STEREO MASTERING

Stereo Mastering refers to the process of taking a single high resolution stereo track of your finished mix and preparing it for distribution. Once we receive the stereo file, we clean it up and process it through a bunch of mastering tasks in order to enhance the sound quality. Think of mastering as the last chance to fix any imperfection and apply luster to your track to make it shine. As soon as you receive the final master, it’s ready to be released on all major platforms like iTunes, Beatport, Spotify, etc. A mastering ensures that the track will sound the best it can on all types of audio devices. Ultimately, a mastering will create a clean and unified feeling throughout your song and more importantly, it will determine « the sound of your record ».

AUDIO REQUIREMENTS

• Export a single stereo track of your finished mix in WAV 24 bit with a sample-rate of 44.1 khz.
• Properly label your stereo track file with your name and song title.
• 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 dynamic processing on the master channel.
• DON’T normalize and don’t use any dither.

TIPS

• The final stereo track is already suppose to have a proper mixing session before submitting. Remember, a mastering won’t make a bad mix sound good, it all starts with a great mix! If you struggle with your mixing game, we can help you with that to ensure that your song will sound to it’s full potential. If you only need a final professionnal touch on your mix, we recommend you to choose a STEM MASTERING. If you don’t know anything about how to properly mix a song, make sure 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 be re-mixed to make sure it still sounds as intended before submitting.
• Once your mix is done, perform this final test before sending : Insert a limiter on the master channel and push it enough so that you hear a little bit of the limiter. This test is vital to make sure that all the elements blend well together when they are squeezed. After that, make sure to fix anything that sounds weird. Before exporting your final mix, it’s REALLY important that you remove completly the limiter from the master channel and that you still maintain -3 to -6 dB of headroom. We only use that limiter as the final test to make sure that your song will sound the best it can in mastering.

WHAT YOUR ZIP FOLDER MUST INCLUDE

• A stereo track of your song 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).