Mastering

A piece of music goes through many stages and transformations before it becomes a record. After starting out as a bunch of ideas and emotions, piece by piece it becomes a reality. Each step along the way is crucial in helping to realise these emotions, from writing the song, playing the instruments, recording the sounds, mixing the sounds and of course, mastering! By listening closely to the music and keeping up a good communication with you, the artist, we will enhance the song in the best way possible and put all the finishing touches needed to turn it into a polished record. We believe that the best masters are produced by keeping in regular contact with our clients, plus we like a good natter now and then!

The mastering process varies and is entirely dependent on the music. Some tracks may benefit from some nice broad band equalisation, gentle compression and perhaps a little analogue saturation, whereas others may benefit from something more aggressive. Some tracks will have obvious issues that need dealing with, which could be recording issues, room issues, mixing issues or hiss, pops and clicks. Whatever the track needs, we have the right tools and the experience to deal with it.

We can master for any format, whether vinyl, CD, FLAC, mp3 etc. or even a combination of formats. We use the best software in the industry which allows us to perform sample rate conversion and file encoding without unwanted artefacts.

We also offer a free mix evaluation service for those of you where the mix is easy to recall or still in progress and you would like a second opinion before the final mixdown. Just send us the latest version of your track and David will give it a detailed listen in our mastering studio, then give you some advice on how best to improve your mix before the mastering stage, if necessary. This is useful for solving little problems within the tracks before they become embedded in the final mix.

Stem Mastering

Stem Mastering is similar to Mastering, but instead of sending us just one track, you can send 2-8 mix stems, which gives us a little more flexibility and control over the final sound. We can also provide vocal up and vocal down mixes this way. It is not meant as a replacement for mixing and the song should be fully mixed down before sending it over. Stem Mastering is charged at 50% on top of normal mastering rate, just calculate the amount and use the ‘Extras’ button to add it to your bill when placing your Mastering order.

Online Mixing

Our online mixing service allows us to provide a full mixdown of your music. We provide a range of mixing services, from a basic digital mix (£100 per track) to a full analogue mixdown on an SSL desk at one of our neighbouring studios. For more information on this please drop us an email and we can tell you more about the services provided and the studios and engineers available.

Audio Cleanup

We offer post audio services to musicians and the film industry alike and can restore problematic audio to its original state as well as provide balanced audio mixes. Please get in touch for a quote as each project is unique.

Audio Restoration: Clicks, pops, hiss, background noise, coughing or chair squeaks in live performances and even clipped audio are all issues which can affect audio in a negative way. Luckily we have powerful digital editing tools which enable us to deal with these and you’d be surprised at what results can be achieved, even with clipped audio! Old vinyl or tape transfers, badly recorded radio mics, live music recordings, air conditioning noise, the sound of a motorway drowning out a conversation and poor quality telephone recordings are all issues we have dealt with in the past.

Audio Levelling: In film and TV, recordings from different takes often don’t match up well. This can be due to background noise or room ambience, unmatched microphones, proximity from the microphone, different reverberant response from the room or a combination of the lot, and can cause recordings to sound unbalanced and unprofessional. By listening to the audio carefully in our Mastering Studio and applying subtle processing and level balancing we can achieve that polished professional sound for your productions. Our Mastering Engineer David Rose has worked previously in sound design and music composition for film and TV so understands the process well.

CD Duplication

We offer CD duplication and replication from runs of 200 to 1000+ including printing. Choose from a variety of different formats to suit different budgets and needs.

Click here to download a detailed pdf containing all the information about our duplication and replication services.

Click here to download a pdf containing guides for artwork.

Artwork

We work with a number of artists and designers who provide album cover artwork. For more information on prices and to look at some examples please get in touch.