Anyone planning to commercially sell their music or distribute it for radio airplay, TV broadcast or club play, should have their music professionally mastered. Un-mastered tracks & CD's often sound soft, thin, inconsistant or "boomy" when compared to tracks that have been mastered, which are generally warmer, louder and more balanced. Every single major label release is professionally mastered in a tuned room by an experienced engineer.

Mastering is the final creative step in the CD making process, where all final sound sweetening & tweaking is done and a CD Master is assembled. While 80% of the tracks I master are recorded & mixed in-house, I do master "outside" material from time to time, including music for DVD release & Broadcast. For outside material, the process is similar to what I describe on my mixing web page. Tracks are carefully listened to and analyzed (EQ, RMS, Stereo imaging etc.) in Pro Tools or Logic Studio's WaveBurner, and then mastered using a variety of DSP processors (Waves SSL/API, Massey etc.).i.e. adding Compression, adjusting EQ to bring out each instrument, Peak Limiting to maximize loudness. I mix & master on JBL LSR 6300 series THX certified monitors tuned via JBL's room mode correction system (RMC™), utilizing an Apogee Rosetta 200 for D/A convertion. The CD is then played back through & a variety of professional & consumer audio systems (Tannoy PBM's, Harman Kardan/JBL home theatre, multimedia/iPod speakers etc.) to ensure all tracks translate well. You're encouraged to carefully listen to the mastered reference tracks (256k-320k MP3/AAC or CD) in your home/studio/car/ipod etc., to make sure your happy before signing-off on the project. If changes need to be made we can schedule a "revision" session that you're encouraged to attend. Because projects often require approval by a number of people (artists, producers, record label etc), it helps to consolidate revision notes, thus saving valuable studio time. Once everything sounds great we'll burn your Redbook CD Master for replication/duplication &/or iTunes distribution.

Mastering jobs are generally booked weeks in advance and may take several days to complete depending on the number of tracks, edits & revisions. If you'd like me to master your CD/DVD, please contact me well ahead of time, even before you finish your final mixes (I'll be glad to provide feedback!). For the best possible results, you should provide us with uncompressed 24bit mixes on CDR/DVD and please do not use a preak limiter on the Master Buss...I need a few db's of "headroom" to work (don't worry your tracks will still be loud), and I cannot fix badly distorted mixes. I usually work on a per-song project rate, which varies depending on what I have to work with (i.e. mix quality) and what needs to be done. Hourly rates begin @ $50/hour (w/client present), and we also have affordable mastering packages for indie artists/bands ranging from at $300-$500 per CD (ftp/mail/drop-off). To schedule a job &/or request a quote, please click here.