Mastering

Pricing:

The following rates apply to tracks up to 8 mins long. (Eur approx and subject to exchange rate changes)

1) 1 Track mastered and delivered (electronically) £25.00 / 28 EUR

2) 2 Tracks mastered and delivered for £50.00/ 56 EUR

3) 3 Tracks mastered and delivered for £70.00 / 78 EUR

4) 4 Tracks mastered and delivered for £85.00/ 95 EUR

5) 5 Tracks mastered and delivered for £ 100.00/ 112 EUR

6) 6 Tracks mastered and delivered for £115.00/ 128 EUR
Pay via Paypal (See bottom of page)

Album mastering up to 15 tracks £260.00 !! / 290 Eur !!

Please enquire for more than 15 tracks on an album.
Add £7.00 to the above for 2 x RED BOOK encoded CDR and jewel case
add £5.60 for delivery of Master CD-R by SPECIAL DELIVERY.

Before choosing your mastering engineer I suggest :

1)Comparing what speakers and equipment is being used (and see it in a picture)
2)Verifying what professional audio experience your M.E. has.
3)Verify a photograph of the treated room where your audio is going to mastered.

Mastering information :

Mastering is the final step before manufacturing your CD/Vinyl or distribution of your audio online. Having a fresh set of highly experienced ears sonically review the material and bring it together as a product is of great value, whether these are songs for CD release or destined as a demo or upload. Mastering will ensure maximum compatibility with a wide range of playback systems and correct a number of common problems related to the frequency balance in your tracks. As well as corrective processing Mastering will include addition of sub codes (for automated royalty reporting etc).

I offer a mastering preview option which is my way of showing confidence that I can make a great master of your music, send over the track via Yousendit / Sendspace or click on the "Send me your track" box via Soundcloud below.

(This is subject to my time and availability, I will simply do it as soon as I can)

I have very experienced ears gained from 10 years of professional audio engineering, 5 years semi pro engineering and music composing with numerous commercial releases. (I am no wet behind the ears out of audio college engineer, I have literally 1,000's of hours studio experience, see

side bar under Freelance Engineer ) In essence you are paying for this hearing acuity, correctly treated room and my labour, the equipment is incidental and has been chosen with care.

My mastering prices are highly competitive and I will put my skills and equipment to work, to produce a quality end result.
I am confident my masters can compete with any expensive mastering studios. How?, look at the decor in my room, money has gone into acoustic treatment and equipment.

It is important to note that I use SADiE Series 5 the high end application used by mastering professionals globally.

Equipment and room :

PMC IB1 (High res monitoring) + Custom built stands and neoprene isolation
Extensive acoustically treated room ( 7 floor to ceiling bass traps and extensive mid/hf treatment and acoustic ceiling cloud)
Dynaudio Acoustics BM6P monitoring (excellent imaging and driver integration)

DAC : High resolution DAC with LM4562 opamps in the output stage.
Analog hardware :
Class A analog compression
Valve/Tube and optical compression with Telefunken Valves

(Telefunken Valves are rare and reknowned for there exceptional audio qualities)
Custom built speaker stands and isolation pads

OFC copper cabling throughout. (12AWG OFC speaker cables)
QED Audiophile speaker A/B switch
NAD C350 Power Amplifier for clean sonic delivery
Passive volume controller for transparency
SADiE V5 PQ workstation with VST plug in option
SADiE V4 24/96 (designed for mastering)
Numerous high quality EQ's for correction and enhancement.

4 x mastering limiters inc VOXENGO ELEPHANT V3
PSP Mastercomp
Kjaerhus Audio GCO-1 compressor

Voxengo Warmifier, Crunchessor plug in
Focusrite Liquid Mix compression / EQ
Massive Passive EQ, PULTEC EQ, Smart Research C2
and API 2500, Chiswick Reach Tube, Fairchild 670 compressor emulations amongst others.

A few secret tools that remain unmentioned !

Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro headphones (for QC)

SSL X-ISM (Inter sample peak metering)
Plextor CD-R / DVD-R drives (as recommended by SADiE)
PlexTools Professional error check software
Apogee UV22HR and MBIT+ dithering algorhythms
Audio restoration tools (Izotope RX)
Nuendo 4 (certain tools in this app are gems for mastering)
Taiyo Uden CD-R (Best quality CD-R media)
Onbody inkjet printing and DVD case as standard for Red Book CD clients.

Audio can be delivered via the internet or by post on a Red Book CD-R, .wav / .aiff files on CD-R/DVD-R or DAT tape or if need be MP3 format.(Stereo Interleaved files only please)
Please call for further info on an attended session.

Payment by Paypal instant payment or by personal cheque made payable to Barry Gardner. Paypal E-cheque (for personal and paypal e-cheque, masters are not released until payment cleared.)

Files / CD-R (data or Red Book) / DVD-R delivery advice :

The ideal delivery would be 24 bit mixes (stereo interleaved only please) that are without limiting, multiband compression or loudness maximizing plug ins applied on the master output of your mixes. This allows headroom for mastering processing to be applied and allow the processing to have maximum effect. An ideal digital peak level would be highest peaks to approx -4dBFS on your DAW output metering. Any sample rate up to 192kHz can be handled. However of course life is not always "ideal" and you may send what you have.

The procedure :

I would like to know your expectations for the mastering process and if you have identified any specific problems as then the process can be tailored to suit these requirements. Your input will be of great value.

Listening is the absolutely no. 1 priority when it comes to mastering, if I do not give ample time to listening it is difficult to proceed. This critical time is figured into the rates above.

Then, as is deemed necessary choosing what not to do and then applying mastering processes such as, level matching, manual fader riding, equalization, characterful compression, limiting, multiband compression, loudness maximizing if desired, dithering, relevant vinyl press processing if applicable. ISP metering check included. Sub code insertion, RED book CD-R creation using SADiE industry standard software and Plextor master recorder. C1 / C2 error rate check.

Section of track sent for approval as .wav file, masters released upon approval and cleared payment. Pay by Paypal below.

Complete satisfaction guaranteed.

Do not hesitate to contact me for further information or a friendly chat regarding your project.
You can deliver audio by clicking on the SoundCloud icon at the bottom of this page.

You can deliver files of up to 100MB (megabytes) via the internet using www.yousendit.com if you sign up for the free trial that is currently on offer. For 14 days files up to 2GB in size may be sent and from then onwards files up to 100MB's are free to send. Sendspace is another upload site that allows larger files sizes to be sent.
Both sites have a wizard available to install for speedier uploads.
or of course by mail. (Special Delivery recommended)

Contact :

Barry 0(zero)781 0271371 or via the website form or by email to safeandsound123 at googlemail.com

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