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If you want to give your music the final polish and professional edge to stand-out in the marketplace, then you need quality mastering.

Mastering is last stage before your music is ready for the world to hear. It does far more than simply increase the loudness as many are aware of. It adds punch, clarity, and fine-tunes your music into the perfect sound.

Many musicians are aware of the importance of mastering. It can sometimes make or break the success of your music. When done right right, it ensures it makes the right impression.

However, trouble comes when deciding where and how to get it done.

Traditionally, you had to use an offline studio. This meant you were at the mercy of the quality in your local area.

Sometimes you might get lucky, but most of the time you had to shell-out major bucks to get top quality and personal service.

Today, the software to allow you to do it yourself has improved. You can now make small improvements on your home computer.

The problem with this is that you can often make the music sound much worse on your own. You lack the heavy duty equipment a professional has. And, most importantly, you don’t get the “fresh independent and professional ears” to identify problems and help you achieve your final vision.

You’re on your own. The best is not brought-out in your music.

However, in the past 4 years a new option has grown in popularity: Getting your music mastered with online-only mastering houses.

You can now access world-class talent no matter where you live. And since online studios save money on the costs of a brick and mortar storefront, your investment is much less than if you did it offline.

There are generally 3 steps to working with an online mastering house:

1. Create an account and transfer your music over to the engineer.

2. The mastering engineer can then listen to it and give you his or her first impressions and tell if there are any major problems. Sometimes music must be sent back to the mixing engineer or, in rare cases, re-recorded.

3. Through discussing your final vision, the engineer makes it happen and instantly sends your music back online for you to review. Any revisions can be easily made.

As you can see, the advantage is there is a lot less waiting on your part. You tell the engineer what you want, go about your daily business, and he or she makes your vision come to life. Everything happens instantly online without you having to be in the studio.

Simply put, going online is an ideal choice for independent muscians or small labels. It allows you easy access to world-class talent (once only the “big guys” had access too) for less money and fewer hassles.

In addition, since online houses have clients from throughout the world, they’re also experienced with a wide-range of sounds. Often a limitation with local studios is they’ve worked with only one or two types of music and lack expertise with anything else.

To find a good online mastering studio, it’s important you look for experience. If an engineer is just getting started, be wary. He or she may not have the right equipment (or know how to use it) and does not know the techniques which are gained over time to optimize your tracks.

When it comes to picking a mastering engineer, experience is the key to getting a great result.

The concept of premastering your music is a method that can save you a gobs of money when compared to having it all done at the replication house later on. It also does usually yield a better quality when doing it at a dedicated mastering house who does just that solely. Then it is always easy to find a good replication facility afterwards whom you can send your already premastered CD and they just have to do the replication without modifying the sound anymore.

Most mastering facilities have to charge an hourly rate for the time it takes to do compression, stereo-image-adjustments, equalize, or whatever else necessary to prepare the music for CD and Vinyl production and hence replication. In getting your recording as close as you possibly can to the sound you want in the end as you can before entering the premastering, you can also reduce those charges. However, nowadays there are mastering studios that offer their work completely online (so called “online mastering”, or “iMastering”/”eMastering”), worldwide, at a flat fee. Transfer of your music is done online as WAV or AIFF files, they master (premaster) them and send a finished physical CD (or CD Image for Nero / Toast) back to you which you then take to the replication facility.

Important points to ponder when doing the mixing are making sure the instruments are mixed properly and the need for each is appropriate. By need it is mostly the reference to the use of re-verb, equalizing and effects similar that allow the instrument or voice sound like it is immersed into the mix, or the absence of them that makes the instrument or voice sound like it is right in your immediate area.

Using a mix with the guitar processed with re-verb and chorus, and having the lead vocals dry, for example, could sound unrealistic due to the fact that the guitar will appear to sound like it is further from you than the vocalist, which will appear to be screaming in your face. But if that is the effect or sound you want to portray, go ahead. But, as a general rule of thumb it can be annoying, and may result in ear and listener burn-out, which obviously you do not want!

