Mastering Info
We get calls here everyday at Supaslump Masters from Artists and Labels who heard that they should have their album mastered professionally but are not familiar with the process or techniques. “My tracks sound good already, is it really necessary to spend the extra money on Mastering?" they ask. Our answer is this:

Your record may sound good, but do you want it to sound great?
Do you want it to be as loud as a major label release?
Do you want extra attention paid to how the tracks flow from one to another?
Put it up next to the new so and sowithout changing the volume, do you hear a major difference?
Do you want to be sure the manufacturing plant will not reject your master disc and even more importantly, be assured that if it comes back from pressing with errors you will not be out of money because it was your fault.

Having your record Mastered by a professional with highly trained ears makes the difference between a mediocre to good release and a top notch production.

This is a basic primer on Mastering, what to look out for when choosing a facility, and why you should master at Supaslump Masters.


1. What is Mastering?
Mastering is the final step in the production of an album after mixing has been completed. A Mastering Engineer is responsible for overall level, eq, compression/limiting, song spacing, cleaning up noise where possible, and creating an error free master disc to be copied exactly in the manufacturing process.


2. What happens during a Mastering session?
Without going into too much technical detail, a normal Mastering session with us flows something like this:

First, all of the tracks to appear on the album are loaded into a workstation to be examined for digital errors, distortion or other problems that may be fixed easily by the Artist or the Mastering Engineer. This is the first major advantage to picking a facility that REALLY cares about how your record comes out, not just about taking your money. When we start work on a project, if we hear anything that could make for a better end product we immediately notify the Artist or Producer and ask if you would like to fix this and send it back to us.

The second step in the Mastering process involves placing the tracks in the correct order with rough spacing and just spending time listening to the music, nothing more. We may listen to the raw tracks for hours while taking notes on eq/level problems, clicks/pops, creative spacing ideas etc. We never load in a record and just start tweaking things without giving consideration to the fact that this is YOUR record, not ours. Therefore we always make sure to acknowledge YOUR vision first.

The next step is to correct eq and compression differences between different tracks. Part of your album may have been recorded at so-and-so studio in Oakland. The next part may have been recorded in NYC 6 months later and so on. It may have even been mixed at different times by different people at different studios. The goal is to make it sound like it was all done at one time with a solid vision for the end product, not just a compilation of tracks.

Now that we have everything in the same ball park, its time for the magic to happen. This is where the experience and ears of your Mastering Engineer really make a difference. A Mastering Engineer who does nothing but Master records 24/7 has an expert perception of how your record sounds in comparison to the other hundreds of finished CDs that he has worked on. Special attention is paid to making sure the tracks are crisp, loud, and have a tight bottom end.

Next, all the tracks are cleaned at the beginnings and endings and arranged together as a finished record. A lot of engineers will take the tracks and put either 1 or 2 seconds in between songs to space them apart. We pay much more attention to the spacing of the tracks. A mere 10 milliseconds of difference can sometimes affect how it feels when playing from track to track. We can have some songs slamming into each other for that street mix feel, and others with space in between that fall on beat, and others with odd timed space used to break up the pace of the whole album for dramatic purposes. Even though a Mastering Engineer is not always hired for creative purposes, this is where you will be glad you hired one who has good musical sense.

The final step is burning an error free Master disc to be duplicated exactly. The way this disc sounds is the way your 10,000 copies are going to sound. Using a top notch Mastering Engineer is like quality control for your investment and there are many technical specs pertaining to how data is formatted on a Master CD before duplication. We had one client who mastered with Supaslump for his first two releases which came out great. On the third record he decided to try to cut corners and save some money by not mastering with us, and burning the Master disc himself. He called a month later to tell us that the duplication plant produced 5000 copies of his record, shrink wrapped with artwork and the cd skips horribly between half of the tracks. He just got nailed for nearly 5 thousand dollars because the problem was his Master disc and not the Plants fault. So again, quality control.

Once the final master is burned, it is examined closely, and its off to manufacturing.


3. What to look for when choosing a Mastering Engineer and Facility
In this day in age with the technology we have, you have to be really careful when choosing a Mastering facility. Nearly everyone has Protools nowadays and there is a lot of jack of all trades kind of people selling mastering services at ridiculously low rates when they have no business doing the job. If you run across anybody selling Mastering services cheaper than us, be very, very wary of the quality of their work. Records are not mastered in a studio that doubles for recording and mixing. A mastering room is designed significantly different from a recording studio and is used for nothing else but mastering. Here are some criteria that generally separate your average Studio from a Mastering Room:

A mastering room will almost always have floor standing speakers about 10 to 15 feet in front of the console. Although we have them on hand, we generally dont use nearfield speakers. Why? Because cds get listened to in living rooms, cars and clubs. An important aspect of mastering is making sure the material sounds good on your home stereo, car, headphones, ect. After all, this is where people will be hearing it. Nearfield monitors are great for referencing some things but a pair of super high end audiophile, noise free, floor standing speakers can not be overlooked.

A great Mastering Engineer usually has at least 10 years experience as a recording and mixing engineer and has made the decision to specialize and devote all of his attention to Mastering. Thats not saying that a good recording/mixing engineer doesnt have the ability to master your record; its just saying that you wouldnt go to a heart doctor for brain surgery would you?

There should always be detailed written documentation that accompanies your Master disc. When you receive your final Master it should include 2 separate pieces of paper that describe what is on the disc. One is song lengths, starts and ends for your liner notes and the other is technical data for the manufacturing plant. Most people doing low cost mastering will overlook this and it certainly is an indication of the quality of the Mastering job. A lot duplication plants wont even accept a job with out proper documentation.

