Darren Boling Mastering

Mastering is the last step between the creative and artistic part of the music creation process and the less exciting but highly important technical and quality control aspects. It’s the last chance to make sure all the songs of a project sound as good as possible, and also work well together as a group of songs. Once the mastering is approved, the mastering engineer also creates a myriad of master formats to be used for digital distribution (Apple Music/iTunes, Spotify, Amazon HD, TIDAL etc.) and production of physical products such as CDs, vinyl, and cassettes. Metadata and CD-Text entry can also be critical.

You may need up to 4 (or more) different master formats (CD, digital distribution, vinyl, mp3 for reference and download codes) to be created and checked for quality assurance. Digital distribution needs are changing day by day as well, and may require more than one master format to optimize for all possible digital distribution options.

Mastering is more than just stereo bus processing, it’s also quality control.

The short answer is to render/bounce 32-bit floating point (0r 64-bit floating point) stereo mix files at the same sample rate as your mixing session, in WAV or AIFF format.  It's preferable to master from versions without any peak-limiting or loudness processing on the stereo mixes so there is ample headroom and dynamic range for useful mastering adjustments and processing. If you have been mixing with a limiter or aggressive dynamics processing on the master fader, it’s often helpful to send versions both with and without that processing.

No and yes. I offer unlimited revisions to your master for no extra cost until you are happy with it.  It’s uncommon to go beyond a version 2 or 3 and usually those revisions have more to do with adjusting things like fades rather than the actual sound. However, you do have the ability to request revisions to any aspect of the master until you’re satisfied at no extra cost. This is true as long as I’m working from the same mix files.

If you decide that you need to revisit your mix(es) and send new files to master from, this will result in additional costs.  This is why it’s VERY important to double and triple check the actual mix files you are sending before you submit them for mastering.  A song may play fine in the session but picked up an issue in the export.  

I use Samply for review which lets you listen to uncompressed audio via computer, phone, or tablet (bandwidth notwithstanding).  This allows for checking in your studio, in your car, via headphones and earbuds, or however you'd like.  You can also drop any notes directly on the timeline.