from 1800-21:00

The Grandmix of the millennium is  available as a 3CD-box
You can order the Millennium Grandmix here, or by sending an e-mail to : liebrand@euronet.nl
All CD's ordered from Ben's site will be signed by Ben Liebrand himself :)

TECHNICAL INFO

The GRANDMIX of the MILLENNIUM was digitally edited from the
original digital 12" masters, on the AKAI DD1500 Digital Audio Workstation.

This DD1500 has 28 hours of recording time at 44.1 KHz 16 bit stereo.
And can record up to 16 tracks simultaneously. The DD1500 does not
use any audio mp3 or other destructive data compression.
The DD1000's used for the previous mixes where limited to 1,5 hours.

First off all, all tracks were gathered on CD where much attention was
paid to selecting the original long dance mixes where possible.
All tracks were then digitally recorded form a Philips 850 CD player
into the Akai DD1500. After this task was completed the CD versions
were no longer needed, as every track was ready for use in the DD1500
library. Some rare masters were transferred from the analog master tapes,
using the Studer A80 master recorder, or from Sony F1 digital recordings.
If nothing else was available, vinyl copies were used which were recorded
into the DD1500 from a technics SL1200mkII turntable fitted with a new
Stanton 681EEE styles, running through a Studer turntable preamplifier.

All tracks were then checked for there exact BPM using a Roland SBX80
sync-box as reference. The tracks were entered in a database and sorted
by tempo and key.

The first of december 1999 the playlist was finalized and editing could begin.
The DD1500 proved to be an excellent choice as the system did not crash once
during the 4 weeks of editing that followed. The mix was completed on the 24th
of december, after which the Intro and outro was made on the 26th and 27th.

The intro was inspired by Ben being absent from the music scene for many years.
It has the atmosphere of the spaceship in Alien 1 where the boardcomputers
restart themselves and the crew aboard after a long period of hibernation.
The ships systems include 4 processor Irix servers, PC's and Macs (boing)
The intro was also made with the DD1500 and naturally, the famous vocoder

The 28th was used for mastering the CD versions incorporating a countdown at
the end of CD 1 and 2, and a count-in at the beginning of CD 2 and 3, enabling
a seamless transition from CD1 to CD2 to CD3 in a Club/Disco situation.

The CD was mastered and P&Q coded at Sony by Paul Adema. This is the
process of actually adding all the track ID's on the CD master to make it possible
to locate each song individually.

On the 30th of december the broadcast version was mastered. As the mix runs for 3
hours nonstop, a way had to be found to broadcast it in one piece, without using any
datacompression or unreliable playback devices. The solution was broadcasting the full
3 hours from an Akai DR8 digital multitrack recorder, kindly supplied by Okke van Bergen of
Helios (Professional Recording Equipment) in Haarlem. After connecting the Akai DR8 in the
Radio 538 studio, the system was checked, and the playback level was set. Two minutes past
18:00 hours, I pressed play on the DR8, 10 minutes later I was in my car driving home to
a new millennium's eve with friends and family, listening to my mix on the car radio.

Feeling relaxed, not a worry on my mind, confident that the Akai DR8 would do it's job,
and so it did........

Special thanks to Rob Lunenburg, Jack v't Westeinde, Arie den Ouden en Rob Weijers,
for sending those ancient 1MB simms within 80 nanoseconds (4 use in the equipment).
  And Okke van Bergen for supplying the Akai DR8 which was used to broadcast the entire mix