Mastering (or pre-mastering) is the process of preparing a track or album for its final destination medium. This means ensuring that things will sound as good as possible on the widest variety of sound reproduction equipment; ensuring masters meet streaming platform recommendations; sequencing and preparing CDs and vinyl for final releases; providing an error-free master copy of such CDs; and in the case of vinyl, ensuring that a track can be cut to vinyl with no problems. Mastering an album also involves making all the constituent tracks sound consistent as a single project.

For online mastering, simply send us a message via our contact form, and we will reply with details of how to transfer your tracks to us. Once everything is ready to go, we will master your tracks and return them as promptly as possible.

We aim to have your tracks back with you within 8 to 10 working days, or less. If things are more or less urgent, then be sure to let us know. We pride ourselves on our flexibility, and always try to accommodate our customers’ time frame. Please note that rush fees apply for very urgent orders.

We aim to have your tracks back with you within 8 to 10 working days, or less. If things are more or less urgent, then be sure to let us know. We pride ourselves on our flexibility, and always try to accommodate our customers’ time frames. Please note that rush fees apply for very urgent orders.

Please see the submission format page for details. Broadly speaking, the simplest advice here is that you make your tracks sound as good as you possibly can. Make sure you have checked them on several different playback systems, and referenced them against tracks that you like (preferably at the same subjective level). Make sure that all of the parts in the track sound how you want them, the balance of elements is as you want it, and that all in all you can't think of any way it can be improved. We will then bring the very best out of it.

Most important is that we hear exactly what the artist was hearing when they were mixing, with some flexibility. Ideally we will have a clean signal with no limiting or clipping applied. Limiting a master should be the last stage of processing, and is practically impossible to undo/remove. So please bypass any limiting/clipping.

However, when a mix is built with these processes applied, the track depends on them to sound the way it does. Remove them, and everything sounds different.

Therefore, if you mix with processing on your master output channel, we suggest sending

1) A version with all the processing (i.e. your home master) for referencing

2) A version with the final loudness processing bypassed

3) A version with all master processing bypassed

This provides the greatest flexibility with the least ambiguity. We know how you wanted it to sound, but the sound is more flexible for us to work with. Don't worry if the track sounds quiet - clean is more important than loud at the pre-master stage. Simply mix it down with plenty of headroom at 24-bit/32-bit floating point, and we will take care of the loudness in line with your preferences.

Yes, all supplied masters will be good for these platforms.The specific details can vary somewhat, depending on the style of music and intention. While all masters will be ok to use on streaming services, some genres/styles may benefit from having separate 'DJ' (i.e. loud) and streaming-specific masters. We can advise further on individual projects.

In the unlikely event that you are not happy with the mastering, simply tell us what changes you require and we will revise the master accordingly. Revisions are free, though more than one revision is rarely required.

It sometimes happens that after mastering, the artist/producer wants to change something in their mix. These changes obviously have an impact on the mastering, and the degree to which that happens depends on the scale of the mix changes. For example, raising an occasional violin part by 1dB may mean no/minimal changes in mastering, whereas realising that the drums and bass had been accidentally muted would mean a completely new mastering setup. As such, we charge for this on a case-by-case basis. Assuming the changes are minimal, recalls are charged at a lower rate, just to cover the time involved.

Additional versions such as radio edits, clean edits, alternative arrangements etc are subject to a small additional charge per version. To minimise the cost, these alternative versions should be supplied at the same time as, and be sonically identical to, the main version. If they are supplied later, recall fees apply.

In general we assume all creative decisions have been made knowingly and considered carefully prior to sending for mastering, and go ahead and work unless there's something preventative happening in the mix. However, sometimes we get something in a track or two that is much better fixed in the mix. We'll always get back and suggest changes in these cases.

Generally speaking, we prefer not to resort to stem mastering unless a mix is in very poor condition. And in such cases, we prefer to get back to the artist with suggestions - they often help with future mixes too. Typically it is one or two parts of a mix causing trouble, so in these cases we'll ask for those parts to be split out to their own stem.If a mix is in need of full stem mastering, costs can be discussed. Just get in touch.