Online mastering studio services
Your songs will get clarity and punch while making them interpret well on most playback systems. Tired of thin and dull sounding overcompressed masters? Want that dynamic and transparent sound? Good news: you've just found it!
The aim of mastering is to make a good mix compatible with most audio players ranging from mp3 players to audiophile systems. This is usually achieved by configuring the optimal frequency curve, dynamics, stereo image, and loudness of a song.
When I say optimal I don't necessarily mean flat and loud. Unfortunately most of today's masters are inferior to those of the 80's and 90's regarding sound quality. Due to the heavy compression applied on them in order to achieve the loudest possible signal, modern masters lose transparency and dynamic range resulting in a lifelessly flat, thin and distorted sound. This phenomenon is usually called the "Loudness War". Nonstudio prefers NOT to produce hyperloud masters and has a great advice for those who still want them: turn the volume up on your music player!
It is important to note that mastering is not the secret weapon to turn any recording of any quality into a perfect one. If you send a rather problematic mix for online mastering and you expect a magically sounding outcome, you will be disappointed.
To download reference materials please follow this link.
How to prepare your songs for online mastering
- Use the best possible audio resolution, at least 44.1 kHz 24 bit uncompressed (e.g. wave, aiff), stereo audio files are required.
- If you recorded your tracks in other formats do not convert or resample them, unless you have top notch sample rate converters and you're fully aware of what you're doing.
- Do not apply fade ins, fade outs and volume automation on the stereo mix. These processes should be applied after everything else is finished in the mastering stage (except dithering) to preserve maximum resolution.
- Switch off everything on the master buss, especially:
- equalizers
- dynamic processors (compressors, limiters, loudness maximizers, gates, expanders etc.)
- analogue tape and valve amplification simulators (so called warmer and saturator plugins)
- Sonic enhancers and exciters
- Stereo imaging or stereo widener processors
- Reverb and delay processors
- Dither plugins
- Noise reduction plugins
- Don't make your mix louder. You should leave enough headroom for the mastering engineer to do a decent job. Loudness maximization is one of the last steps during mastering, so if you make your mix louder before you send it for online mastering, things will go wrong very likely.
