Basic tips from Hybrid Studios online mastering services
So you’ve spent your time writing a song, crafting the melody and lyrics, searching through sonic tones, and perfecting your mix… but you’re not quite finished; there’s one final step in making your song sound as good as possible. It’s time for mastering.
Mastering your music ensures that it will sound great across all platforms. Regardless of 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 be balanced consistently across multiple playback systems, such as a phone vs. a car. Mastering allows your music to sound balanced, complete, and ready for commercial distribution across any platform.
So what should you send to your mastering engineer? Always send a stereo WAV file at the highest sample rate and bit depth at which the recording was tracked. The final mix should peak at no more than around -3DBs and stereo bus compression should ideally be gentle (unless there’s an artistic reason for the contrary). Don’t use any limiting on the final mixes. Lastly, if you have any reference mixes or masters, those are typically welcomed along with notes on what you like about those songs and would like emulated.
At Hybrid Studios we offer online mastering services using the best analog and digital equipment in an accurate acoustic environment to bring your material to a professional and commercially competitive level. We focus on the artist experience and work hard to provide clear channels of communication with a fast turnaround. For more information about our online mastering services, please visit our Mastering page.
