Both TSM's CD-R Masters and Reference Discs are burned using the highest quality Plextor Premium burners, using the highest quality Taiyo Yuden media, directly from the exact same digital files created for your CD release. Both these discs contain Compact Disc Digital Audio with all necessary subcodes and TOC (table of contents) compliant to all Red Book (or if Enhanced CD, Blue Book) specifications. These can be used as masters for both replication (pressed CD's using glass mastering) or duplication (burned CD-R's).
Every Master Disc and Reference Disc is burned to be within exact book specs and tested to insure that there are absolutely no uncorrectable errors on your master disc and that BLER (Block Error Rate - aka C1's & C2's: the measure of correctable errors) is also at the very minimum possible. All Master Discs and Reference Discs come complete with a printed Track and PQ list (usually required by CD replicators) and an error test report to show that it exceeds all manufacturer's requirements.
Additionally the final audio data image that is burned onto Master Disc is listened through once in its entirety prior to creating the Master Disc to further guarantee the audio on the disc is exactly as desired. This is the only difference between them and the Reference Discs.
We recommend that you use the Reference Disc as a backup copy that you do all your listening from, and use the Master Disc to send directly to your manufacturer for duplication or replication.
We also recommend that you receive the Reference Disc first and approve it prior to having us burn the Master Disc.