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How do I prepare my tracks for mastering?

I want the final, approved version of each song that you are happy with! If that involves top-down mixing or limiting, so be it. I’ll contact you if that causes problems so we can talk about how to address it, but that isn’t common. It isn’t my job to tell you how to mix - it’s my job to help your music come across as well as it can and to get it ready for widespread release.

The only exception is if you added a limiter only for loudness. If that’s the case, please send me both that and a version with just that limiter bypassed. If the limiter is an important part of the tone of your song, leave it.

Okay, how about the technical side?

  • Please name each audio file simply but clearly. When in doubt, a text file explaining what each file is will help me out. I’m happy to accept audio in WAV, Aiff, or FLAC format.

  • Each track should be a floating-point bounce at the projct sample rate. With floating-point files, any peak/average level you want is fine. If you need to submit 24-bit fixed point files, please ensure that the audio does not clip your master bus. As long as the files are not clipped, there is no need for any specific amount of headroom. There is also no reason to upsample from the rate that you worked at.

  • Please leave some pre-roll and post-roll time in each file to give a little wiggle room for export glitches and reverb/delay tails.

  • If you have track spacing for an album that you would like me to match, a “guide” bounce of the whole album as one file is the simplest way to get us both on the same page. An mp3 is fine for this purpose.

  • I need at least Artist, Album, and Track names for each track, spelled and formatted as you want them. Plase note that most special characters will not wind up on the DDP due to technical limitations in CD Text. I would like these in a flat text file (not RTF or DOCX) or a CSV if possible. If you have them, I also need UPC/EAN codes for the album and ISRC codes for each track. If you have it, please include album art. All of this information will be added to all deliverables within the limitation of each format.

What about references?

If you want to send reference material (for example, albums you love the sound of), that is always welcome. Albums or songs that you feel go “too far” in any specific direction (too loud, too dynamic, voal too loud, etc.) are also useful.

Please provide links to specific releases when possible, but do not send me copies of copyrighted material.

If you don’t have any references you want to share, don’t feel obliged to hunt some down. They should be obvious to you, including why you’re sending them.