Recieved my finishe Mastering job for my CD and I am pissed off...

N

nonreversebird

New member
hmmm , where to start. I guess from the beginning. The owner of this studio near my city sold me on that their engineer is literally the best mastering engineer in northeast florida. Ok so I bought it and I actually sort of know the guy as an aquaintance. At this point I will say I dont know the guy at all. So here is how the business transaction went down. I was told the cost and that I would definitely like the guys work. I recieved a 30 second sample of one of my songs but not the one I requested. Well I blew that off and figured for whatever reason the Mastering Engineer thought I would be better off listening to his work on another one of the songs I provided. Ok so I listened and decided it was good enough to go for it. It wasnt as good as I expected but I attributed that to my work. The geer I used to record with and the old computer I used , etc. The result was a cleaned up version of my mix. One notch louder and EQed differently. This deal cost me 350 dollars for 16 songs. I figured it was money wise a really good deal and even if it wasnt exactly what I wanted if it was significantly improved upon I would be happy.

Well let me tell you this. I would NEVER go back to this place for any reason again. I was not treated like a customer at all. I waited for my master and figured it might take a long time and that would have been fine. Well they told me it was done in 1.5 weeks. I was happy it was done but a little weary that they got it done so quick. So I drive a long distance to this place and pick up 1 CD. It was an audio CD. Well I thought for my money since I provided wav files I would get wav files back mastered and maybe a couple of audio CDs for that amount of money. I was dickfully told that it was not standard practice to give wav files back. Ok so I dealt with that and left the place with my 1 audio CD. Thankfully I gave these people the song names and order to the CD or they wouldnt have even known what to give me it would seem. So I am listening in my ride on the way home and it sounded OK. And then track 7 was an unmastered track. So now I really was pissed. The reknowned Mastering engineer was conveniently off for the day so I couldnt turn around and ask for this problem to be corrected. Unbelievable. So I go home and email the guy about the issue and tell him what I want for my 350 and I actually was nice all this time. No raising hell at all YET. So I was told that the imfamous engineer would give me a call and my CD would be corrected. No Call came or an email so I called there and left a message to get my CD properly done and to call me as soon as possible. I told them to forget the wav files since this was apparently such an issue. So I get a call back saying it would be done by 3pm and I could come back out. Went out there and it wasnt done. I had to listen to some jerk off come out and lecture me again about the wav files. Now I was pissed and did in fact raise my voice, ect. Go to my website to find out who I am and you might be able to imagine me pissed off. So they tell me to wait in the waiting room for 10 minutes and the recording dude would burn wavs and an audio CD. Again not what I wanted. I wanted 2 audio CDs and 1 data wav CD for my 350 which is not much to friggen ask. So I stud at the door and that GD recording engineer wouldnt even talk to me or anything. I couldnt believe it. I thought that we were decent enough aquaintences to at least show me some respect.

Moral of the story. If you are the owner of a company in this industry dont tell your customer you play friggen guitar and you have a band. I dont care. Secondly if you are going to delegate all these guidlines of communication like call for an appointment and they would prefer emails, You had better make sure you keep your end of the bargain.

This was an awful experience for me and it is actually hard for me to even enjoy MY MUSIC now that this was done. I am curious would any of you working engineers treat your customer in this fashion?

oh the place doesnt even have a hardline for the phone. its a cell phone.
 
Oh

and if you want to know the name of the studio I will tell you. I will tell you not to got there is what I will tell. you. I never ONCE got to talk or see the engineer for my 350. All I got was some young owner with the bucks show me the gear and tell me he plays friggen guitar and has a band and that I would be the first to not like this guys mastering. Pathetic. I wanted to tell the guy right there, I dont GIVE A DAMN WETHER YOU PLAY GUITAR I want to know that the money I am spending is going for what I am paying for. Man I am pissed. If you are in North east Florida dont go to this place is all I got to say. I almost punched this guy right there and he didnt even realize it. I dont even know what to do. Even if the job the guy did is good I feel like he and this place were not the right place to do the work and It probably could have been done better elsewhere.

WWWWWWWoooooooooooooooooooooshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
 
Dude, that bites. I'd certainly call up and try to talk the THE ENGINEER if at all possible about this.

Some of it, eh... Wav files... It's not "standard" I suppose, but if a client asks for it - even if there's a nominal fee involved - it certainly shouldn't be a problem. I have clients ask me for PCM files (usually 24-bit) fairly regularly.

