Delivery times can vary depending on the scale of your project. Generally single digital mastering takes the best part of 2 hours. EP mastering with CD sequencing will take roughly 1-2 days. A double sided album with 18 tracks going to both digital and vinyl release can take up to a week given the procarius amount of steps involved. Priority mastering is available for an additional 30% extra.

Put simply, ISRC codes are like the licence plates for the music that you put out. They are an alphanumeric code that is assigned specifically to ONLY one unique recording (song / podcast etc) forever. It is important to have ISRC codes assigned to all your work. Why? well properly encoded tracks provide the means for your work to be tracked by royalty associations allowing you to receive payments for your plays. On top of this, if you wish to participate in the ‘Billboard Charts’ , ISRC codes are a must. You can obtain ISRCs from your record label that manages you or for all the Indie Artists out there, obtain them through your chosen aggregator such as ‘Distro Kid‘ or ‘CD Baby‘.

UPC (Universal Product Code) and EAN (European Article Number) are essentially barcodes that track your ‘product in the market’. Unlike ISRC codes that ONLY track ONE individual recording, UPCs and EANs apply to a product / package that contains those tracks. So UPCs and EANs apply to the ‘vehicle of delivery’ or the ‘specific release’ of your work. For example, you would require a UPC for releasing a single. If you wanted to release a follow up EP with the same single plus two new tracks, you’d need a new UPC for this new EP product. Hence, this is how your work, although packaged differently can be tracked for royalties and charting purposes. Again these can simply be obtained from your record label or aggregator.

Still confused? For more info on the matter, check out THIS ARTICLE that dives deeper in to ISRCs, UPCs and EANs.

For standard stereo mastering, please send us the music of course in the highest quality possible. If you have any reference tracks that you’re vibing, send them through and we’ll do our best to match that sound that you’re after. If you have any artwork in the form of digital images (JPEG / PNG etc), please send that through ASAP so we can embed your beautiful art within your audio files.

Finally and most importantly, when you start a project with us, you’ll fill out a form that confirms all relevant details such as artist name, track titles, track ordering, ISRC Codes and so on. So please have all that info ready when you hit the Go button!

We ask that you send us the highest audio quality possible. Why? Because our signal processors work at a very high sampling rate and bit depth meaning that we can process your music at a much higher degree of clarity and precision. Please only provide us with UNCOMPRESSED OR LOSSLESS audio files meaning no data has been compressed (stripped / deleted) during the process of sending us your files. This will ensure your audio is completely un-altered from its original state. (Please don’t mistake UNCOMPRESSED files with ‘audio compression’, feel free to leave audio compression) We Prefer to work with WAV, AIFF, PCM and BWF but also accept FLAC, ALAC and other lossless formats. We might cry if you send us an MP3 though.

Ideally your final mixes will allow us 6dB-FS of headroom to ensure that there are no audible peaks or clipping abortions within your music. If you really want to spoil us, we ask for a dynamic range of about 15dB measured in RMS. Most Mastering Engineers will always recommend removing any limiters / brick wall compressors or ‘finalisers’ off your master mix bus to avoid an overcompressed result. We say leave it if you have it there for tone and character, but if it’s just there for the sake of making it louder, scrap it and leave that to us. One last thing, just be sure to leave us at least 3 seconds before and after the music. 

We encourage you to come along while we master your music. There is no pressure to attend however as we are entirely self-sufficient and you’ll still achieve immaculate results if you’re absent, It just allows you to have that personalised input into how the result sounds.

You’ll have the chance to decide this when you start a project with us. We’re happy for you to upload securely to our private Dropbox or feel free to share us in on your pre-uploaded files with a download link. Please contact us prior for physical submissions.

To date, we have never had to do a revision. Our work generally speaks for itself. However we will always strive for what our clients want to ensure that they aren’t just satisfied, but thrilled. We therefore offer a complimentary 2 stage revision process. This means if you are not thrilled the first time, we’ll have two more attempts to make it right before you pay another dime.

You will be happy. Simple as that.

For simple stereo mastering, we provide three main file formats that we feel offer the most usefulness for our clients. First, we’ll provide the ‘Raw Mastered Output’ which is an uncompressed WAV file at a 32Bit float bit depth and a sample rate of 88,200Hz. This is the highest quality file that we work with and we’ll give it to you for a rainy day. The second file format we provide is ‘Red Book Standard’ which is also an uncompressed WAV file at a 16Bit bit depth and a sample rate of 44,100Hz. You can use this format to burn your own CDs or upload them to your chosen music aggregator. The final format we export for you is a high quality compressed MP3 file with a bit rate of 320Kb/s. This is really only used for your own listening purposes but also ensures that all the right data is encoded in the best possible MP3 if you decide to share your music this way. We provide all three formats for each one of your tracks. 

Of course we’re happy to provide you with any additional file formats that you may require. 

Once our job is done… our job is never really done… and we like it that way. We pride ourself on service. The trust that you put into our service pushes us to go the extra mile for you. We’re truly dedicated to the process of making you happy. Whether it’s providing you with the right contacts to get your music in stores, your artwork sorted, or a photo shoot, we’ll be there to assist you long after our job is done.