CD mastering facilities

  • Thread starter Thread starter Walnut
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Walnut

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I wondering where I can find a good low price CD mastering outlet. I recently sent out my CD project to a company called Masterbymail.com. Not to be confused by The Brain Machine. I sent my CD out about two weeks ago and I have not receive a email of a call back ater I left several messages. They only use a answering machine so a live person never picks ups. I have spoken with a gentlemen before I sent my CD out and he sounded very convencing. The prices are $15 a song or $99 for a full CD under 74 min. I do not find this to be good business practice by not responding after explaining to me that it takes about 24 to 48 hour to complete the project. You should check out the site if you haven't already. I assume that they may have a large volume of CD mailed to them since the guy told me that they receive request from all over the world. I have not yet seen any company mastering CD's for that low of a price. I am starving artist, so I cannot afford those 3,4,5, or $600 dollar prices. I anyone have info on these forks, please let me know.
 
Walnut said:
The prices are $15 a song or $99 for a full CD under 74 min.
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It's been my experience that really skilled MEs get paid appropriately for their talents (and many times still not enough!) vs. bullshitter-wannabes whose rates are only slightly higher than McDonald's teen managers.
 
I think what Blue Bear means, Walnut, is that he is personally DIEING to master your CD for $15 a song. Just ask him, I'm sure he'll agree!! ;)
 
Actually.... no - I'm not a mastering house, but Walnut -- you may want to look to John at Massive Mastering or Tom at The Mastering House -- both really know their stuff, and while you'll have to pay more than the completely ludicrous price of $99/CD, they'll give you very high-quality results for much less than major-label pricing.
 
Ah see now there you go... I give you a deal in your hands that you can make a huge commission off of and you go refer them to some other guys...

geeze...

;)
 
I give a Forum discount! :D

Seriously though - There are a few things to look for in some "budget" places (I actually consider MY place to be a "budget" place, but that's for another thread).

Check out the gear list for unusual or obvious attempts at deception. I'm not making any assumptions here, but does masterbymail ACTUALLY have a FAIRCHILD? A $30,000 compressor? And a PULTEC EQ? The gear list says so...

Could it just be a UAD card? I've got one... It's on my gear page. However, I make it a point to note that I'm running digital emulations of certain hardware if that's the case, and actual hardware where it applies.

I've seen an awful lot of these types of places come up lately - I'm still busting a lot of them for ripping stuff off of my site (found another just a couple days ago). Obviously, these aren't ethical, trustworthy people.

Of course, I'm not actually implying that masterbymail *doesn't* actually have a real Fairchild. Maybe he does. I'll tell you though, if I had a Fairchild in here (not that I'm actually all that nuts about them for modern mastering) I'd have a photo of it in my rack.

Geez, I sound so bitter... Well, I think I might have the right to be. A little. Some of these places give mastering a bad name, and that just pi$$es me off.
 
If I had a Fairchild in my rack, I probably couldn't stop jerking off to it long enough to get anything done :eek:
 
If I ever get a Fairchild in here for some reason, that pretty much ruined it for me.
 
The thing about mastering that is so often overlooked is that it's not a commodity where cheaper is better. It's not like buying a ballpoint pen or getting CDs pressed. It's an art... like hiring an architect. Do you want the $2/hr architect?... maybe?

I work with bands at whatever rate they can afford. Sometimes that's right up there with the industry standard rates for mastering, sometimes it's a hell of a lot cheaper than that. In any case, I work as much as I can and people seem to be happy with it.

Expect to spend some money if you're serious about your music, which you should be. If you're only doing this album once, do it right. Spend a few hundred bucks if you can... or work out a deal where you spend a couple hundred and give the engineer a piece of art, or buy him dinner... people can work for some pretty weird things if you push the right buttons.
 
Massive Master said:
If I ever get a Fairchild in here for some reason, that pretty much ruined it for me.
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Hey, I probably just saved you a lot of money, those Fairchilds are expensive! :D :D :D :D
 
I really don't want one anyway. If I did vinyl, maybe... Well, not MAYBE...

But the thought of goo dripping down the tubes... I mean, wow... That's just wrong.
 
Massive Master said:
I really don't want one anyway. If I did vinyl, maybe... Well, not MAYBE...

