Do I need professional mastering?
If your music is going on streaming, vinyl, or a club system, yes. Mastering is the layer that makes a track translate - same energy on a phone, in a car, and on a Funktion-One. It also catches problems in the mix you might be too close to hear. In a market this saturated, the difference between a track that lands and one that gets skipped often comes down to this last 10%.
What is the process of mastering?
You send me your final mix. I listen on the main system and on reference monitors, take notes, and start with the path that suits the track - digital, analog, or hybrid. Reference checks happen throughout, against your own references and against my benchmarks for the format (streaming LUFS, vinyl pre-master, club). You get the finished master plus a short note on what I did and why. If something needs revisiting, you get up to three rounds of revisions.
How to prepare my track for mastering?
Send a 24-bit WAV at 44.1 or 48 kHz with at least -6 dB of headroom on the master bus. No limiter, no clipper, no mastering chain on the file. Name the file `ArtistName_TrackName_Version`. Include a reference track or two if you have a specific direction in mind.
Why should I use an engineer instead of AI or Instant Mastering?
AI tools read waveform data. They don't read context. They don't know your track is supposed to feel restrained, or that the kick is intentionally soft, or that you want this one to sit darker than your last release. A human engineer with production experience makes those decisions with you, and gives you feedback on the mix you can take into the next project. Instant mastering is a vending machine. This is a conversation.
What is the difference between mixing and mastering?
Mixing is putting the song together — balancing the kick against the bass, carving space for the vocal, deciding how much air is on the hats. Working on individual elements. Mastering is the final pass on the finished stereo file - tonal balance, loudness, format prep, glue across the whole record. Different jobs, different tools. Some clients want both done in one place; you can book mix-and-master together.
I want to upload a song to Spotify / Apple Music / Soundcloud, what file type do I need?
Unless you're signed to a label, you upload through an aggregator or distributor (DistroKid, Amuse, Symphonic, etc.). They accept 16-bit, 44.1 kHz stereo WAV files. Apple and Spotify then transcode that to their own streaming formats - AAC at 256 kbps for Apple Music, Ogg Vorbis around 320 kbps for Spotify on premium. SoundCloud accepts MP3 or uncompressed WAV; WAV sounds better and is what I'd recommend. I deliver the file you upload, in the format the platform expects.
I already have a mastering chain on my song, do I need to remove before submitting?
Yes. Remove it. A limiter or compressor on the master bus locks the dynamic range and the loudness floor before I've had a chance to work on the file. The best results come from a clean stereo mix with headroom. If you've been mixing into a limiter for monitoring purposes, bounce a version with it bypassed.
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