Online Mastering Services Include:

Mastering is the process of taking a final mix of music and analyzing it  for any flaws or imperfections, then making the best series of  compromises to make it sound as good as possible on every playback  system. A Mastering Engineer also adds a fresh objective perspective  that might have been lost by the producer having heard the same song and  tweaked mixes over and over again. Since every speaker affects the  sound of the audio being played through it, mastering allows your music  to sound its best across multiple platforms.

$100/song for songs under 6 minutes. Add $10/min for each additional min. Ask about our Locals Only Discount. Must be in Long Beach, CA to qualify. Includes CD master (44.1 16bit), Streaming Master (44.1 24bit), High Resolution MP3 (320kps), and High Resolution Master (192/24bit)  

Mastering ensures that your music sounds great across all platforms.  Whether your song was recorded at home or in a professional studio, it  still needs the final step of mastering to sound its best. Professional  mastering allows songs and albums to sound consistently balanced across  the board, while tracks that aren’t mastered may sound disjointed when  played in sequence.  Mastering allows your music to sound balanced,  complete, and ready for commercial distribution across any platform.

Send a stereo WAV file at the highest sample rate and bit depth at which  the recording was created. The final mix should be peaking around no  more than -3dBFS and LUFS ~18dB. Please do not use  any limiting on the files you send. Lastly, if you have any reference  mixes or masters, please send them along with notes on what you like and  want emulated from those mixes.

Mixing and mastering are often confused because of the similar methods  and tools involved, but they are two separate and important steps in the  song creation process. Mixing generally refers to the individual track  arrangements within a multitrack recording, whereas mastering is the  final polish on a mix.

QUALITY CONTROL:  This involves fixing any small errors or oversights in the original  mix, such as pops and clicks, and correcting other small mistakes that  jump out once a mix is amplified.

STEREO ENRICHMENT:  When done correctly, this allows your audio to sound much bigger by  broadening spacial balance (left to right) and also tightens the center  image by focusing low-end frequencies.

EQ: This  refers to correction of spectral imbalances and enhancement of any  elements that might need to pop a bit more. Great mastering is balanced  and proportional, so no random frequencies should be left standing out. A  balanced master should sound even across every playback system.

DYNAMICS:  Compression improves the dynamic range of your song. It raises the  quieter frequencies in the mix while maintaining louder signals.  Compression bonds the song together and gives it a stronger feeling of  uniformity.

LOUDNESS: Generally the last process  in a mastering chain is the use of a limiter, which affects the song’s  overall amount of loudness and creates a peak ceiling. Limiting boosts  the track to sound competitively loud without clipping or distorting.

SAMPLE RATE & BIT DEPTH CONVERSION:  Dither is dependent on the final output medium. If you are planning to  release on CD, for example, you’ll want to convert to 44.1kHz 16 bit and  may have to convert and dither your file to be the correct file format.

HANDLES & SEQUENCING:  Sequencing refers to putting your audio tracks in order (generally for  an album), and handles refers to how much silence you put between each  track in the sequence.

LANDR and other comparable online mastering services have an established  linear set of processes that “master” your music. Since these services  are basically computer algorithms, they work in the same way every time  (ex: EQ, then Multiband Compression, then limiting). This can be  problematic at times because a computer is not able to make as many  analytical choices when it comes to artistic choices and personal  preferences. For example, sometimes a song doesn’t artistically call for  any additional compression. A mastering engineer can make this call  based off past experience, but the computer will process the audio the  same way it always does and likely add some compression. In the end,  while the convenience factors of LANDR and other online mastering  services make them appealing, you usually end up with an inferior  product because the mastering process is not being adjusted specifically  to the needs of the source material.

Vinyl typically has a few extra things to take into account when mastering that CD and Streaming do not. These specs can vary from Vinyl Plant to Vinyl Plant, so if you have a specific place in mind, let us know so we can follow their deliverable specs. If you are planning on a vinyl release, but don't have a place in mind, let us know as well. We can both recommend places and also prepare the masters for when you do settle on a location.

Simply put, the ‘loudness wars’ refers to a philosophy amongst music  creators that louder is literally better. If you can make your music  louder than everyone else, people will be able to hear it from farther  away and physiologically like it better. If you compare music from  before loudness normalization to music of today, you’ll see that there  is some logic to the argument. The human brain does perceive something  louder as sounding better. Loudness normalization is the process of  measuring the loudness of a piece of music, then using the reading to  lower the level to a standard reference level. For example, YouTube’s  reference level is -14 LUFS, so if a song is analyzed to be -10 LUFS,  YouTube will lower the level by 4DBs to bring it to the reference of -14  LUFS. Loudness normalization was created to combat varying loudness  when listening to multiple songs in a sequence. Before loudness  normalization, one song in a playlist might be quieter than the rest, so  the end listener would have to turn up a volume knob to adjust the  playback volume. Then, if the next song in the playlist were super loud,  the listener would have to turn the volume back down. This leads to a  terrible user experience where listeners are constantly adjusting a  volume knob. Because of loudness normalization, being louder is no  longer the focus; dynamics are!

Apple Digital Masters is the new name for Apple’s Mastered for iTunes  (MFiT) program. The program is based around a procedure developed by  Apple specifically for Mastering Engineers to follow. This set of tools  allows Mastering Engineers to audition Apple’s proprietary encoding  during the mastering process and take into account how music will  eventually interact with Apple’s encoding. In addition to auditioning  the encoder, there is also a tool (called afclip) that processes the  audio file and creates a text file for audio clips. Because of this  special encoding process, extra attention must be paid to headroom and  inter-sample peaking while mastering.

Long Beach Mastering is an online Mastering service, which means, in most  cases, we do not have clients attend mastering sessions. Sessions in may be attended at an additional fee, if scheduling permits.