Mastering
I offer mastering for 50 Euros per hour (approx. 51.95 USD) including VAT per track for artists planning to submit their music to a record label or to radio stations, distribute their music online or get their own CDs or vinyl pressed. Discounts for mastering of complete albums are available on request. I also offer mixing services.
How to Prepare a Track for Mastering:
- Remove all processing from the Master channel
- Check your export setting to make sure that any Normalise or Dither options are turned off
- Tracks should be exported as Wav- or Aiff-files at 44.1 kHz/16bit or higher
- Be sure to leave at least 3 dB of headroom (ideally -6dB, the loudest part of your song on the master channel should read -3.0 dB max)
- Track naming: “Artist/Band Name – Track Name”
It will generally take me about a week to send you back the mastered tracks. In case it takes longer I will let you know beforehand.
The masters will be returned as 44.1 kHz, 16bit Wav-files unless otherwise specified. If you’d like another format (Aiff, AAC, FLAC, or MP3), please let me know in advance.
If you want me to make changes after listening to the masters on as many playback sources as possible, I will do one revision for free. If you require more, you can purchase additional mastering time. If you change the original stereo mixes to be re-mastered, it counts as an extra track and will be charged at the full mastering rate.
To Improve Your Music the Mastering Engineer Can:
- Raise the overall level
- Balance song levels and EQ individual tracks for cohesion
- Correct minor flaws in the mix with equalisation
- Improve flow by changing the pause between tracks
- Eliminate noise between tracks
- Make your music sound good on any sound system at any volume
So mastering is not about making your music sound as loud as possible, but as good as possible while making your tracks louder and maintaining the dynamics.