One final thing to think about: Its not always what the Mastering Engineer does to your music; its what he doesnt do. Does he work on Rap and Hip-hop all day everyday, or does he primarily get Rock records? Can you trust him to have the sensibility to let your low end move the speakers even though he might think it is a bit loud for his taste? All engineers are different and they all have a preference for how they like things to sound. What some perceive as a problem may be exactly what the style of music calls for.


4. Why you should master at Supa Slump Masters?
We have top notch ears and top notch service. Out of the hundreds of albums in stores now that we have completed, never once has anyone comeback disappointed with the sound of their record. We constantly get calls saying thank you for hooking my record up!

We are not a money hungry machine. Our pricing structure we designed so an independent artist can get a quality Mastering job for his hard earned money. Our current rates are $600/full album whether it takes 1 day to finish or 3 days to get perfect. We dont charge by the hour because we take pride in making it flawless regardless of the clock. There are some rare things that cant be fixed, but when you see our name in the credits, you know it is the best it can be.

Our policy regarding revisions is second to none. Most Artists and Producers cant be here in the studio for the session. That is no problem. We guarantee every decision we make. If you get your Master back in the mail and you think there should be an extra second of space between tracks 3 and 4, we fix it. We dont say that will cost you another hour of time. Basically, you are gonna love it or it gets redone for free.

You only get one shot at making first impressions with your record. It would be stupid to put endless time, energy, love and money into your product and then skimp on this crucial part of record production.

If you have questions, call us up!!!! We will give you any advice you need on preparing your tracks for mastering or any other part of the production process. We are here to make better sounding records so ask us anything!


Greg Forsberg
Supaslump Masters
supaslumpmasters.com
info@supaslumpmasters.com
(415) 948-4734




Jan 10, 2006

Babysitting the Manufacturing Plant (You don't have to worry about this now that we do our own replication!!)


These days, with smaller manufacturing plants popping up all over the country, and loads of middlemen brokers trying to get your replication business you have to pay EXTRA close attention and confirm every detail concerning the CD in writing BEFORE they cut your glass master. Here are some major errors I have seen different plants make over the last year. Most could have been saved by a little extra micromanagement by the label or artist. "Why should I have to baby sit the plant?" you might say. The answer is if you don't, then who will? A lot of times they could care less about your lifes work and instead, try to melt as much plastic into little discs with some kind of audio on them as possible. Here's a short list of ridiculous errors I have seen them make:

CD-Text:

CD-Text is the technology to encode artist names and song titles as well as other bar code and ISRC info on the disc. Most cd players can't read this but many newer models of home and car stereo can. I always encode these things in the master and write bold explicit instructions that only an idiot could miss on the masters label. Half of the time it never makes it to the album. Why? Because they overlooked it even though it was written bold and in their face. You must emphasize to them more than once to not overlook this and get it somewhere signed that they acknowledge it should be there before they cut glass.

Always cut the glass master at 1x!!:

Here is another one. This one is less of a mistake and more of a blatant disregard of your wishes. All top mastering engineers would agree that all glass should be cut at 1x speed. We won't go into technical reasons why because there are too many and they are too technical, but common sense can deduce it is at least slightly more accurate. I burn my masters at 1x ONLY! No matter what. Why will the plant deceive me and cut your glass at 4x or maybe greater? It's all about the Benjamins folks. When you order a package deal for CD replication, the plant usually sends your master out of house to a glass mastering facility that they would never divulge to you the contact info or location of. Even if you had someone at the plant paying extra attention to detail, he would not be around for the most important part; the glass mastering. This glass facility gets paid with a chunk of your cd package to the tune of $300 to cut the glass. They are trying to push as many cd's through per hour to clear the most profit. Sometimes they will ask for an extra fee to cut at 1x but most of the time they will say they did but didn't. That's bullshit. And, since there is no way to verify what speed they actually cut at, all you can do is get it in writing and signed from your plant. This way they might feel a little more pressure to get the details right or it's coming out of their pocket.

Enhanced Cd


Another oversight. I encode an enhanced cd (CD-Extra) and mark it explicitly on the label but the plant leaves the video portion off. This one really sucks because sometimes the artist or label spent money to shoot a video to be included on the cd and the plant just left it off. When you get your thousands of copies back it is without the "enhanced" part and the plant will always try to save face and blame it on someone else. It washes down the river to me since I made the master, but I am prepared and on your side. I keep an exact duplicate of every master that gets done at Supaslump and I have the best glass plant in the country available to error check and write a signed QC report on my master disc. No plant can deny this. You will get your money back.

Sample Clearance (copyright)

The powers that be regulate that the manufacturing plants be held responsible for copyright infringements like using any recognizable sample of another piece of music or movie audio or whatever. They will actually shut the plant down when it is discovered. I'm all for the protection of intellectual property, but not for how I've seen the plants handle it. Some plants have a room full of people that all they do all day is listen to incoming projects and accept or reject them based upon copyright infringement. This is fine, if a plant doesn't want to handle your record because you sampled an old James Brown beat, you can go somewhere else who might not catch it. (You will of course pay royalties if you make money off it right?!) The problem lies after you pay them and they notice the sample halfway through the replication process. Here is an example:

You order 1000 cd's for $1300 with full color artwork, the whole enchilada.
The plant starts printing jackets, tray cards ect..the glass has been cut and only then someone discovers the sample. The plant will then hold you hostage. You will be given the option to fix the music or pay for the printing, glass mastering ect. and be forced to gather up all these parts and find another place to reassemble it with the small remainder of your original $1300. Nightmare.

Anyways, I'll add more of these screw ups as I encounter them, in the meantime stay involved in the manufacturing process completely, get all your stipulations in writing/signed and remember that we double check and document EVERYTHING and will back you up hopefully acting as a safety net when things don't go as planned.