If you happen to be faced with a scenario where your available tracks necessitated you to make the rhythm section mono, make sure that you apply the re-verb to them in stereo. This method will enable you to create an illusion of a stereo-image though the drums are in mono, and add to the sound quality.

You also need to use good speakers that are equidistant from your listening area so you get a realistic stereo image, and, if you can, listen to your mix through several different speakers. In the event you have a boom-box available to test the mix through that, or possibly a car stereo, or even on one your friend’s high end stereo systems. This will allow you an opportunity to get the highest level of “compatibility”, reveal most of the flaws the mix might have and assure the mix is as good as it can get before supplying it for premastering.

In so far as tricks go for using effects on the mix, it is completely a matter of your personal preference. If you like the overall sound that is the goal. So, long as it sounds good on as many systems as possible, it is good. Though try to avoid compressors and limiters on the masterbus when supplying your mix for premastering (though it is OK if you have them running when doing the mix, just take them off when doing the bounce for the mastering house). In general, too much processing starts to sound weak, and using too much re-verb is a common error as well. Try to keep things clean and make sure the sources (e.g. the equipment and room you use to record the guitar/vocals, etc.) sound as good as possible already so that they require just very few processing during the mixing. This is the real “trick” to get a great mix and afterwards a great master and CD after you have sent it to the mastering house and replication facility.

I wanted to let you know about something really exciting I´ve just recently discovered which affects all of us (labels, studios, artists, the end-listener - the whole music industry).

Finally some of the “big players” in the music industry (namely: Grammy-winning engineer/producer Charles Dye, alternative indie artist John Ralston, and recording studio owner/podcaster Allen Wagner) had the courage to do something against the still ongoing and getting worse and worse “LOUDNESS WAR” (you notice how boring it would be if I would yell at you all the time and only write in UPPER CASE, equally boring is it to listen to dynamically death music). Their just founded non-profit music industry organization Turn Me Up! is about to bring back dynamics to music, as the topic already suggests. Now the great thing is that this is not just-a-few-man organization trying to change the (dynamics) world, but that all of us, regardless if artist, label, studio, can participate and certify us with them. It´s clear that XARC Mastering, as a supporter of dynamics and simply spoken: high quality music enjoyment, is one of the first to having joined turnmeup.org and now awaiting our certification to soon be able to extend our service and offer turnmeup.org certification for your XARC-Mastered record.

If you would also like to make a difference it´s just a few clicks away to join turnmeup.org at no costs and get your next record certified by them as well so your end-listener knows you care about quality, not just loudness. While the page to join is certainly over here I first suggest that you explore the sites and read some of the very interesting articles on the homepage and especially watch the video on the homepage called “Loudness War - The Movie” - it´s an eye opener for those who wasn’t aware of the problems this creates yet.

On the other hand I have to thank all my clients that *are* and always *have* been aware of this already throughout the years and allowed me to not dynamically destroy there music which is there to stay for years with compressing it to the maximum, but instead compressing it as much as it *needs* to *sound good*! It´s your quality releases which will still be listened to in decades from now not like all the more-than-often “sonic trash” (to say it with honest words) that is out there nowadays from the major labels (and unfortunately to often also the smaller ones because they feel they have to “compete”). This quote from turnmeup.org expresses it the best: “It’s not our intent to discourage aggressively limited records, they are a valid creative choice for artists. But today, most artists feel they have no option other than mastering their records to be as loud as everybody else’s. And when everybody is doing this because everybody else is, who’s actually doing it because they want to?”

So I hope that this site is a relief to you as much was it was for me when first discovering it a few days back. All joined together we can make a difference and bring back quality music once again, which is the main goal of mastering and for the end-listener (and maybe I actually will start buying CDs then as well again once they contain *quality* again instead of LOUDNESS ON ALL COSTS).

Back in 2004, One to One magazine published an article about the mastering industry, and a portion of this included my comments on MP3 encoding. Since I am sometimes asked about how to get the best quality MP3s possible, and because such a thing is generally quite useful, following are my comments (partially based on the aforementioned interview).

