Why Mastering?

Many people who have software and hardware tools in the low to medium price range offer mastering services, so why bring your project to a high-end mastering lab like ours?

Consider the following questions:

• All your favorite records have a mastering credit from a high-end mastering house, and all the best engineers and producers have their projects go through the step of mastering with an experienced mastering engineer. Why is this?
  
• Your mix is working well in your environment, but how will it sound on an expensive stereo, a modest stereo, a boom box, walkman with headphones, computer speakers, or on large systems in a club?
  
• Is it possible that there may be certain things in your mixes that you have grown used to overlooking and you will continue to do so until someone else points them out to you?
  

Mastering, perhaps more than in any other area of audio engineering, is all about experience. Through having spent many years listening to mixes both good and bad, produced on a variety of budgets and on a variety of recording equipment, we are able to tell almost immediately which aspect of the program can be improved and how to give it a nudge in just the right place to make it come to life. Every project is different, and within each project the songs and even different parts of the songs sometimes require different treatment. It's a project by project and song by song process.

A project that has been mastered by an experienced engineer will just sound better. Using the right amounts of EQ and compression we can make it sound louder, fuller, and more engaging. It may have come in sounding like a demo but it will leave sounding like a record. Through subtle adjustments to levels and timing we allow the songs to flow into one another producing a complete listening experience.

Once they have been through the mastering process, few would disagree that it is worth the extra cost to put that all important final sheen on their project. Mastering is actually the smallest part of the project budget, yet it is often the point where the project takes the biggest step forward in overall quality.