Making Beautiful Music

Sony Music Entertainment, which traces its roots back more than a century to the Columbia Graphophone Company, has always tapped the best technology of the time to record and deliver the sound of music. Wax-coated cardboard cylinders played on a graphophone paved the way for the gram-o-phone's flat discs, which evolved into double-sized 78rpm records and 331⁄3-rpm LPs. Vinyl was succeeded (but never fully replaced) by eight-track and cassette tapes, as well as today's CD-ROMs, DVDs and MiniDiscs.Adding style to substance, Sony also seeks out high-tech tools and vendors to cover its playlist—literally. An in-house production group, located in Sony Music's New York City offices, oversees the creation of eye-catching innovative packaging for the company's audio offerings and related promotional materials. The group is responsible for hundreds of releases a year for major artists, and produces thousands of components, including CDs, cassettes, MiniDiscs and LPs, according to Arthur Yeranian, senior director of graphic arts production for Sony Music Entertainment. "We pump out a lot of work," he confirms.Yeranian and his staff work with several external vendors, including four separators and various printers. Its primary print provider is Shorewood Packaging. Sony had outsourced all of its prepress work to select vendors, but decided to set up an internal prepress department last year. The new department was functional in January and fully operational by March.The production group has been taking on prepress jobs gradually, initially handling some CD booklets and products. At press time, Yeranian was targeting Sony's Legacy Recordings label, which features "all time classic" releases."It made sense to take on Legacy projects in house since this label requires a lot of repackaging, along with original packaging material," he explains.The new department features a complete Mac-based creative team and an imaging room for scanning and retouching. "We're scanning on a [Heidelberg] Tango [drum scanner] here, but we still outsource some scans," Yeranian remarks.A single prepress operator processes jobs using the CreoScitex Brisque RIP. "We're not outputting film; we're only preparing files for CTP production," he affirms. "Shorewood is fully CTP, and the process has been very successful for us."For proofing, Sony Music installed a Fuji PictroProof, a continuous-tone digital system, about a year ago. The production group uses the proofer for initial approvals with art directors and some sign-off proofs, as well as for remote proofing at various workflow stages with vendor partners.Yeranian believes that utilizing a contone proofer has both pros and cons: "We do have to watch out for moíres," he admits. "On the other hand, contone pretty much eliminates the unwanted patterns … that can show up. … [Contone output] is easy to match on press," he continues. "Running just black can be tricky, but that just takes some getting used to."Yeranian lauds the Pictro-Proof's speed and ease of use. "It's fast, which is essential for us, considering that our job turnaround can be as quick as overnight," he contends. "And it's easy to maintain. One of the things we like best about the proofer is that it tells you when it's hungry and thirsty."The device also supports Sony's goals to remote proof. "We've done tests and tried remote proofing with separators that also have PictroProofs, and found that we can communicate very well," he relates. "We did have some difficulty at first, but found that the trouble was due to the humidity and temperature in our room. Since, we've undergone construction and added air conditioning, which eliminated the problem."When we started [remote proofing]," he recalls, "the proofs were a bit on the red side, even though the calibration was set to a particular vendor's device. But after making a small adjustment, we're remarkably close."Too many cooksKnowing that too many cooks can spoil the color, Yeranian is limiting the number of vendors involved with each project. "Although we're careful that the output is fairly uniform from vendor to vendor, you wouldn't expect two proofs from different suppliers to look exactly the same, so we only use one separator per product," he explains.Sony is also sending proofs digitally via WAM!NET, as well as testing CreoScitex Ren-derView for remote soft proofing. On site, digital proofing allows Sony to save on retouching and revision time. "Plus," Yeranian adds, "we know that we can output a proof in-house that will be relatively stable to what we're sending out, and close to a halftone proof like the [Kodak Polychrome Graphics] Approval."For some jobs," he continues, "we're still getting Approvals from the printer. However, we're also producing some Legacy label projects for which we're only using the PictroProof."As happy as Yeranian is with the in-house capabilities, he doesn't predict Sony will ever completely eliminate third-party prepress suppliers. "We have a great deal of confidence in our industry vendors," he stresses. "In fact, the person we brought in to run the department was from one of our separator vendors. We're not trying to do everything in house. We're simply trying to increase our productivity cost-effectively. We're going to stay small, save money and see how it goes. In turn, to Sony, we're operating like another outside vendor, and we'll demand as much from the company as any supplier would expect from a client." -Dawn Greenlaw

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Making Beautiful Music

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