Online Mastering at The Mixplant
Mastering your music is the final, and the most often ignored, step of audio engineering. It’s the final polish on your project before you show it to the world.
While mixing and production ‘can’ be done in less than ideal environments, mastering must be performed in a specific environment. This includes at the very least, a full range monitoring system properly set up in an acoustically treated room. A lot of bedroom and beginner producers simply don’t have access to this type of environment.
It’s no coincidence that rampant software piracy has enabled many online-only studios to spring up, offering mastering for a fraction of what professional studios and engineers cost. The gear list may look impressive, but their inexperience makes all that expensive digital kit worthless. In most cases, after you level match your original with the mastered version, you’ll prefer your original!
The difference at the Mixplant comes down to years of real world experience, an acoustically sound monitoring environment, and a genuine interest in making your music sound the best it can without having to break the bank.
Mastering Pricing and Details (Australian Dollars)
- Digital mastering is $50 per track.
- Includes an CD standard 44.1kHz/16bit WAV file of your finished master and a 320kbps CBR LAME encoded MP3 file for a record label demo, or distribution to your Soundcloud, MySpace, Facebook, personal website etc.
- Stem mastering is available as well for an extra fee based on number of stems and complexity of the project. Please contact me if you are interested in stem or separated mastering. See the Mixing area for tips on exporting stems.
- Creation of a DDP images, including track spacing, ISRC codes and other information associated with physical CD duplication will incur an additional fee per track.
- Label discounts are available as well, please Contact me for inquiries.
What I need from you:
- Make sure your mix is the final mix, signed off by all parties involved!
- Do not apply any dithering during mixdown and disable all plugins on your master channel before rendering (unless they are crucial to the final sound).
- Upload a 24bit WAV or AIFF. I can also accept 16bit or 32 bit files.
- Leave at least 3db or so of headroom (the space between the highest peak of your track and 0db), more headroom is perfectly acceptable.
- Leave at least a second or two of silence at the start of your track.
- Feel free to upload any reference tracks if you are going for a certain vibe. I will take these into account as much as as your original track will allow.
- Please label your tracks with Artistname – Trackname, I have too many track1.wav’s lying around!
- If your track is over 15 minutes long, please let me know ahead of time as extremely long tracks may incur an additional charge.
What you can expect from me:
- Turnaround time of 1-3 days. If this changes, you will be notified ahead of time. Expedited service is available for an extra rush charge of $15.
- If there are any major issues with the track uploaded (accidentally rendered to mono, limiter left on etc…) I will contact you before proceeding.
- A link to a 44.1kHz/16bit WAV file to my server (other formats are available on request). This link will be made available for 3 months for you.
- MP3 encoding with track art embedding can be done at no extra charge on request.
- Two revisions/tweaks of the mastering work for free. Any more revisions are subject to a fee depending on complexity.
- Once you are happy with your track, I will send a Paypal invoice which you can pay with any credit card (no Paypal account needed). If you don’t have a credit card, bank transfer can be arranged.
- Major changes to your mix, or rewrites to the song after mastering will incur a full rate charge.
If you are still not happy with the final result, I will make sure your money is quickly refunded, hassle free.
If you have any questions at all, please Contact me and I will be happy to answer any questions or to discuss your needs.
