​​Mixing Guidelines Before Mastering

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To ensure the best mastering results, please prepare your mixes following these guidelines:

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Headroom

• Leave at least 6 dB of headroom below 0 dBFS on the mix bus.

• Avoid clipping anywhere in individual tracks or the master output.

Peak Levels

• Individual tracks: peaks should generally stay below –6 dBFS.

• Mix bus: peaks should not exceed –6 dBFS, leaving room for mastering adjustments.

Dynamics & Balance

• Maintain natural dynamics; avoid heavy mix-bus compression unless intentional.

• Balance all elements in volume, panning, and frequency spectrum.

Low-End Management

• Keep low frequencies clean and mono below ~150 Hz.

• Use high-pass filtering on non-bass elements to reduce masking.

Stereo & Phase

• Check phase coherence, particularly in low-end elements.

• Avoid stereo imaging that cancels when summed to mono.

Effects & Processing

• Reverb, delay, and modulation effects should be set tastefully.

• Avoid excessive limiting or EQ on the master bus—these are best handled during mastering.

File Delivery

• Bounce/export 24-bit or 32-bit float WAV / AIFF at the original session sample rate.

• Include all stems if possible (optional but helpful for revisions).

• Avoid dither or normalisation; leave final loudness and format adjustments to the mastering engineer.

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Services & Pricing

• Singles / EPs: £35 per track

• Album: £350 flat rate

• Special rates may be available for not-for-profit labels—please contact us to discuss.​

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What’s Included

• Mastering for all requested formats (digital, vinyl, cassette, etc.)

• DDP files for physical releases

• ISRC encoding

• Revisions as needed

 

​Deliverables

• 24-bit WAV files at 44.1 kHz or higher (matching supplied files)

• Fully tagged MP3 and FLAC versions with metadata and artwork

• Format-specific masters for physical releases (please notify us in advance)​​

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