The
quality of your final mastered track – in large
part – depends on the quality of the mixdown
you send us. The more professionally you
prepare your stereo mixdown for us, the more room we
have to improve the end product
In other words: there are limits
on what the mastering process can do for a track
that was not produced and mixed down well to begin
with!
The road to a great sounding track begins with how you choose,
prepare and mixdown the elements of your track. The
mastering engineer only stands at the end of that road
... you hand off your best work and they in turn will
improve on what they are given
Your Mixdown
If you write your music with careful consideration
to what frequency ranges each of the parts of your
track will occupy, your final mixdown will
be much more well balanced, with more room
for the mastering process to improve it
Consider: – is
your bass interfering with your kick because they occupy
the same frequency range? If so, have you addressed
this with EQ and/or side chaining? Have you chosen
a lead sound that doesn't interfere with the bass?
Is your mix sounding muddy are you finding it hard
to hear parts even before mastering? These things
are all part of your job – mastering cannot fix
a poorly put together mix
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Compression and Limiting
Compression and limiting are fine for individual channels
and / or stems in most cases.
However:
- We cannot “uncompress” overcompressed
or poorly compressed material so please take care
that the amount of compression you use on your
channels is appropriate – this applies to
both stereo and stem mastering
- We prefer that you do not use any limiting
or compression on the master channel for your stereo
mixdown. If you do use any, please
be sparing.
Overall Gain
For your final mix – either the stereo bounce
or when preparing your stems - try and keep the
gain of your master channel at ~-3db
This is called “leaving headroom” and
it allows our engineers to use mastering gear to give
your track much more end volume, clarity and punch
than you will be able to do on your own.
ie: Please do
not try and push the gain of your master channel
as hard as you can before you send it to us! Try
and resist the temptation to “slam” the
master volume of your track ... very important!
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Stem Preparation
Mixing down your track for stem mastering is basically
the same as mixing down a stereo render: use
the same care in setting the levels of all your channels
relative to the master, that you do for a stereo
render.
The difference here is that you will need to logically
group your channels together, and bounce them
down separately for a stem master. We will
assume that you have bounced these stems at the gain
level they should be relative to each other
Stem Breakdown - here is what we recommend as a guide
to bounce your stems:
5 Stems:
1 – Kick
2 – Bass
3 - Snares / Congas
4 – Hi Hats / Shakers
5 – Vocals
Keeping the kick and bass separate are essential,
as this gives us the ability to fine tune your low
end. Keeping your hi frequencies and mids separate
is important for the same reason.
If you require additional stems, all of these are
possibilities:
6 – Pads
7 – Leads
8 – Synths / Guitars (lower mid's)
9 – FX Tracks (individual effects channels)
These are only suggestions based on common practice.
The most important things are that:
- a. you group your
stems logically before you bounce them down
– b. you keep the stems in the overall gain relationship
you want for the final mix, and that
– c. you follow the general advice we are giving concerning
preparation for mastering.
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Delivering Your Mix
/ Stems
When you go through our order process you will be given
the option to either upload your materials to us via
broadband transfer, or you may choose to ship
them to us on UDF formatted DVD
If you are ordering Tier 2: Stem Mastering - please
ZIP, RAR, or SIT all of your stems together before
transfer or shipping
For large (above 2GB)
jobs
We recommend that you ship them to us on burned DVD. Extremely
large files take a long time to transfer and can be
more trouble to transfer that way than it is worth.
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Consult with Us
Please contact us if you
are considering our EDM Mastering service. Let
us know what your needs are and we can start working
to get your tracks professionally mastered today |
