Recommended mastering Service

[BigRedX]

Looking for recommendations for someone to master our next single for CD and download.

 

Genre is post-punk/goth/synth pop.

 

Looking for someone sympathetic to the style of music.

[robiredale]

Personally I don't look for "genre specific" mastering. More of a consideration when selecting a mix engineer for me. The key I think is getting someone who specialises in mastering, rather than someone who does mostly mixing with a bit of mastering on the side.

 

My most recent project was mastered by Pete maher. It's not out for two weeks or I'd share it.

 

https://www.petemaher.com/

 

Very professional service at reasonable prices. His client list speaks for itself. Super experienced guy, with great equipment, and most importantly, the knowledge of how to use it.

[BigRedX]

Thanks!

[MoonBassAlpha]

Tim Turan is the go-to guy for many.

https://www.turanaudio.co.uk/clients

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, MoonBassAlpha said:

Tim Turan is the go-to guy for many.

https://www.turanaudio.co.uk/clients

 

Have you used him yourself? If so could you post a link to a track of yours that he has mastered?

[BigRedX]

Thank you for all the suggestions.

 

However, based on multiple recommendations on other fora, we're going to try Tim Debney at Fluid. He appears to have done lots of tracks we like.

[MoonBassAlpha]

On 03/03/2025 at 14:05, BigRedX said:

 

Have you used him yourself? If so could you post a link to a track of yours that he has mastered?

Sorry, missed this, on holiday. 

Probably too late but:

https://bigstirrecords.bandcamp.com/track/where-are-the-living

 

This is a home recording done on a Zoom r24 so the raw recording is what it is, but the label seemed happy with it. 

[BigRedX]

Thanks. Not too late we're still deciding.

[Leonard Smalls]

Recommend Russ at https://www.mottosound.com/

He definitely knows his stuff!

[BigRedX]

After all the recommendations I thought that you might be interested in the final outcome. Based on feedback here and from another forum we chose two different people to do masters for us one of whom supplied us with two versions with differing amounts of compression.

 

So along with our original master, we had 4 different versions to consider. Our synth player per got one of his kids to randomly rename the tracks so that only they knew which was which and then sent them out as versions A to D.

 

Listening to each in turn I thought they were all, good which little to choose between the four. Version C had a bit more "air" and separation of the instruments but the other three sounded very similar. I then stuck all four masters in Logic and used the solo function to switch between them on the fly. At this point it was noticeable that Version A sounded a bit "louder" than the others, although none sounded excessively compressed. 

 

It's always tempting to just pick the loudest and most impressive sounding one, but in this case our mix has to also stand up next to a dance-floor friendly remix that we have had done, and the "louder" version did this better than the others. So that will be the one that goes on the single. It was also the one that we all picked as our first or second choice.

 

And the winner is...

 

The version done by our synth player which I believe was created using Ozone. 

 

The single will be out on April 25th to coincide with our gig at WGW. 

[MoonBassAlpha]

Interesting. Perhaps he is more tuned in to the outcome you were all hoping for/expecting?

[BigRedX]

TBH there was so little to choose between the 4 versions that for a stand-alone single release any of them would have done the job admirably and picking one in that case would have been almost entirely subjective. It was only because we wanted our original mix of the song to stand up along side the dance remix that we eventually chose the one that had a slightly higher average loudness. 

 

We'd all heard the master that our synth player had done before this competition but neither myself or our singer correctly identified it when listening to all 4 versions. I was expecting our master to sound slightly weedy compared with the ones that we had paid for but this was not the case at all. 

 

It was one of those situations when you can't help but wonder if a professional could be doing a better job, and in this case the answer turned out to be that what we were doing was equally as good.

 

The single will be available to download and stream on Friday 25th April and on CD at our gigs.

Edited March 22 by BigRedX