Last Minute Pre-mastering tips...

[moelar2]

Hello,

Our scheduled date for mastering has crept up on us...We have just under 24 hours to get our mixes to sound as good as they can before we take them to the mastering house. We're actually taking our PC w/Layla over to the engineer's studio.

Are there any Pre-mastering tips any of you would like to share? Anything we should watch out for during the mastering session. We're mastering 6 songs@$150/hr.

The music is alternative rock, somewhere in between deftones (riffs) and incubus (vocals).

Thanks!

 

[tmix]

You may ask the guy who is doing the mastering, he may have a few desires, but some standard ones I have been asked to do is:

a) Leave a couple of seconds silence (noise actually) at the beginning / end for them noise print for noise reduction and also do the fades.

b) Leave some dynamic range in there. Don't compress the snot out of it.(that is what you are paying THEM to do isn't it?)

c) Leave the files in the highest sample rate you can (96K or ?)

d) I forgot...

e) Oh yeah, Go light on the Reverb! it is easier to add than subtract.

g) You may want to make 2 different mixes (vocals up and vocal down) Relationships change when they are squeezed.

Have Fun! You are finally at the end!

Tom

 

[moelar2]

Thanks Tom!

I actually did download some stuff from the guy's website which is pretty helpful. I'm just glad to finally be done!