STEM MASTERING

A stem mastering is similar to a stereo mastering, except that it allows the studio engineer to have a lot more flexibility and get the best possible sound for your track. The idea behind a stem mastering is to split your final mix into multiple stems, where each of them contain group of instruments. The benefits to work with multiple stems is that we can set the right level balance and correct imperfections that we wouldn’t be able to fix in mastering. 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 mastered with all the stems combined and balanced in a single high quality stereo master ready to be distribute through all the major platforms like iTunes, Beatport, Spotify, etc.

AUDIO REQUIREMENTS

• Export a single stereo track 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.
• Export all of your stems in 24 bit WAV with a sample-rate of 44.1 khz.
• Regroup all the elements in your mix into logical group of stems and properly label them with the group of instruments. As an example, a 8 stems project could be : (Kick – Snare/Clap – Percussions – Bass – Chords – Guitars – Vocals – FXs).
• Leave at least -3 to -6 dB of Headroom on the master channel.
• 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

• All of your instruments should already have been processed and mixed before sending. A stem mastering is a good option only if you want our team to apply some final professionnal touches to your mix in order to fix any imperfection that we can’t fix in mastering. If you really don’t know anything about how to properly mix a song, we can help you with that and we suggest you to choose a MULTITRACK MIXING.
• We recommend to start your mix session without any processing on the master channel. In a case where you mixed your song against a master channel processing, it will usually need to re-mixed to make sure it’s still sound as intended before submitting.

WHAT YOUR ZIP FILE MUST INCLUDE

• A stereo file of your song with the audio requirements listed above. This is only useful for us to hear if any instrument in the stems are missing.
• A folder containing all of your labeled stems that meets all the audio requirements listed above.
• 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).