Mastering

Mastering is the technical and artistic process of balancing, equalizing and enhancing analogue or digital mediums (CD or ½” tape) to ensure the finished product attains maximum musicality – to compete in the open music market. Our mastering studio is highly creative, technically and acoustically true. The master provides the template for thousands of CDs, DVDs and records produced for commercial release. Working in a controlled listening environment offers a new perspective and essential for success in today’s market place, a fresh ear is just one of our essential assets.

Mastering is the final creative step when making a record, at this stage, sound judgements need to be made. We welcome clients to attend the mastering session and if not, just post your mixes (on a Data CD-R or Data DVD) with all production notes and upload them to our secure FTP server. We prefer to use the FTP server – it’s safer and more ‘green’ than the post.

Monitoring:

Westlake Audio BBSM 12 Reference Studio Monitors | 
Bryston Amplification
Adam A7x’s
Yamaha NS 10′s
Tannoy R3′s
Full Spectrum Wall & Ceiling Absorbing 
Clouds

EQ & Compressor | Limiters:

Manley Massive Passive Equalizer

Manley Vari-Mu Compressor/Limiter

Empirical Labs Fatso (UBK mod)

Universal Audio Precision Limiter

Waves L2 & L3 Linear Phase Digital Limiter

Voxengo R8Brain Pro Sample Rate Converter

Transport:

Studer A810 MKII 1/4 ” tape machine
Technics SL-1200 Mk II turntable (Ortofon carts)
Sony MiniDisk Transport

Other:

RME Phase Ccope and Spectrum Analyser
Pre-gap Hidden Tracks
CD+Text
ISRC

iDDP authoring

Mastering track sheet - Please fill in this template, then ‘save as’ & rename to submit with your mixes.

Mastering check list download - If you’re a little inexperienced in the mastering process, please have a read – it will allow us to provide  an efficient service.

We recommend you take references home (CD-R, DAT, Cassette, or DVD-R) to play the music in familiar surroundings. It helps to listen to the references and find problems at this stage, so a revision session can be scheduled as soon as possible. Projects may often require approval by producers, artists, record company execs, and engineers, to save time it helps to consolidate revision notes. Once everything sounds great, the project moves onto the final stage at the pressing plant.

We can master from the following formats:

CD Audio, Data DVD, Data CD (as a .wav .mp3 or .aif), DAT tape, mini disk, Cassette or vinyl.

Please bring in your ‘mixes’ on either data CD/DVD or a digital storage device (such as a mobile hard drive or flash memory stick). It’s best if you save or export/render the finished mix/s in real time at the same sample rate your project is set to at 24 bit resolution, for example, 44.1 kHz sample rate at 24 bit resolution in stereo (interleaved). Carefully listen over to all mixes before sending to check for any pops or clicks in your mix, these may have been incurred by your sequencer/digital audio workstation.