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Mastering is the last chance you have to change anything about the sound before it’s released.
We step back and listen to the entire mix. Take into consideration, the spacing, loudness, what format it will be released, whether its vinyl, digital download, CD, or cassette, we can help make sure the volume and tone is not drastically different between tracks or compared to other material.
Mastering can make the difference between your tracks sounding professional and polished, or lacking luster and sounding flat, dull or otherwise not ready for release. Mastering is the process where stereo files of the final mixes are tweaked with dynamics and equalization adjustments to finish them off and ready them for production.
In our Cleveland studio, we carefully listen to each mix and determine the final steps to finishing your masterpiece! Mastering is an important step, and can make the difference between your songs sounding right in a playlist with other artists similar to you, and your songs sticking out as unprofessional and sounding like a demo. By adjusting the volume of each song, and making sure no songs are too loud or quiet in relation to each other, as well as tweaking the stereo width, frequency balance, and appropriate dynamic range. With music being released primarily through digital downloads and streaming, it’s important that your masters meet a set of technical specification in order to prevent inter-sample peaks and ensure distortion is not introduced during file conversion. Your music will leave mastered for iTunes and ready for marketplaces such as Pandora, Spotify, Bandcamp, as well as mastered for vinyl or tape. We always make sure to check the technical specifications to see that the files will be correctly delivered.
Mastering your Audio in our Cleveland Mastering Studio: Our Music Mastering Process
We master material for major labels, independent artists, producers, and audio mix professionals. Our passion is helping artists and labels bring their music and sound to the next level, helping them breakthrough, and have a longer lasting impact.
Free 30 second A/B Sample
Get a free mastering A/B test to hear the difference. Send us a song, and we’ll master 30 seconds of our choosing, and then put an identical section of the unprocessed for a before and after. A lot of our customers agree our audio quality is amazing, and we work with you to get the best final result possible.
Usually files are sent through the internet, using dropbox, google drive, or wetransfer, or something similar.
Usually wav or aiff files of the final mix of each song. When in doubt, you can always send two versions, one with compression, and one without, or let us A/B on our own your master bus compression, tape, or distortion effects.
Mastering Services at Bad Racket Studios
Mastering is essential to making a polished product. We are a full service Cleveland mastering studio with a lot of experience with different types of projects. Most people are looking for something near them and we’re a mastering studio serving northeast Ohio and beyond. We do mastering for digital, vinyl, cassette, CD and any other type of format you could imagine. We can deliver a professional master with our blend of digital and analog gear. We can help prepare your lacquer for vinyl, or assist in finding the perfect tape machine. We have access to everything from 2″ to 1/4″ as well as the latest digital tools such as Pro Tools, Logic, and Reaper.
Our Experience in the Studio at Your Disposal
As a recording studio and staple of the music community since 2009 we have the ear to know just what to do to spice up your recordings. A little boost here, a little cut there, we know know just how to carve out the tones and dynamics of a great mix. Our professional masters will keep you coming back for all your projects. The purpose of mastering is to balance sonic elements of a stereo mix and optimize the sound for a variety of systems and formats. Mastering is the important final step of production. Creativity takes courage, and we have a passion for creating and recording, and have been honing our skills of creating, recording, producing, and looking at every challenge as a new opportunity for success and progress through learning from experience. Its this attitude that has led us to win multiple awards and what makes us such a special part of the community.
Equalization
We use the best equalization tools we have. Our ears. Adjusting the tone, and listening to how the sound might translate to a variety of playback systems is important to consider. We can transfer your tracks, and then adjust the equalization between songs, as well as adjust the length of the fade, adjust stereo width, and optimize the frequency distribution evenly across tracks.
Dynamics Adjustment
Dynamics and peak limiting is often used to adjust the loudness and compression levels of the tracks. This can be used to change stereo width and adjust the frequency distribution by bandwidth as well using multi-band compression
Audio Restoration
We can help restore your old recordings and even recover a less than perfect recording situation. we can take out pops and clicks, as well as remove ambient noise and compensate for room tone in-accuracies.
Editing and Fades
We can do all the editing and fades between files as well as adjust the spacing between tracks. Editing in our nonlinear system is a breeze in Studio Z our Video Production room.
Preparing the files
We match your exact technical specification to your needs. A cassette tape isn’t going to get the same treatment as a commercial digital release. Finalizing the highest quality possible lossless files to CD duplication or uploading files to your accounts on the internet is a breeze with our high-speed internet. We realize that not all projects are the same and careful attention to your previously released content, and contemporary or vintage works in the same vein as your style and professional quality standards.
Happy Smiles and Free Friendly Advice
We can’t make you happy, but we can exceed your expectations and make you happy about your final version of the project. Our system features robust and flexible client management from start to finish. Let’s hear the final points to perfecting your personal craft and creative vision. Let’s communicate from start to finish to make the best end-result better together. We are a complete mixing and mastering package. But on the other hand, some days we operate in a producer’s perspective, others, simple mixing board, patch-bay, duty while another engineer explores our vast network of electromechanical passages for audio from vintage vibes and style, to on-point professional in a more rigid setting. Let’s go on a sonic adventure together.
Contact us to talk about your mastering project today!
Exporting your Mixes as Stereo Wave Files
Use WAV or AIFF file format? What’s the difference? Which is better? Answer: They are the same quality, just slightly different file format. They are both PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) encoding. Zipping files is ok, but don’t use mp3 or m4a if you can help it because those are lossy, or compressed audio for streaming and the web, much like a pixelated jpeg vs a full quality photo.
Frequently Asked Question: Can you make music ready for streaming services and digital distribution on services like Spotify, itunes, pandora, amazon, etc?
We can take each streaming service required submittal specification, and render multiple versions for whatever streaming or profile files ready for upload to digital distributions.
Can you get my CD to show up in itunes etc?
iTunes uses an online database called Gracenote which you can submit directly from iTunes). Or if you have digital distribution through CDBaby Tunecore, AWAL or Ditto, the information will be submitted for you.