When sending a project to be mastered, there are a few things to keep in mind. First of all make sure there is enough headroom on your final mixes so that the mastering engineer can actually have room to do what he needs to do. I recently received a project to master and there was so much limiting on it that it was almost impossible to do anything to help it. The wav files looked like a block of cheese, no dynamics what so ever. This is the number one mistake I see more and more. So the long and short of this is to use little or no limiting on your master before sending.
Next for best results, have your engineer bounce down the final mix at the same sample rate and bit rate the project was recorded in. This will give the mastering engineer the highest quality file to work with. Also in the advent of digital streaming such as iTunes and Spotify and so on, they have their own guidelines for final master delivery, so let the mastering engineer do the dithering and conversion for the platform.
Next make sure the files you send are labeled correctly with correct spelling and provide artist title and album title. When assembling a project for manufacturing, we add meta data for the master and the last thing you want is to see wrong information pop up on your car CD player.
Comments