Get Ready for the Master

So you've just finished that latest greatest mix. What can you do to make it ready for radio and nightclubs, and make it work across a variety of consumer-grade systems? And how do you transfer your material to vinyl?

The best way is to take it to an experienced professional mastering engineer. In addition to providing the segues between songs, mastering engineers also can add a tremendous amount of punch and depth to your final recordings.

While some people choose to master their recordings "in-house", most mixes that go for international distribution are taken to a professional mastering engineer, who can encode these with ISRC* and PQ** codes. In addition, professional mastering engineers tend to apply a variety of very high-end analog and digital tools (Compression, EQ) to really enhance the sonic spectrum - these tools are not usually found in conventional desktop workstations and home studios.

If you have decided to go with a professional mastering engineer, what do you need to do to get your song ready?

Taking your recordings to a mastering engineer requires a little bit of prep on your end. It's best to think about preparing your mixes for the mastering engineer while you're still doing the final mixes so that you're able to turn things around quickly if something starts taking off.

Here are eight tips that will make working with your engineer an easy and accurate process.

1. Make sure that your hottest peak is no higher than -3db. This is the digital age and you've got plenty of headroom. Any digital overs will require extra time at the mastering lab, and will also add to your final total.
2. Don't put any compression or EQ on the final output buss. Yes, your mix will sound "wimpy" and not as punchy, but it will give the mastering engineer a lot more room to work from. Adding compression and EQ is like tying a mastering engineer's hands behind his or her back. You want to give them raw dough and they'll hand you back a nicely baked loaf of bread.
3. Keep the project at the same sample rate and bit depth you started at; don't convert. Mastering engineers usually have high quality tools to do the conversions, and a lot of times they'll even transfer to analog before downsampling for CDs.
4. Always include a text file for the mastering engineer that has bit depth and sample rate info. For example, writing "All files are at 48kHz and 24bit" helps the mastering engineer a lot.
5. When titling your mixes, use mix numbers for easy reference - for example, MyNewSong_Mix18 is way more descriptive than MyNewSong_Final version, especially if there are revisions.
6. If you're not sure about the placement of vocals, do three stem mixes - vocals, vocal fx, and instruments and include that along with the mix. Make sure you title these appropriately like MySong_18_Vocal, MySong_18_VocalFX, and MySong_18_Instruments.
7. When mixing, mix with a subwoofer - if you don't you're mixing the low end with blinders on.
8. Most mastering engineers will accept delivery in a variety of formats. Make sure to check with the mastering engineer before sending them the files. The most common method is to deliver the data on a hard drive or data cd. Avoid giving them audio CDs as these require conversions to and from the CD-R and are subject to clocking errors; in addition, audio CDs are always 16bit, so you lose that information.

If you follow these tips, your mastering engineer will really be able to make your mixes stand out from the pack. It will also save you lots of time in the mastering lab (and time is money). It'll give your mixes a huge leg up both in the clubs and on radio; your mixes will be punchy, strong, and professional.

That's it for now. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email here or visit www.hollywoodrecordingstudio.com.

*PQ Codes are used by the manufacturer of CDs to tell them track titles, start and stop times, etc. These are both embedded electronically in the disc as well as given to them on a sheet of paper. This is used anytime glass masters are made (as opposed to CD-Rs which are simply burned and don't require these).

**ISRC Codes are allocated by the RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) and help to uniquely identify each recording - this helps with the collection of royalties and tracking of the song across the internet and radio. Visit www.riaa.com for more information.