One piece of software that I continue to commonly use when preparing tracks for Internet Distribution (at least in MP3 format) for my mastering clients is known as the Lame MP3 encoder. I can tell you that it certainly is anything but ‘lame,’ offering an absolutely massive variety of modifiable parameters. In a sense, it’s a ‘dream’ piece of software for anyone who wants to tweak MP3s to perfection. There’s also the ability to use some experimental psychoacoustic tunings too, which is of course an added benefit.

VBR (variable-bit-rate) encoding works particularly well too with The Lame — it’s not at all inferior to CBR (constant-bit-rate), and adds just that much more “edge” to complex portions of the music being encoded. Using my (admittedly quite refined) methods, I can achieve results at 192kb (average VBR) that has frequency response fluctations of less than 0.2 dB in the entire 20-18,000 kHz range (and less than 1 dB in the range above this). Also, stereo imaging is perfect compared with the uncompressed master.

The caveat here though is that there’s a very noticable drop in quality at bitrates lower than this. Of course, now that broadband is becoming more widespread every day, it’s not really much of an issue to distribute MP3s at a higher bitrate than one would back in the analog modem days, as download time differences between 192kbps and for example 128kbps aren’t really significant for most people anymore. Another caveat is that if one is not careful in the encoding process, it’s easy to have lost peak limiting and clipping. This is why I often will reduce song volume by a dB to compensate.

So, the lesson is that it really is possible to have really good sounding MP3s, provided that one is careful and thoughtful when doing the job, and does not use too low of a bitrate.

In an interview, I was recently asked if I could offer any mixing tips to ensure a higher-quality final mastered product. After thinking about that a bit more, I decided I ought to have a post, that I will update from time to time. As a starting point, I offer my interview response, which I think provides quite a good, brief overview…

What do you recommend the composer does to the track before sending it – can it be in any condition?

We prefer to have the completed mixdown of each song, with dithering and any other effects (of course with the exception of effects on single tracks within the mix, like on vocals, drums and all other elements) turned off, and without clipping. As for resolution and sampling rate, 24 bits / 44.1 kHz (or higher), compressed with WinRAR (to allow for checking of transfer errors via the CRCs/checksums incorporated into those archives) are preferred. That said, other formats are able to be accommodated, but we strongly recommend against mastering, for example, from a MP3 source because of the “heavily” decreased (at least for the mastering stage not high enough) quality that comes about as a result of the encoding process. Such encoding to “lossy” formats should only be done at the very end of the mastering. That’s a service we also offer (for example for Internet Distribution)—and where the encoding settings are optimized individually for each song.

As for mix quality, we really see a very wide range there, from very good down to very problematic. In the latter case, though, we’ve surprised quite a number of our clients in the “miracles” we’ve been able to “perform.” A good example of a problematic quality mix that we were able to heavily improve is available at:

Well_Red_-_Corkonian_Brigade-Unmastered-Mastered.wav

Generally what advice can you [our] readers about mastering and mixing?

In terms of mastering, unless there is really no other alternative, it’s best to put mastering projects in the hands of the “pros.” It’s kind of a situation where the adage “if you would do your own dentistry…” really applies. Beyond the intricate technical and other factors there though, there is the one that is more often missed—the fact that the mastering engineer has completely “fresh ears,” and is in a definite advantage over those who have mixed the material, in terms of being impartial to the project. Also, whenever you are viewing the engineering credits of any “commerical” CD you will notice that the mastering is always done by a mastering engineer who was not involved with any other step of the project. This is simply because of the above mentioned reasons.

In terms of mixing, there are a few tips I can offer, in addition to those I already mentioned. Often, artists spend many an hour in the mixing studio, trying to get “huge” sound at that stage, when really getting everything out of the tracks is something that’s far better left to the mastering engineer. As odd as it may sound, sometimes a “small” or “dull” mix is really a lot better to work with. Also, keep in mind that it’s usually the mastering engineers job to make volume and compression adjustments. Another big thing is to be restrained with the use of “mastering processors” (i.e. compressors, equalizers, limiters, exciters and the “finalizers” we tend to see these days) across the master buss—if you do that at the mixing stage, it’s next to impossible to “undo” during the mastering.

One of the artists for which I have produced results that I’m particularly proud of is an Estonian group, by the name of Soul Militia.