And all the driving... If I *forgot* a track, you bet 'yer ass I'd be offering to FedEx it out...

I am curious would any of you working engineers treat your customer in this fashion?
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In short, no.
 
Buyer beware

Hey nonreversebird,

Sorry to hear about your bad experiece dude. That really sucks. I had a similar experience on a CD my old band did about 1 1/2 years ago with a studio here in Houston. They were horrendous and never produced a halfway decent end result. I ended up doing a better job in my limited home studio. It's very frustrating.

Man, please don't shoot the messenger here but $350 to Master 16 songs?

To me, that is a red flag. While their is absolutely no excuse for shoddy work.....EVER! You do get what you pay for....sometimes less.....which appears to have happened in your case.

I'd say there is an unfortunate lesson for all to learn from your experience. The very few shitty people who represent themselves as pro's (and are not)cast doubt on the many fine people who actually are reputable pro's. In the future:

- Get references you can trust
- Ask for before mastering and after mastering tracks to listen to. A good ME/businessperson will want to manage their customers expectations.
- for the 1 minute sample master....you pick the track or don't friggin deal with them.
- Depending on the payment terms, try to pay half up front and half upon delivery and acceptance of the final product. If the studio requires all up front, you better be sure you trust them.
- Respect the Mastering Engineer but remember this.....you are the customer. If they are reputable, decent people they will want to make you happy....within reason.

Bart
 
Sorry to hear this dude. I've listened to some stuff off your website, and really like it. Hopefully, you can find a better place to have your music done. I know it doesn't help with the $350 you've spent already. Bummer bought that. Good luck.
Ed
 
I think that any reputable ME would try to correct the situation. It's their name on the CD too, so they should take a personal pride in their work.

Please don't take this situation as an example of other mastering engineers, I'm certain that all of the MEs that frequent this forum (Brad, John, Ryan, and myself) would not have done this.

I know that if you had been that unsatisfied with my work, if I couldn't correct it to your satisfaction I would simply have had you return any of the materials that I worked on and not have charged you anything.

BTW I am curious which studio this is, please send a personal message ...
 
Question

Tom,

Just curious....It would seem to me that $350 for 16 songs wouldn't allow the ME to spend much time on each song. Just over $20 an hour for Mastering can't pay anyones rent.

Thoughts?

Bart
 
sorry to hear about it
you're only a couple of hours from Orlando where Bob Katz lives. He might be a little pricey but will probably give you a lot better quality and service.
 
My bet is that you weren't even dealing with a "mastering engineer" at all. More likely that you were dealing with a shady studio owner that just wanted the money. Good chance that if you were to have talked to the engineer he may have even told you that he was no real mastering engineer. I have to do that all the time. I always reccomend that my clients send their projects out of house to be mastered. More often than not they don't whether it be for budget reasons or just pure laziness. If I have to do it, I make it perfectly clear to them that I am no mastering engineer. The only thing that I do guarantee them is that what they get back will sound better to them than what they started with, or they don't pay for that part of the process. I charge my regular hourly rate for doing that, and if they want 2 audio CD's and 1 data CD, no problem. As long as they don't want more than like 10 discs, then I don't charge them a thing for the CD's. I will give the product to my clients in WHATEVER format they want it. If they want it on a VHS tape? No problem! All they have to do is pay for any non CD media that they use and eny extra time it takes me to do it.

Personally, NO ONE touches my work until I get a chance to talk to them first. It is very important to me that I have a good feeling going in to a project about the people that will be doing it. Ifnot, I look elsewhere. If I am not allowed to talk to that person, for ANY reason, that usually means that something shady is going on.

It sucks that this had to happen to you. I always try and find the bright side of things. The bright side here could be that you only lost $350 here to learn this lesson since most mastering houses will cost more than that.
 
yeah, i agree that the whole "we don't give you the .wav files" thing was ridiculous.
if a client wants THEIR recording in a certain format on a certain medium...they'll get it from me. "You want me to convert it to SDII, down to 64kbps MP3, sum it to mono, record it back through an old soundcraft console while cutting out all the lows, and then record back in stereo to the computer at 192kHz after turning off my kickass A/D converter, and delay the left channel slightly??? A little strange, but sure!!"
CDs are what....20cents each now? And what scares them so much in that they can't give you your songs back in their original format?
weird
 
Bartman said:
Man, please don't shoot the messenger here but $350 to Master 16 songs?

