A P+Q audio CD, more commonly referred to as PMCD (Production Master CD), is a Red Book standard CD that is used by pressing plants for CD duplication/replication.

Due to the highly delicate nature of this procedure, a normal audio CD burnt with a standard CD writer is normally not good enough.

Unless specialised hardware/software is used for the creation of a PMCD, the undetected errors presented could lead to a rejection (and session cancellation) by the plant.

In order to avoid this, people normally ask the mastering engineer to take care of that.

A PMCD produced by a mastering studio will come with several documents to certify the integrity of the medium.
These documents are produced only after rigorous tests have taken place

Because of the lengthy procedure involved in making a PMCD, every mastering studio charges extra for this.

We only use Plextor Drives and Taiyo Yuden CD-R’s