From their site…

The R&B/Soul/Hip Hop trio Soul Militia formed in Estonia in the late 90’s. Semy, Craig and Lowry were already pursuing careers in music business when a series of fortunate events brought them together. Starting out as a quartet the group released their debut album in 2002 appropriately titled “On The Rise” . The completely self- written record spawned a couple of radio hits and was the first contemporary R&B album released in Estonia.
(more…)

One common (mis!)conception I see when people think of me, XARC, or other on-line mastering firms, be it in forums or elsewhere, is that they think on-line mastering is just for a “quick shot” – perfect for when they don’t have the time to go to a “real mastering studio,” or when they need a demo mastered “quick and cheap.” Thus, for the real mastering, they think they would go somewhere else. But…

On-Line Mastering is Real Mastering*
(* At least in the case of XARC!)

The difference between XARC’s on-line mastering and an equally-skilled “brick and mortar” firm – lets call them “Firm X” – is not to be found in the “usefulness” of the product. XARC and Firm X both use professional-grade equipment, and both employ professional, skilled and talented mastering engineers. Both have actual studios too, and both are in every way real mastering firms. The true difference is that XARC is simply not tied to certain constraints that exist with “Firm X”. We are thus in a position to deliver not equal, but rather higher quality. Here are a few examples of what I mean:

• Having an on-line firm enables us to work within a global marketplace, rather than a more limited, local one. The advantages to this are huge, particularly in the realm of being able to work with such a wide range of musical genres. It’s never the “same old, same old.”
• In terms of efficiency, there is far more flexibility too. For example, we can “pre-listen” to the clients’ mixes to see if they’re optimal for mastering. If any changes are required, those can be done and delivered very quickly, even if it has to be repeated several times. With snail mail, it’s impossible – or at least would take weeks to accomplish. The same applies in reverse – when it’s time to deliver the approval master, it’s just a download for our clients. Iterations at that stage again benefit from nearly instant delivery, rather than days back and forth.
• Not being limited to having to go from mix to final master in a day or two (which is the typical practice when a mastering session is conducted at a “brick and mortar” mastering studio), also gives us the opportunity to refine the final product. We can get every last bit of perfection out of a track, and improve quality with the extra time, because we’re not as “rushed.”

So, on-line mastering really is real mastering. It’s just that the on-line aspect of the process creates the preconditions for what us mastering engineers are able to do; in the case of XARC that means we are able to provide a better product to our clients, that in every way matches (and I like to think at least typically exceeds) the quality of what is produced at Firm X. And, who knows – it may just be that in a few short years, it will be Firm X who will have to say, “but we’re just as real and good and as high-quality as XARC and the on-line firms!”

Hello!

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to tell you a bit more about myself, and my work as Managing Director and Chief Engineer of XARC Mastering. For sake of easier organization, I have categorized my extended ‘bio.’ Happy reading!

Mastering Me, Business Me

Prior to starting XARC Mastering, I worked for a German TV Station editing, mixing & mastering audio for their daily needs. In and of itself, the work there was very interesting, and often very inspiring. Taking on a slightly different project in 2001, I worked for six months with Artificial Illusions Film, on their movie “Malen mit Licht” (English translation: “Painting with light”). I performed all of the audio editing, including mixing & mastering of the soundtrack, as well as creating the sound effects and mixing & mastering the complete movie in Dolby Surround. The movie was nominated for and won at the “SLM-Televisionprice 2002” in the category “Special price production engineering - camera, audio, cut”.

But, my destiny soon appeared to be taking a different direction. Indeed, in a lot of respects, (and akin to many things in life), XARC came about essentially “by accident.” One major part of the inspiration for XARC originated one day in May 2003, when I was browsing the musician/producer forum on renoise.com, taking a look at their section where new songs are posted for review. One sounded particularly appealing to me, so I downloaded it, and decided to improve upon it sound-wise, just for fun, so I mastered it for my own personal collection and listening pleasure. I was quite pleased with the results, and thought, “hey, maybe I should give this to the composer.” One thing led to another, and he was so “blown away” by the quality that he said: “this rocks, I am sending you $50 USD for your job.”