To me, that is a red flag. While their is absolutely no excuse for shoddy work.....EVER! You do get what you pay for....
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Bartman said:
Just curious....It would seem to me that $350 for 16 songs wouldn't allow the ME to spend much time on each song. Just over $20 an hour for Mastering can't pay anyones rent.
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I think I'm seeing sort of a pattern here that does at least explain some of this to me.

As customers, most people don't necessarily understand the economies of this stuff. Given this guy's price point, and what he needs to do in order to make even a modest living given his overhead ... pretty much suggests to me that you're not entering in to a "high service" type situation.

I mean at those rates, forget about paying for help. Do you honestly expect the guy to hire a competent assistant so that each one of them can enjoy maybe $10 / hour tops between the two of them? :D Maybe you get a musician who "plays guitar" and has very little people skills to help out for a few hours a day in his spare time (sound familiar?) in exchange for the experience.

The guy probably had like 20 projects he had to get out all at once, and just didn't have enough time to get it all done and satisfy everyone. Live with it, because that's the tradeoff.

It's like restaurants. You go to McDonalds if you want something fast and cheap. If you want really exceptional, high-quality meals with exceptional customer service to boot, you're going to have to pay considerably more. It's a simple matter of economies and business models.

I remember someone said on this board, I believe :

You've got three choices: Fast, cheap, and good.

You can pick any two of those.

1) If you want it fast and cheap, it's probably not going to be very good.

2) If you want fast and good, then it's not going to come cheap.

3) And if you want cheap and good ... then I'll get to it when I feel like getting to it. :D


And I'm afraid number 3 is what you just had some firsthand experience with.
 
Thanks very much all you guys for the words...

Woo, its the next day. I put all the mastered wav files on my ipod and listened to them while I went to sleep. Yea its a better mix of my mix for sure in different ways. It may in fact be impossible to get it much better but the fact the guy told me that mastering is done in the spare time for this particular recording engineer makes you wonder. Anyway I will never contact these people again and they have not contacted me. So I guess the feeling is mutual. I know one thing I wont give that studio credit for doing shit. If I am able to sell this CD this studio and their engineers name will not be on it. I guess that is just fine with them. You know the crazy thing about this even more is that this place does CD duplication and labeling. They could have gotten more business from me if they had conducted themselves professionally. It would seem they were ONLY conserned with those musicians that were currently recording in session at 50 dollars an hour . They made it clear that I knew that. Sheesh again poor business practice. This place is called "Vision Sound" in orangepark florida. Maybe I am the first to say they are complete assholes there but If you are reading this and you are looking for a place to do business dont go here. ESPECIALLY for mastering. There are 2 young owners, the kind of guys that would have long chains hanging from there wallet connected to the belt sort of guys. They both must have had their own band and they made it clear to me they were players. Like I really care. My rant will end now on this and I am going to try and erase the memory of who did the work so I can go on with the production and selling and distribution myself. Thanks again you guys for the moral support it actually does mean something to me. You know musicians that put their soul into their music and spend months on it or maybe even years for some take this mastering thing real serious once you find out what it is. I didnt know anything about mastering until I came to this messageboard. I read from you guys for hours and realized that this was the essential thing my music needed to make me happy. Well Ill get over it and move on and thanks again.
 
nonreversebird said:
It would seem they were ONLY conserned with those musicians that were currently recording in session at 50 dollars an hour . They made it clear that I knew that. Sheesh again poor business practice.
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So in other words ... he's busy working on a session for a customer who is paying $50 / hour ...

... and he's giving it his undivided attention.

And this is somehow a bad thing? Nonreverse, if you were the guy spending 50 bucks an hour for a session ... would you be happy if your engineer suddenly dropped everything he was working on and told you to hang tight while he went and serviced some other cheapskate customer who can't wait an extra day to have his masters fixed?

Be realistic. If you just walked in without calling in advance while I was in the middle of a session, I would have been a lot more rude than these guys. I would have told your punk ass to get lost.

Right now, you sound to me like a cheapskate who wants everyone to drop what they're doing for him because he's spending 20 bucks an hour on some lame music. I haven't heard your stuff, but I don't particularly want to. I'm guessing it sucks. These guys probably don't want their names associated with shitty music.
 
Bartman said:
Tom,

Just curious....It would seem to me that $350 for 16 songs wouldn't allow the ME to spend much time on each song. Just over $20 an hour for Mastering can't pay anyones rent.