But the thought of goo dripping down the tubes... I mean, wow... That's just wrong.
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Oh no, I wouldn't get any on it, now THAT would be wrong! :eek:
 
Mastering

I'm probably inviting criticism for this post but I think there is too much emphasis put on "Mastering." I certainly realize that there is an important place for mastering but the bottom line is, the mastering engineer is giving an objective and additional opinion to what has already been done in the studio. You can send your recording to several different mastering houses and get it back several different ways. Personally, if I record, mix, etc. my music and get it to sound the way I want it to sound, I don't want someone changing what I did because after all, isn't it his opinion? I value my own opinion so I like to decide what my recordings will sound like. Of course, for people who don't have an "ear" for mixing, mastering, etc. being able to send it out to someone else is invaluable because they need the other opinion. I've heard "professionally" mastered recordings that I thought were terrible. Someone else may like them. Music and recording is such a subjective thing in so many ways, you can never please everyone anyway, even people in the same band can't agree many times on how it should sound. Like they say........there are at least a hundred ways to do it right.
 
HWB said:
I'm probably inviting criticism for this post but I think there is too much emphasis put on "Mastering." I certainly realize that there is an important place for mastering but the bottom line is, the mastering engineer is giving an objective and additional opinion to what has already been done in the studio. You can send your recording to several different mastering houses and get it back several different ways. Personally, if I record, mix, etc. my music and get it to sound the way I want it to sound, I don't want someone changing what I did because after all, isn't it his opinion? I value my own opinion so I like to decide what my recordings will sound like. Of course, for people who don't have an "ear" for mixing, mastering, etc. being able to send it out to someone else is invaluable because they need the other opinion. I've heard "professionally" mastered recordings that I thought were terrible. Someone else may like them. Music and recording is such a subjective thing in so many ways, you can never please everyone anyway, even people in the same band can't agree many times on how it should sound. Like they say........there are at least a hundred ways to do it right.
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Very good point, that's why you want to send your material to someone with an experienced set of ears, has mastered a good number of great sounding CDs, not someone who is going to butcher it. I've always been an advocate of hearing the results before committing (and was one of the first to offer a "risk free evaluation"). You're not going to get this from the larger mastering houses without paying for it, I don't blame them. But there are those of us who are not as well-known and will give samples of our work before having to commit (John and I included). I've had my mixes mastered at Sterling and other top mastering facilities and not always been satisfied with the results. At other times they have taken it to areas I'd not have thought of. It's nice to be able to compare the results from different studios and pick the one that you like best, or none at all.

There are at least a hundred ways of doing it right, but some of them will be more in line with your vision than others. Objectively measure those results including not mastering at all, or your own personal mastering.
 
HWB said:
Of course, for people who don't have an "ear" for mixing, mastering, etc. being able to send it out to someone else is invaluable because they need the other opinion.
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I don't have "inexperienced ears" at all and yet I send stuff I mix out for mastering... why? Because if you mixed it, or worse, tracked AND mixed it - and incidently, it wouldn't matter if you were George-friggin-Massenburg - by that point, you're no longer objective enough to analyze the overall sound quality of your work. Period.

A skilled ME will catch any problems you may have missed in becoming acclimated to the project over a long period. IMO, the highest compliement you can receive is the ME telling you "there's nothing I can change..." - then you know you REALLY did your job well!
 
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"there's nothing I can change..."

Actually, what he said to me was, "there's nothing I can change that will make THIS sound good..."
 
lpdeluxe said:
Actually, what he said to me was, "there's nothing I can change that will make THIS sound good..."
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LOL :D

I've had that happen as well and have told clients not to throw good money after bad, remix or re-record this before mastering. They didn't seem to take it very well.
 
Gawd yeah... That's not a rare situation...

That's where you take them aside (even by e-mail or phone) and find out what they want to do. Sometimes they say "yeah, we can remix it" and sometimes they just want it to be "less irritating" becasue they can't do better.

Always a learning experience for them though - When they come back six months or a year later, it's almost always a "180" from last time.
 
strmkr said:
If I had a Fairchild in my rack, I probably couldn't stop jerking off to it long enough to get anything done :eek:
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Are you talking about Morgan Fairchild?
 
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