It was that event that really got me thinking. It was immediately obvious to me that there was a good business opportunity there to take my work international. A look around the Internet proved on-line mastering to be a brand new concept. Around then, I also realized just how empowering an on-line mastering service could be for a huge range of artists. So, I decided to test the concept out, to see if it was a good direction in which to expand my mastering work. I created a bit of “buzz” on forums like kvraudio.com, and was really quite surprised with how well that worked. Before I knew it, the clients started pouring in, I was quickly becoming addicted to working on an international level, and, as a professional, I had really never felt better. I thought long and hard about what to do next.

I soon came to the decision to take the plunge. I took the very brave step of quitting mastering for television and film, and started doing XARC full time, launching the business as a new company along with a professional website in December of 2003. At that point, I had already mastered for 33 “online clients” from a few countries under the XARC brand. How things have changed from then to now… Now we’re going to easily surpass a thousand clients next year. I’ve had the truly life-changing experience of working with a global set of artists in over sixty countries. I’m very proud to be able to bring high-quality mastering “to the masses.”

I’ve said many times before that not much could’ve really prepared me for the incredible experience XARC very quickly became. I am truly honoured to be able to do the mastering work I love, while working with such a huge variety of artists, from such a diverse range of genres and nations. They often say music is an international thing, but I don’t think I ever fully appreciated that until starting XARC. The depth of talent and creativity I am able to work with each and every day, I assure you, is far beyond just inspiring, and has very much changed my life. I really couldn’t hope for much more.

I also feel it’s important to contribute back to the industry on another level. In that area, I am also responsible for maintaining our ongoing research program, looking at new techniques in audio processing, and working together with various DSP-Coders and engineers to achieve the best for audio in general. That in itself is certainly an interesting and educational experience, and I am very glad to be involved.

Ordinary Me

Although I keep extremely busy with XARC, I do try to have a bit of a “life” outside of work. Completely (or at least somewhat!) outside the scope of XARC, I consider myself an avid amateur (digital) nature photographer. At a later time, I will probably post some of my pics and talk a bit more about that.

One of my other larger and more time-consuming interests are finances and financial markets. I particularly enjoy tracking my investments, subjecting them to extensive analysis, and otherwise following the ups and downs (all the while trying to take advantage of both) of many international stock markets.

Also very important to me is one of my closest companions – he’s of the furry feline variety. Charly Vauck (a cat!) is a fixture in the XARC studios, and even works for food only (although he’s not particularly skilled at mastering, at least not yet). I’ve included a picture of him below:

In terms of sports, I’m not too big of a fan of much other than Formula 1 and Stock car racing. Of course, Michael Schumacher, the German national legend, is my racing hero! I also love to play Snooker as often as possible.

Perhaps not surprising at all given my work, I also have been quite involved in the music side of things as a hobby (and sometimes a few commercial releases) too. I used to be fairly accomplished on the soprano flute, but I’ve lost my touch in recent years, and I am really quite “rusty.” I’m still quite the piano virtuoso though (and if enough people ask, I’ll have to perform a little virtual concert here). For the past dozen or so years, my main musical genres have been mainly melodic/epic/electronic music (i.e. trance, dance, techno), but also with a healthy mix of world-ethno-jazz fusion with Western beats. I’ll quite likely feature some of the artists I particularly enjoy from those genres in later posts (and maybe even some of my own work now and then), however a couple relatively large “influences” of mine in the fusion category are Deep Forest and Enigma.

Unfortunately, being so busy with XARC, I don’t really have the (large quantities as a result of my perfectionism streak) of time that I need to compose much of my own.

In terms of vacations and getaways – I do try to take a vacation every year whenever possible, sometimes for just a couple of days, sometimes for longer. This year, I attended the Fawkes / Faucks / Fauks / Vauck / etc. family reunion (during May) in Switzerland, along with many other family members from all over the world who are realted to Guy Fawkes, the famous British conspirator. Usually though, I try to ‘escape’ to some place sunny and warm, provided there’s a lot of musical tradition to find oneself in, and also where there are some good parties (i.e Ibiza!)

If anyone has any other questions about either “me,” please feel free to ask