Preparation

Wednesday, 01. 23. 2008

How to prepare your tracks for Mastering:

1. Get your mix to a stage you’re happy with. The best masters come from the best mixes.

2. If mixing ‘In the box’ (digitally), try to ensure none of your channels are clipping. This includes any effects/inserts being used. Pay particular attention to your master fader, please ensure it’s not clipping.

If recording and mixing in 24bit (recommended), having peak levels of about -6dbFS are perfectly fine. If mixing in 16 bit, peaking around -3dbFS is recommended. That is not to say they are goals for your meters! But keeping ‘under’ those levels is recommended.

3. Try not to use excessive compression on the master stereo bus. Ok for tone/’glue’ etc, but not always for level.  If in doubt, send two versions, one with, one without.

If you like the sound of it, leave it on!

4. Please do not use any peak limiters on the master stereo bus.
i.e. Waves L1, L2, Voxengo Elephant, Ozone, Sonnox, Massey etc.

5. When mixing down your final stereo mix, choose whatever bit rate/sample rate you’ve been mixing in. There is no need to convert to a higher or lower format before the mastering stage.

Rates up to 32bit/96kHz are accepted.

6. The preferred format is Raw uncompressed data audio files, WAV/AIFF. DAT is also accepted.

7. Please provide all band/album/track name/isrc codes etc. that you would like included on your master.

If in doubt, please get in contact.

email: s(at)analogheart.net

ph:+353 (0)87 2501623

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