Thoughts?

Bart
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I don't disagree that the cost seems low for a pro mastering job. Prices can depend on a wide range of factors including gear, the reputation of the engineers, studio overhead, location, etc.

The point is however, if you are promoting quality mastering services you should treat customers with the same respect and quality when you decide to take on a job. Otherwise let them know that there are compromises due to the decreased costs. Some studios offer after hour rates or other cost cutting measures, but the customer knows in advance that you aren't going to get the chief engineer or there may be other compromises involved. The client should also know what they are recieving in advance, e.g. one audio CD and PQ list, etc. and that other media or services are at an additional cost.

Being lazy or not providing your best service due to a lower budget isn't really being professional in my opinion. Offering a reduced amount of services/product with the customer knowing beforehand and agreeing to the terms in another thing altogether.
 
That was their rate 350. I paid it. I didnt pay for a lecture on standard practice on what I get for my money. The wav file deal. Dont you get it. That is what I am pissed about. Let alone the lectures on how to contact them. Email. Then to have me drive 50 friggen miles which is like 6 dollars of gas for my exterra. to pic up an unfinished product after all the lecturing.

That is what I am most pissed about. Its not the job, like I said I feel he did a good job with what he had to work with and I happy with the mastering. It was the GD business transaction and how I was spoken to etc. I am not the kind of guy that will listen to someone lecture me ESPECIALLY IN PERSON. Dude I was shaking if that tells you anything.

I will say this for the God Damned last time I am happy with the work that was done. It almost took an act of God it seems to get the CD but now I have it. They could have sent me a God Damned Email and apologized for this shit.

I didnt go here looking for cheap mastering. Its the only studio around me that does it. That just happened to be their price. I didnt want to send it off somewhere. I would have paid more money. That was just their rate.

That should clear this whole thing up. Now you can tell how pissed off I WAS.

I never ONCE got to talk to the engineer. I was told I would. They did not conduct themselves well and I know the guy found a good setup and ran all my songs through it because that is essentially how I mixed all the songs. One after another same eq settings and volumes for all. So it would figure that is how the mastering went.

Look you guys I live in redneck ville. Its even more redneck than Georgia. I am sort of a redneck and I dont like people getting up in my face with a tone of voice like I heard. I take 4 miligrams of xanax a day for shit like this from a doctor.

So just take my advice the business transaction is very important in your dealings with people no matter what you do. Especially if you just mastered someones song called "Kill'n Spree"

get it now? I thought so

OH and I am NOT PISSED AT anyone here so PLEASE dont go there for Christ's sake. It was the people on this messageboard that told me what I needed to do with my music. I respected all the mastering engineers on here.
I took their advise so thats it.
 
OK I am going to now take back what I said about you guys because you are not reading

I was told to come out per appointment. You understand that right. That means come at a speceific time to get my god damned mastering job. I followed the instruction. Clear.

When I got there the CD was not done. Is that clear. Ok fine. go get and let me be on my way . They FUCKED UP. Get it. I could give a god damn about who was recording because that was none of my business. I was told when to come and I came at that fucking time.

Now if you guys cant read that shit there then get glasses ok. I never even called this place after I handed them my tracks. I figured it could possibly take a long time and I was prepared to wait.

Now read the shit i have typed. I am not fucking typeing it again. This whole little thread thingy started out nice now its a bunch of shit and you now know how pissed the fuck off I can get and you now know why I write the type of music i do. I dont like getting fucked around with.

I WAS NEVER LOOKING FOR A CHEAP FUCKING MASTERING JOB. IS THAT GOD DAMNED CLEAR. THIS WAS THEIR FRIGGING RATE. I PAID IT. I DIDNT PAY TO BE LECTURED ABOUT WAV FILES.

I DIDNT PAY TO BE TOLD THAT EMAIL IS THE DESIRED FORM OF COMMUINICATION VS. THE FUCKERS CELL PHONE.

I DIDNT PAY TO BE TOLD TO DRIVE HUNDREDS OF MILES TO GET MY MUSICS ONLY TO HAVE THEM FUCK UP OVER AND OVER AND ATTEMPT TO TREAT ME DISREPECTFULLY.

now that is all in caps and you should be able to read it. now dont say something stupid. I was the customer, meager, quiet and very nice.

I AM NOT THAT ANYMORE.
 
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