CHECK YOUR MIX FIRST

Mastering isn’t going to fix a bad mix. So check your music on all kinds of systems. Here’s a trick: no element of your music should suddenly completely disappear just because you are in your car vs listening on headphones vs in your studio. It will never sound exactly the same on different speakers but every element should still be audible.

Don’t send an mp3

mp3 files are small for a reason: a ton of musical information is simply thrown out! That may be acceptable for mass consumption (YouTube, Spotify) but never in the studio and absolutely never when mastering. Send a WAV file. Minimum of 44.1 kHz sampling rate and 24 bit depth.

Don’t master before we master

If you compress your track to death to make it really loud we can’t really do what we need to do. So keep your output master bus pretty transparent. Don’t use stereo wideners or imagers, don’t squish the beat with a limiter, don’t use saturators or harmonic distortion plugins. And leave plenty of head room. That means: send us a file that is NOT LOUD.

mastering won’t fix talent: it helps talent shine.

Mastering takes a well made recording and squeezes a little extra sonic excellence out of it. Just like waxing won’t turn a Honda into a Lambo, mastering won’t magically give you talent. But if you have a Lambo of a track… we will make sure it is ready to turn heads.

want more in depth notes?

Download this pdf.