First of all, if you have any questions after reading this page, get in touch.
Mastering single song
€ 45 | Stereo Mastering (one stereo track)
€ 55 | Stem Mastering (up to 12 stems)
Mastering 2 songs or more (per song)
€ 40 | Stereo Mastering (one stereo track)
€ 50 | Stem Mastering (up to 12 stems)
Specials
€ 30 | Song remastering (one stereo track)
€ 60 | Podcast/promotional DJ mix remastering (one stereo track)
What is remastering?
Remastering is the process of passing an already mastered material through a mastering process.
This process can be very useful when to bring older music at today’s standards, or to level up all the tracks in a DJ set, or even to revive your early releases that maybe didn’t get the mastering love they deserve.
Older music can really benefit from remastering to bring it to a similar level of density and tonal balance as modern-sounding music. Especially for DJs playing both new and older tracks, the difference can be quite noticeable - and can occasionally lead to these old gems being received underwhelmingly.
Simply passing older music through a limiter will make it sound louder but lifeless, so I developed a specialized chain that makes it practical to tonally and dynamically rebalance the entire song: the low-end is solid, the low-mids are thick but not excessive, and the high-mids and highs are smooth and controlled.
Especially when the source masters are from good to excellent (for the standards of those times), the end result is nothing short of amazing!
Mastering info: delivery, preparation
Delivery
Usually a master will be ready in 1-3 days. It mostly depends on the time of receiving the files, I do critical listening sessions at the start of my day (EU time zone).
Main delivery: if the source files were produced at a higher sample rate (48-96 kHz), I will master at that native sample rate, and deliver 16-bit and 24-bit stereo wave files at the same native sample rate.
Additional delivery: stereo wave file standard 16-bit 44.1 kHz. This format is compatible with absolute all digital stores and playback devices, and still widely used.
Delivery on request: lossless FLAC and lossy AAC/MP3 conversion.
Everything above is included in the price per song. There is no limit regarding the number of revisions, I’m a reasonable person and I want your music to sound as close to your vision as possible.
Files transfer
A safe service that allows to just drag & drop files up to 50 GB (and with one month auto-expiration) is SwissTransfer.com. Otherwise, any other cloud storage solution works.
I suggest a file naming scheme like Artist Name - Track Title (BPM, bit depth, sample rate).
Technical aspects
Mix and pre-master
For each song I will need two versions: the mix and the self-made pre-master as reference. If you trust my taste, sending just the mix and specifying a known reference song is fine.
The files should be exported as 32-bit floating point wave files. Do not worry about the actual level of the tracks, don’t change anything for the purpose of the export. The floating point format is ensuring that no clipping will ever occur. Just disable the relevant plugins (see below).
Pre-roll and post-roll
If you export from Ableton Live or other DAWs that have no pre-roll at Bar 1.1.1.1, please shift your entire project 4 bars to the right (drag everything, or use the insert time feature if available), and export with a bit of silence before the song starts.
The reason is that sometimes these DAWs can cut out few samples of the audio right at the beginning of the song. Also make sure you leave plenty of tail at the end of the song, so I can fade out the tails smoothly.
Plug-ins
If you’re using processing on the master bus, then you should leave on everything that qualifies as mixing decision. Buss compression, saturation, OTT, saturation, custom EQ curves - any process that imparts a strong characteristic to the sound should stay on.
Anything else that are considered mastering moves (like EQ to cut the low end on the sides, or clipper, or limiter) should be taken off before exporting the mix.
Exporting Stems
Different DAW’s work differently when using the solo button - some may mute the send effects. My suggestion is to start by muting all the tracks in the project (except for sends). Then, for each stem unmute just the tracks you want contained in the respective stem, and run an export pass.
What I consider important to have as stems:
1 → Kick
2→ Clap or snare - only if they are prominent, otherwise they can go with the drums stem
3 → Hi-Hats and high percussion like shakers, tambourines, rides
4 → Drums stem - the rest of the drums, percussion, including crashes and fills
5 → Bass
6 → Lead instrument or lead stack
7 → Instruments stem - the rest of the melodic elements
8 → Effects stem - transitions, textures, background elements
9 → Instrumental return effects - reverbs, delays, throws
10 → Lead vocal - dry, no reverb or delay baked-in
11 → Background vocals - same
12 → Vocal return effects - reverbs, delays, throws
Ideally, you should create the applicable groups mentioned above in your DAW. Then route all the corresponding tracks accordingly. This way, the entire export process becomes easier, since you only have to deal with muting/unmuting up to 12 groups.
As a general rule of thumb, the elements that are driving the song, need a separate stem. If you have a bass-focused song with an interplay of 2-3 bass lines, then they should be in separate stems. You get the idea.