Mastering is the final step taken to bring your musical expression to its fullest potential. This process maximizes the quality of your mixes so that they sound the best they possibly can on the widest range of playback systems. After mastering, your songs will have the presence and power to stand next to other commercially produced material.

At The Final Sound, we listen critically to each track to assess its specific needs. There is no predefined approach to the mastering process — every song has a unique personality. The mastering engineer brings fresh and objective ears to your project and works to bring forth and intensify the essence of the music while maintaining your original vision. The mastered tracks will have a greater sense of depth, presence, and power and will provide a more engaging and pleasurable listening experience.

K&H O300

Monitoring

Conversion/Routing

Analog Processing

You can submit your mixes using our online upload utility, or by using a secure FTP account hosted on our server. When your masters are ready, we will provide a direct download link or place them on your FTP account.

For best results, submit your tracks in WAV/AIFF or other full-resolution audio format — not mp3, wma, m4a, etc. Send only the final stereo mixdown for each song and not the individual instrument tracks. Please ensure that there is no digital clipping on the mixes. A resolution of 24-bit is recommended, even if you recorded your project at 16-bit resolution. Use the native sample rate used for recording/mixing your project (typically 44.1kHz) in order to avoid unnecessary conversions.

Yes, you are welcome to send a reference song(s) from another artist to provide an idea of the kind of tonal balance or loudness you would like for your own music.

Any processing applied across the entire mix (such as effects on the master bus) limits the options available during mastering. Any processing intended to increase overall loudness should be left for the mastering stage. In other words, do not normalize, compress, or limit your mix before sending. Use any processing on the individual tracks of the mix to achieve the desired sound.

One exception to the above guidelines is if the mix compression is part of the sound you are trying to achieve (e.g. compressor pumping or a particular tonal color you like).

Yes. There are free programs which can perform lossless compression of your audio files:

• WinRAR - (download)
• Monkey's Audio - (download)

These programs can reduce filesize to around 50-70% of the original size. Do not use MP3, OGG or other such compression schemes as they will result in a significant loss of audio quality.

You may send your material through the mail — we can also return the mastered files to you via mail. Please contact us for mailing instructions.

Fundamental mix imbalances are best handled by remixing the track. If you have a troublesome mix, we can advise you on how it might be improved. If a remix is not possible (and the track is not overly distorted), we should still be able to achieve a significant improvement.

Yes. We offer audio restoration services in addition to mastering. Please contact us with details of your request to learn more about these services.