What Is Mastering?
Mastering is the final creative step before release and distribution of your music. The process involves a dedicated engineer with the experience and expertise to identify and execute the adjustments needed to finalize your project for release. Unlike an automated mastering service, the mastering engineer lends a fresh set of ears and works objectively with the artist to achieve the vision of the project while making sure all technical specifications are met. Whether it’s fine tuning a single or bringing cohesion to an album project, mastering ensures that your audio is optimized for playback across multiple platforms and that it sounds its absolute best!
Services and Pricing
Mastering Services
CD/Digital Mastering
Mastering for all digital formats. Masters delivered in WAV and MP3 format. Other formats, such as FLAC, can be provided upon request.
Vinyl Mastering
If your project is to be released on vinyl, it needs to be optimized for the format. Vinyl has technical specifications that usually require a specialized master. Masters are delivered as A/B WAV files with a time log for the lacquer cutting engineer.
CD/Digital and Vinyl Mastering
If you're planning to release your album on both vinyl and CD/digital, two separate versions for each format will need to be created. While having a loud master is fairly standard for digital releases, lower level and more dynamic masters with less compression are ideal for vinyl. They'll also need some specific EQ adjustments to make sure they'll translate to vinyl accurately. When mastering for both formats, I'll create both digital and vinyl specific versions.
Noise Reduction/Audio Cleanup
If you have an old, noisy recording, I can help! Please reach out to discuss your project needs for accurate pricing.
Additional Services
DDP Masters
If you're planning to get CDs manufactured, Disc Description Protocol (DDP) masters are the format of choice! These are the industry standard master format for optical disc manufacturing. DDP's will have CD-Text and, if provided, ISRC codes encoded.
CD Masters
If you need a physical copy of your master, I can create one for you! CDs will be Red Book compliant and encoded with CD-Text and ISRC codes (if provided).
Cassette Digitization
If you have old cassettes that you're looking to get digitized, I can do that too! Please reach out to discuss your cassette project for pricing.
How To Prepare a Mix for Mastering
Mixes should be supplied as stereo interleaved WAV or AIFF files (16/44.1k or higher resolution). Compressed formats, such as MP3 and AAC are highly discouraged, as the lower sound quality will affect the overall quality of the final master. If MP3 mixes are all you have, I can work with them. Just keep in mind they're not ideal.
When supplying a mix for mastering, make sure the mix peaks at no more than -3dB. This will ensure that there is no clipping/distortion, while leaving enough headroom for mastering. Proper gain staging when mixing should always be maintained. The mix should contain no limiting, be dynamic and any compression on the main stereo mix bus should be minimal (no compression is preferred). The goal when mixing is to make the mix sound as good as possible. Don’t worry about achieving a certain overall level as that can be taken care of during the mastering process.
If you have any questions or concerns about how to prepare a mix for mastering, please reach out!
Booking A Mastering Session
To book a mastering session, simply contact me! We'll discuss the needs of your project and you can provide me with any other info you think I'll need to master your project. Feel free to provide any artists/songs you're hoping to sound like so I can reference them while mastering.
You can provide your mixes via a file sharing site of your choice (I recommend Dropbox or Wetransfer). Once your master is finished, I'll provide you a link to download the master files. If, after mastering, you feel any additional adjustments are needed, I'm more than happy to make them at no additional charge.