Frequently asked questions

Does my music need mastering?

The answer is yes because tracks published in today's media landscape, which is extremely competitive, need to be more polished than ever. Tracks that are released after mixing (without being mastered) sound quiet, dull, and underwhelming. But "polishing" that mixed track is much more than making it louder and brighter. It involves careful and judicious equalization, decisive tool selection, and a Mastering Engineer's nuanced understanding of how to make music transfer across systems properly. If you want your music to be as good as it can possibly be, you need to get your music mastered by an experienced mastering engineer. 

HOW DO I PREP MY FILES FOR MASTERING?

If you are working within a DAW like Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, or any similar workstation, export your mix as a stereo .WAV file at the sample rate of your session and at the highest bit depth that you can. We prefer to work with .WAV or .AIF files at 16, 24, or 32-bit (floating point or integer) at sample rates from 44.1kHz - 768kHz. 

Make sure that you aren’t clipping the output. It’s generally a good practice to leave at least -3dB of headroom (the highest peaks in your track should not exceed -3.0), but in reality, anything under -0.1dBFS will be just fine. 

It is also considered best practice to ensure that there is nothing in terms of loudness or maximization plugins on your main mixbus output unless you are 100% committed to the way that the maximization or loudness processing sounds. That being said, If the maximized version IS the final mix, that’s the mix that we want to use for mastering. If you’re unsure, send us one version with the mixbus processing engaged and a second version with the processing bypassed. 

WHAT ABOUT LOUDNESS? (LUFS/RMS)

There is a lot of information about this topic on the internet. It is our philosophy that the best LUFS level is dictated by the song and typically falls within a range that has a correlation to the song’s macrodynamic, microdynamic, and spectral profile. Sometimes, that LUFS matches normalization standards, but it is often the case that we make tracks as loud as they need to be/as loud as they can be without compromising the integrity of the audio. 

CAN I REQUEST A SPECIFIC FORMAT? (CD, VINYL, etc.)

Absolutely! On our submission form, you can let us know how you’d like your masters formatted. Currently, we offer the following formats for masters:

- .WAV or .AIF files at 16, 24, or 32-bit depth from 44.1k to 192kHz for digital distribution.

- .WAV files at 24-bit depth from 44.1khz to 96kHz for Apple Digital Masters.

- .DDP images for CD-R manufacturing.

- .WAV files at 24 or 32-bit formatted for lacquer cutting. Sides A and B will be different files with a cue sheet for the manufacturer.

Can I get a price quote?

Absolutely! You can submit an inquiry to our Quote form and we will get back to you with a price based on your project’s requirements.