Features a collection of articles from the Disc Makers blog that relate to music mastering, including advice from post-production engineers from the SoundLab at Disc Makers.
Independent artists rely on the tangible media that is the music CD. As a physical representation of their hard work, a means of increasing revenue, and to establish their brand, independent musicians use CDs in ways major label artists don’t. Read More.
Making decisions that improve the quality of your final product – based on what you’re hearing – is the basic skill underlying all successful music production. Here are some strategies for improving your listening skills. Read More.
In our July Disc Makers Twitter chat (#DMchat), Brian Lipski, mastering engineer and manager of The SoundLAB, gave us an introduction to audio mastering for musicians of all genres. Read More.
Do you have questions about what mastering engineers do and how they achieve their results? This introduction to the mastering gear in The SoundLAB gives you a glimpse into our mastering suites and the gear we use to make your music sound great. Read More.
Using stereo widening plug-ins in audio mastering to try to expand your mix’s stereo width won’t sound natural and could cause major issues with your finished track. Read more.
Supplying audio files in compressed formats or applying heavy limiting or compression during mix down can compromise your master and negatively impact your audio mastering results. Read more.
If you focus too much of your work on a single instrument in a complex arrangement, you likely will miss the fact that even if you have improved the sound of that one instrument, everything else may have been impacted negatively. Get the mix you want, mix down to a stereo file, and then perform mastering as a separate last step. Read more.
If the music program is sibilant overall, the audio can be cut at a lower amplitude, which can help with the distortion caused by the high frequency information. The result, though, is a vinyl record that’s at a lower level, and the surface noise will be more prominent – not to mention, it’s not going to be comparable to other vinyl albums. Read more.
Vinyl record sales are 26% from last year, and this vinyl record revival can be a sales driver for independent artists. According to Dan Faughnder of Sledding With Tigers, “Once we announced that our first vinyl record was in the pipeline, we received enough pre-orders to break even on the pressing cost before we got them from the plant.” Read more.
The process of transforming your musical ideas into a finished product you can share and sell begins with your audio recording sessions and continues through to the delivery of your packaged CDs or vinyl records. The choices you make at each step affect the quality of your final product, so familiarizing yourself with this process at the earliest stages will help you produce the best possible results. Read more.
The holiday season, especially the golden month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, is the most lucrative time of the year for retail sales. As an independent musician, it can be a time for you to move a ton of product – professionally manufactured CDs, merch, and more. There are many ways to take advantage of this time of the year, and our new guide answers questions about how to prepare your order and make your new release something special for the holidays.
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The primary goal of audio mastering is fairly simple: prepare a recording for distribution and ensure it sounds better going out than it did coming in. Read more.
Brian Lipski, who heads the dedicated group of audio engineers in the SoundLab Mastering Suite at Disc Makers, explains some of the basics about post-production mastering and the gear used in the process – either in your home studio or in a professional environment like the SoundLab. View video…