Mastering

You’re almost ready to go, but time for a final once-over with our mastering service.

Now that you’ve had your recordings prepared through the Mixing process, it’s time to get the playback sounding great on all devices – from iPhone, to massive arena sound systems.

Why Master recordings?

You’ve spent endless hours preparing and recording your masterpiece, the last thing you want is for your tracks to sound distorted, and playback at different levels – especially important if you’re recording an album. Without mastering tracks can sound disjointed when arranged next to each other.

What’s included in Mastering?

Using a combination of manual and automated software, your tracks will be readied for pressing and duplication. This is achieved through:

– Rigorous playback and EQ/level adjustment performed manually by a recording engineer
– Using high-end analog EQ and Compression
– Using Waves mastering plugins (automated) to ‘brighten’ your tracks
– Mixing down to 14.1KHz, 16 bit – ready for CD duplication
– Adding ID3 tag information, which is required for iTunes, Spotify etc.

Mastering is the final ‘polish’ to reduce noise, improve playback on bigger systems, remove distortion and boost the brightness of vocals.

Did you know?

The term mastering comes from the concept of creating ‘a master copy’ –  copies of recordings come from the master whether they’re released as CD, Vinyl or on digital services such as iTunes and Spotify.