Questions
- Do you only work on metal?
- Mostly. That is where the listening habit is deepest. If you are adjacent (grind, hardcore, noise, ugly electronics) and the arrangement is dense, it probably fits. Polite pop is a bad fit; we will say no instead of faking enthusiasm.
- What should I send for mastering?
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WAV or AIFF, lossless, native sample rate (do not upsample to “look pro”). Leave the master bus clean: no clip lights, no limiter slammed “for loudness” unless that print is the only thing that exists—then say so in the email.
Stems or multitrack jobs: print cooler than your ego wants; peaks around −12 dBFS (or lower) on each stem is normal. Use the naming scheme we send. Add a rough mix bounce, 2–3 references, and three sentences on what still bothers you in the rough.
Stem / multitrack checklist: Onboarding.
- Stems or stereo?
- Stereo unless we both agree stems buy a real fix—priced as its own line item so nobody “sort of remixes” through the mastering slot by accident.
- How loud will the master be?
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As loud as the material can take without turning cymbals into bacon and kicks into a flat smear. You pick a reference; we match intent, not a fantasy LUFS number written on a forum in 2014.
Platforms normalize playback. Chasing “loudest on SoundCloud” is a moving target and usually costs punch—say what you want the listener to feel, not what meter you think wins an argument.
- True peak, codecs, and “digital clipping”
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Intersample peaks can poke over 0 dBFS even when the sample meter looks fine. If your distro or aggregator cares about headroom for encoding, we leave air there on purpose. If you do not care, say that too—then nobody is surprised at the result.
- What will mastering not fix?
- Arrangement problems, weak performances, masking that needs fader moves, clipped prints with missing waveform, or a mix that never decided what the kick is doing. Those get a straight note back, not a billable fantasy pass.
- References—how to send them
- Two or three full songs, same rough level as each other, not a forty-track playlist. Say what you want from each: “snare crack from A, low-mid density from B.” If every ref is a different subgenre, we will ask which fight you actually want to win.
- How fast is turnaround?
- Queue-dependent. Email with a real deadline and the track count; you get a yes, a no, or a rush rate—not silence. Rush does not mean “skip QC.”
- Revisions?
- One focused pass if we missed the agreed target. “Different” without a reference is not a brief. Looping vague louder/brighter requests without a compass burns time and goodwill.
- Vinyl cut vs streaming file—same master?
- Sometimes one print works; often the vinyl side wants a different low-end and sibilance ride than the streaming master. Say where the record is going first so we do not ship the wrong compromise.