I’ve recently completed a very short ambient release and the only thing that remains to be done is mastering. I’ve tried sending my stuff to XLMastering for their free preview twice and have heard nothing back either time. I’m just wondering if anyone has used any other online mastering services and would be willing to recommend a particularly good company. The release only has three tracks on it, lasts around 8 minutes and 30 seconds and will be available for free download, so I’m not wanting to spend much on mastering if possible. Any suggestions are welcome - thanks in advance guys!
I think with most online mastering, you must be very careful to know what you are paying for, before you spend your money. There are a ton of people, who claim to be, “mastering studios, and ME’s,” but they are basically doing, what you can very easily do yourself.
However… The above options will happily take your money, and forget to mention whether your mix is really good enough to produce a great master. If you are unsure that your mix is superb… why spend the money? You can very easily do a home studio master… takes a slight knowledge, and little practice… a good home studio master = multiband dynams, + reverb ( totally optional ), + eq, + plus limiter.
simple, piece of cake…
Seriously… LOL… I see a ton of these, “online mastering people,” fishing for bad mixes, to pay $$, for bad masters.
Btw, I am sure Renoise is a community where other people might offer to help with making your master for, “free.” and if that is what they offer, I suggest taking them up on it. Even a minimal $10 or $20 is not bad… but keep in mind, Rakmastering works out to be about $70 a track… and that is pretty damn inexpensive for real impressive mastering.
I would not at all shop at, “xyzMasteringAudio.com” especially when they have photos of their nice Flux Plugins plastered all over their site… lol, what a joke.
No doubt there is a bunch of shady mastering services out there. And with a lot of practice, one could do basically the same job at home.
HOWEVER - to do a good master at home, you still need good monitors, a good listening environment, the oppurtunity to test the master on several different systems (preferrably), good ears, good software/hardware and good analytics options.
More importantly, it’s often wise to let someone else master your mix, since you’re probably ear-screwed after hours of mixing, and it’s hard to be objective to your own master.
I have practiced mastering a lot the last two years, for several different genres, both rock and different elecronic stuff, and I feel I’m starting to get a good hold of it. I’m planning on starting my own “online mastering” service soon, so I offered to do 1 of Ardeer’s tracks for free, and if he is satisfied, he’ll get the last two very cheap. And will look into it later how much I should charge if I end up starting a service, I will have to study the market a little bit more.
Look at who mastered the albums/tracks you’re currently into. Primarily the smaller label ones, as they’re likely to have less budget for mastering and you might find that mastering service is quite affordable.
I have used Melograf mastering on some occasions. Sounds proper to me and is relatively affordable, also the guy working there is quite reasonable and nice to work with. You might try it out.
The guy behind Melograf is Christopher Leary - aka Ochre. You can hear from his music that he clearly knows what the heck he’s doing. I’m totally in love with his music. If I were to ever hand my own music over to someone for mastering, I think Christopher/Melograf would be my first choice
Thanks to all of you for the great replies! I’m investigating a couple of means of getting my stuff mastered just now but I’m definitely going to keep Melograf in mind for future releases.
@2 Daze J - I’ve been trying to learn a fair bit about mastering recently but I’m still not confident touching the master channel too much myself. I’m not a particularly experienced producer but I know I can’t take the pieces I’ve made any further so I think I definitely need someone else to tackle the final stage. Anyway, cheers for all the advice guys - I’ll post a link to the EP when it’s done.
