FAQ
What is mastering?
Mastering is a collaborative process at Mindspawn Mastering. It is the final process in the creative chain. It is literally finishing a record for release. Mastering is the intersection of you, your art, your audience and the marketplace.
Quality Assurance - a professional mastering engineer enhances your music and can reveal aspects that can be improved upon. Your files are checked closely to insure there is no undesirable clipping, distortion, or other errors that detract from the presentation of your art.
Audio Restoration - noise reduction when appropriate, phase alignment, filtering and EQ that serve to enhance the original recording and mixes.
Audio Processing - optimizing your music for playback across all mediums, enhancing the stereo mix and feel of your music. Equalization, mid-side processing, and final limiting on analog and digital equipment.
Mix Feedback
Evaluation of the impact and effectiveness of your recorded audio, the musicality of a mix, the emotional content that's being expressed and how best to amplify that are all parts of the critical listening process. Creating transparent and open dialog with the artist and mix engineer to discuss any potential changes to a mix so as to arrive at a better sounding, more musical end result.
Loudness
Consideration of loudness levels insuring your music is competitively loud for the style or genre without compromising quality.
Embed Meta Data
Meta data and ISRC codes can be embedded into your audio files. This can include artwork, credits and other data that will be embedded in your final masters.
Misc.
Create DDP files for CD replication. Create Vinyl pre-masters for Vinyl record pressing. Delivery of the highest quality masters across the formats that you need.
Specialities
I specialize in Music. Full stop. I have considerable familiarity and acumen across a wide range of musical idioms including alternative, Americana, ambient, blues, classical, country, dance, EDM, electro, electronic, folk, hip-hop and rap, house, jazz, lo-fi, metal, psychedelic, punk, rock, trance, trap, trip-hop, world music and more.
What are the rates of your services?
Probably less than you think. The core of my business has always been independent artists and I price fairly without any hidden charges or surprises. Let me know what your budget is on the book mastering session form.
Click here to book your mastering session
Studio
My studio core is built around a specially constructed, time-aligned acoustically-treated room, world-class speakers and analog gear supplemented by the very best digital plugins. The tools I use on each project vary depending on the needs of the music and the desires of my clients. Informed by those parameters and my experience I choose the best equipment and tools for that particular job to achieve the best possible results.
The Gear - I monitor on Kii BXT Speakers and Audeze headphones. I commonly employ analog gear made by Avalon, Apogee, Bettermaker, BP Electronics, Burson Audio, Dangerous Music, Dumble, elysia, Manley, Neve, Overstayer, Schiit, and custom built hardware.
Timeframe
I can often get to a master within one business day. Contact me to confirm my availability. Once I start working on the master I will generally finish within 24 hours, depending on the number of songs being mastered and any revisions that may be required. My work hours are Monday through Friday 10:30AM to 6PM Pacific Time.
If you require a fast turnaround time please contact me as early in your process as possible.
Terms
My goal is to make the process as smooth as possible. I want you to be completely satisfied with the end result. Payment is due before mastering commences. I accept many forms of payment, ACH, Venmo, Zelle, Apple Pay, PayPal and Credit Cards.
