Mastering Services

Mastering is that final touch of polish to make your music sparkle. It is vital in presenting your music in the best possible way. It is not simply just increasing the loudness, as many believe.

The goal in mastering, is to take a mix, and subtly enhance it. Perhaps to bring out the vocal a little more, or reshape the low end bass for more punch. We might increase or decrease the stereo width. Or make the low end mono for compatibility on club speaker systems.

In mastering, we take a completed mix and apply compression, equalisation, saturation and limiting:

• Compression to help glue the mix together if necessary. 
• Equalisation to lift vocals and lead parts if needed, and to sweeten the song as a whole.
• Saturation to help make it sound vital and alive.
• Limiting to provide the appropriate 'loudness' of your music.

There are other techniques, like the subtle automation of volume and effects to increase movement and keep the listener engaged with the song. And ensuring  the music adheres to the relevant technical standards.

So what is loudness and why is it important?

It is in some ways unfortunate, that human hearing perceives 'louder' as 'better'. This is one of the reasons we like to turn up the volume when listening to our favorite tracks. We want to hear them at their best.

So limiting is extremely important, and is used to ensure your music is of a competitive loudness, particularly on streaming services. Simply put, loudness is a quality introduced by a mastering engineer, which makes the music 'sound' louder, without actually raising the real volume. We refer to this as 'apparent volume'.

Sounds like voodoo magic? No, it is based on pure science.

By reducing the strength of the loudest peaks of a song, and increasing the strength of the lowest peaks, we can effectively make the song 'sound' louder, without any increase in the volume.

Limiting is a form of compression, and as such will reduce the dynamic range of the music. Dynamic range refers to the volume difference between the loudest parts and the quietest parts. A high dynamic range will sound more detailed and clear.

While dynamic range is very important, part of it is usually sacrificed to bring the song up to a competitive loudness. This delicate balance between loudness and dynamic range, is an important part of the mastering engineers job.

Loudness and Streaming Services

Loudness is a very hot issue with streaming services like Spotify. They seek to limit the loudness of all music on their platforms, by using a measure known as Loudness Units at Full Scale (LUFS), in an attempt to protect the listeners ears, and ensure an even volume level so listeners are not constantly turning the volume up or down between songs.

However, it is natural for record labels and artists to want to sound louder and better than the competition. So there are a few other tricks which the skilled mastering engineer can use to make the music 'seem' louder.

Ultimately, we will master your music to the level you specify, or if you prefer, we can find the best balance of dynamic range and loudness appropriate for your song.

So whether you are a home producer needing that final polish and loudness for your mix, or a band with a ready mixed song, we can take it past the final stage of production, for release on Streaming Services, CD or Vinyl.

Please don't hesitate to use the Contact Us form to send us a message so we can talk about any details of your project, or answer any questions you may have.