MIXING & MASTERING

Mixing refers to the process of blending together everything you have recorded to complete your song into a high quality stereo file ready for distribution. During the mixing session, the arrangement is sculpted by processing each individual element of the song with state of the art techiques, to make sure they are in relation with each other while also adding final touches to stems to reach their full potential. After that, we will attend the Mastering session and process your song through a bunch of mastering tasks in order to enhance the sound quality of the final master. You’ll finally receive your song mixed and mastered with all the stems processed, balanced and combined in a single high quality stereo master ready to be distribute through all major platforms. This way, you can basically only focus on creating awesome music and we will make your song sound professional.

AUDIO REQUIREMENTS

• Export a single stereo track of a rough mix of your entire song in a 24 bit WAV with a sample-rate of 44.1 khz and properly label your file with your name and song title.
• Each of your stems should be exported in 24 bit WAV with a sample-rate of 44.1 khz. Ensure everything is labelled clearly by the name of the instrument. (Example : 1.Kick, 2.Snare, 3.Clap, 4.Bass, 5.Piano, 6.Lead Vocal, 7.Back Vocal, etc.)
• TURN OFF all non-essential dynamic, frequency and placement process that you might have put on individual element of the mix, because they mostly can’t be reversed if they’ve already been applied. This may include compressors, reverbs, echos, limiters, EQ’s, stereo widening. You can leave other effects that have a musical value (flanger, chorus etc.). Keep all channel automations that have been applied as a creative purpose. If you feel that the processing is essential for the sound, feel free to just send over two versions of any given channel (dry/wet) and we will decide which one is best suited for mixing.
• At least -6 dB of Headroom on the master channel is required when all the stems are playing.
• DON’T use any compressors, limiters, EQ’s, stereo widening or any processing on the master channel.
• DON’T normalize and don’t use any dither.

TIPS

• KEEP IT SIMPLE. Make sure that every element of your song can work alongside one another and not against. You don’t want two instruments fighting for the same frequency zone. We always say : « less is more » to get a clean mix.

WHAT YOUR ZIP FILE MUST HAVE

• A stereo file of a rough mix of your song with the audio requirements listed above. This is useful for us to hear if any instrument in the stems are missing.
• A folder containing all of your stems that meets all the audio requirements listed above. Dry/wet versions only count as a single channel. Before sending, make sure that everything plays as it should when you combine all of your stems together and that ALL the channels you want are included in the project.
• A reference song that has a similar desired sound. This is useful for the mastering engineer to give him an idea of the musical vision you want for your project. The reference track will be our guideline through the whole mastering session, so it’s vital that the file should be high quality (WAV file is recomended).