First- Class Song and Album Mastering
Give your mixes the punch they need!
Mastering is the last step before the music you have worked so hard creating gets released on Spotify, Apple Music and the other streaming platforms as well as CD or vinyl. Whether you’ve recorded and mixed your project at home or at a professional studio, getting an experienced mastering engineer’s highly trained ears and world class gear on it can be the difference between a release that comes alive and reaches out from the speakers and grabs you or just falls flat and feels small. At Crystal Clear, we use the best of the digital and analog worlds for processing. Our mastering studio is built around our Rupert Neve-designed Masterpiece analog mastering console. That coupled with B&W 805s monitors, an ASW 600 sub, Tube Tech SMC 2B Stereo Multiband Compressor, Fred Forsell-Modified Millennia Media NSEQ-2 Mastering EQ, Langevin A/D conversion and 20+ years experience that our Chief Engineer, Kent Stump has mastering music of all styles, can give your project that big budget, major label mastering sound at a reasonable price (see below) and with a much faster turnaround time than many other mastering houses can give you. We master for digital/streaming, CD, and vinyl.
How Does It Work?
MASTERING
Send your files, preferably in WAV file format, to kent@crystalclearsound.net using wetransfer.com (this is a free large file transfer service that doesn’t require an account - all you need to do is enter your email address as the sender and our email address as recipient, then add your files and send). You can also use Google Drive or Dropbox but make sure you just copy a link and email that to us rather than sharing a folder with us.
We no longer do attended mastering sessions.
Once your files and required information have been received your project will be added to the existing mastering queue. Turnaround time is generally 2-3 business days. Sometimes, depending on the current workload, it may be up to 4-5 business days, but we strive to turn projects around quickly. When we have completed the mastering we will send an invoice to your email address
Required Information
Please include the following information when you send the files (either in an email or as a text document)
• Artsit/Band Name • Exact Song Titles • Song Order (if applicable)
• ISRC codes if you already have your own. If not we can assign them for you. If none are sent to us we assume you need them assigned.
• Please include any special instructions you may have.
How Much Does It Cost?
$50 per song (songs longer than 9 minutes will be billed as multiple songs, depending on length)
One additional versions of the same song (instrumental or performance track, for example) is included free, but must be sent and mastered at the same time as the main version. Any versions beyond that are $10 each.
All versions MUST be sent to us along with the main release version to obtain this price. Additional versions sent later after the original mastering is completed will be charged like new songs.
Versions for vinyl in addition to digital/CD mastering - $10 per song. Please include the side breakdown with other required info (see below)
What Exactly is Mastering?
Mastering includes adjusting and balancing of frequencies and the overall spectral balance of the song
• corrective eq if needed for problems in the mix
• adding compression and limiting (usually multi-band for different frequency ranges) to add punch, control dynamics and bring the overall loudness into a competitive commercial range. Compression and limiting is used differently for different styles of music and if used excessivey or inappropriately for the particular style, can destroy the sound. This is one reason to have an experienced, human engineer rather than the cheap, algorithm/AI based platforms that we all see ads for where there is no eperinced human ears actually listening to your music.
• Adding or correcting/smoothing fades and deleting unwanted space or noise at the beginning or end of a song.
• Setting song order and spacing between songs and creating crossfades between songs that are intended run continuously from one to the other.
• Assigning ISRC codes and embedding them in the metadata of the final master file. ISRC codes are included free with our mastering. If you already have ISRC codes, please send them to us when you send the files to be mastered.
• Adding CD Text information (Artist, Song Title, Album Title, etc.) • Exporting and dithering final master files - WAV for digital delivery, DDP file set for CD replication, WAV for vinyl. We also always include properly tagged mp3 files for your own reference and for promotional use for you as you may need at no extra cost. • Creation of a PQ sheet with ISRC codes, song lengths, etc. and a Tracklist Cue sheet for vinyl sides.
SEND YOUR MIXES TO: kent@crystalclearsound.net
