FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT MASTERING

Mastering is the last and the most important step before music distribution. It is where any final aesthetic, tone or technical adjustments will be made.

There are 3 reasons to use a mastering studio. First - fresh ears. It's difficult to remain objective after having listened to your production for so long. Second - specialized equipment. Mastering studios are using state of the art hardware that most producers don't have access to. Third - experience. Dedicated mastering engineer knows what treatment is needed.

Apart from making your music louder and more balanced frequency wised, it also acquire punch, warmth, fullness, clarity, air and more depth.

Short answer: both. We are a hybrid mastering studio. Our gear arsenal including not only digital hardware but also the irreplaceable analog processors with their most exclusive feature - unique and distinctive sound.

Yes, although it depends on the project. Just adding a tube EQ in bypass mode instantly improves the warmth and the depth of digital tracks. Comparing hardware processors and digital plugin emulations, especially compressors is pointless. They are lacking in quality and nowhere close to the “oomph” factor of the real hardware.

No! Getting a good overall loudness level is important, but presuming the dynamic range and improve it is even more important. Making your music louder it should be done in a fashion that does not damage it.

We can increase the level of your track and seek to minimize the side effects. How loud your track can go without the inevitable side effects of distortion, loss of depth, loss of punch etc. depends on the quality and balance of your mix. Keep in mind that as the loudness is increased the dynamic range is decreased. Thus most of the major audio streaming services e.g. Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, Tidal etc. will automatically lower the volume of your song or not listed it at all.

If a loud master is your primary goal please provide a reference track and be aware that large level increases affect the tone, stereo image, drum punch etc.

Yes. You should turn off all mastering effects on the stereo mix such as compressors, EQ, and limiters. However, you can keep them on individual channels, just not on your master output channel for export. Some artists use compression and limiting while producing, but it is bad practice as it ruins the ability to properly mixdown your project.

The ideal situation would be if your mix is peaking between -12dBFS and -6dBFS.

The best audio format is a 24 bit .wav file at the sample rate of 44.1kHz. You can send a 32 bit which is also fine but not necessary. Do not send MP3, m4a, Ogg Vorbis or WMA files for mastering. They are lossy, compressed audio formats, with degraded sonic integrity. 16 bit files are also good for mastering if this is all that is available.

Sorry, we do not offer a free sample. It takes just as much time to make a free 2 minute sample as it would a full song.

There has been zero privacy issues when using our own cloud server. Other than backing up your music in case it's needed to be accessed later for changes, we do not share any music from our clients.