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Basic Manuals
Preparing your mix before sending it to be mastered
Many artists mixing their projects by themselves (and some starting mix engineers) that are not closely
related to some aspects of mixing can be unaware of the basic steps to prepare their songs for mastering. The
following tips explain the most common issues that mastering engineers run into with mixes. Occasionally,
there will be exceptions to these guidelines. However, most commercially released projects keep these tips in
sight to provide the mastering engineer the best possible mix to work with.

Please remove any Compression, Limiting, Equalization, Denoising and Loudness treatment from your
mix Master Bus
Many times, mixing engineers pre-master their tracks; this means that they add software or hardware signal
processing to the master channel on the mix (which the final stereo mix passes through), and then bounce this
processed sound into a file before sending it to be mastered. While listening to a the “pre-mastered” mix helps
to provide a “closer to the final version” of your song or album, it should only be used as a test, as adding
processors to the master bus makes it difficult (if not impossible) for the mastering engineer to make his work
on the audio, as the mastering itself implies the performance of the previously mentioned processing tasks by
a listening-trained mastering engineer, relying on mastering-specialized resources for compression, limiting,
equalization, denoising and loudness maximizing, all of this happening in a purpose-designed acoustic
environment that also counts on an arrange of calibrated professional monitoring systems. Making it to the
point, the “perfect” mix to be sent for mastering consists in material that complies with the so-called “six
dimensions of mixing”, but sounding “flat” by leaving as much headroom (dynamic range below 0 dB) as
possible.

Keep the Maximum Levels of Each Track Between -3db and -7db
By providing the mastering engineer enough headroom to work with, he will be able to give you a better
final master in several regards. It’s essential to make sure every track has enough headroom. This can’t be done
by lowering the master bus, but every single track in your mix.

Eliminate Noise on the Mix
Mastering will make your song louder and bring out imperfections that may not be as noticeable on the flat
mix. If you can just hear it in the mix, you will definitely hear it in the master. Remember to remove any pops,
clicks and background noise. After increasing the mix overall level during mastering, there are high chances for
new noises to appear, but the elimination of these ones is part of the mastering job and must be performed
with adequate specialized tools.

Keep Your Mix Clean and Dynamic
It is important to reduce frequency buildups that are not part of the main focus of your songs. These
buildups can make a mix sound unclear (“muddy"). It’s a good idea to use low-pass filters for instruments or
vocals that have little low frequency content. To keep your sound dynamic, it’s essential to avoid overuse or
misuse of compression; this error can suck out the life from your song and it’s one of the most delicate aspects
that mixing and mastering engineers have to deal with. Avoiding unnecessary compression in the mix gives the
mastering engineer space to sculpt the dynamics to create the best possible master.

Submit the Highest Resolution File You Have
The ideal Bit Depth and Sample Rate to be used in your mixing session (and to send us your audio your audio)
are 24-bit and 96 KHz, respectively. Please be sure to send your audio in the sample rate used in your original
session if your work was mixed “in the box”; if it was mixed at a lower sample rate (44.1 or 48 KHz, for example),
there is nothing to be gained from up-sampling the audio to 96 kHz. Bit depth should always be 24-bit. The
best file formats to send your audio to mastering are .wav (WAVE) or .aif (AIFF), as these are uncompressed,
non-lossy renders of your mix. Compressed, lossy formats as MP3 are not intended for mastering.

Submit Reference Songs and Notes
The mastering engineer knows what commercial levels are and will be able to match your musical material
to these levels. However, within each genre there are often tendencies in equalization and compression, and
obviously the artist will expect a specific “sound” along the master. For this reason it’s very helpful if you provide
us any song references featuring the kind of sound you’d like your music to have. Written notes are also useful
to tell us what you want. Finding your desired sound is the central and most exciting part of the process.

Do Not add Fades, Crossfades, or Spaces to your songs
Creating song fades is part of the mastering process and should be avoided during the mixing stage. There
are at least a couple of reasons for this: a.) The fade-in / fade-out lengths and their curve shapes must be
designed having the gap time between tracks in mind. b.) A fade-in or fade-out coming from the mix will activate
the mastering compressor / limiter in an inadequate way because of the fixed threshold level at which the
processor starts affecting the incoming signal. This would cause the device to work in an erratic fashion,
resulting in an uneven sound during the beginnings and endings of the songs.
If you have special requirements for spacing between tracks (as continuous tracks or a “hidden song”, please
make sure to let us know about it when you send us your material.

Remove any Dithering
As with fades, dithering will be added by the mastering engineer, if needed. If you’ve used dithering or any
plug-ins designed to “enhance” the sound when pre-listening your mix, please be sure to remove them from
your mix master bus before bouncing the music to a file. Dithering is best left to the mastering engineer to
choose the correct settings for each song.
The “Mastered for iTunes” standard do not include any dithering.

Reference Your Mix
It’s important to listen to songs that you want your mix to sound like, especially toward the end of the mix.
Listen carefully to general levels, compression, equalization, use of effects, etc. This can give you a good idea
of what you might want to fix, change, or modify. Also, listen to your mix on different playback systems such as
your home stereo, car stereo and headphones.

Above it all: Make Sure Your Mix Sounds Like You Want
This is possibly the most important tip. Often after mastering a song, the artist declares not being happy with
the way the track was mixed. As you can guess, a new mix will then require a new master. It’s important for
artists to remember that mastering is not a “magic fix” at all, and that there’s not going to be a great final master
if the incoming mix is not good. As mentioned before, mastering will bring out both the best and worst in your
mix; so it’s essential to smooth out everything possible before submitting your stereo mix to us to be mastered.