Having your super hit song mastered with some sexy and expensive analog gear is an important part of the music making process. Of course you can do the mastering yourself in your home “studio”. Trust me on this: Having your song professionally mastered is a good thing and Online-Mastering.com does it even better.
Listening to music is fun. Listening to the same song again and again is fun too but only if it keeps your ears interested. Professional mastering is the key to that. Of course you need proper mixing, etc but in the end you need someone qualified and in possession of good ears to listen to your song and do voodoo stuff with it.
Online-Mastering.com is offering professional mastering service for those in need. It’s very simple to use their service: register an account, upload your song and wait. After a while you’ll receive an email once your track can be downloaded for a preview. If you like what you hear, pay online and receive the fully mastered track immediately. It took about a day to receive the master for the song I uploaded. Mastering a single song costs $120 and you get a discount if you want more songs to be mastered. In my case the unmastered song I uploaded got twice as loud than it was before. The vocals are clearer and better and the whole song is more in place somehow: it’s good to listen to it over and over again.
You can compare the unmastered version with the mastered one below. Oh and by the way we are launching a remix contest tomorrow with great prizes to win. For instance the best mixes will be professionally mastered by Online-Mastering.com
We might use this for our upcoming “Carticipate” song which we commissioned to promote carpooling.
I’ll check this audio mastering service with one of my new electro productions. Hope it can bring my sound to a new level as well ;)
It just sounds louder and compressed.
Louder isn’t always better…I think this it is a good option if you don’t know where to go in the US and have synth music. But as an engineer, not a mastering engineer, I’m not sure tracks recorded in a live environment would come out as well. Essentially, it’s the ultimate garbage-in, garbage out scenario. Hopefully, they’d give project studio artist feedback if something wasn’t working out in mastering. Also, there’s no mention of how many re-do’s you get and if they’re extra. If it’s a matter of just slamming the track through a multi-band compressor (a Finalizer) and some EQ…maybe sending in the track that needs the most “help” as a test and see how it turns out as a test?
Dear Crunchgear readers,
1) Yes, we do give very detailed feedback on a track.
2) It’s definitely no garbage-in, garbage out as our company works on the same quality level for EVERY customer – We work for platinum crowned artists as well as for labels, post-production studios and recording studios or even bedroom producers. And we do not make a difference in service quality.
3) The customer has our satifaction guarantee, so re-do’s are included. But usually (over 90%) our customers take already the first result ;)
4) Louder isn’t always better. But even if you compare the two samples at the same level, you will notice all other things that happened (tightened low end, harmonic saturation in the mids / lows, more crisp highs, improved vocal clarity and widened stereo field)
5) We do not slam anything through any standard gear / chain, instead EVERY single master gets an individual and carefully selected processing… Optimized to get the most out of a track…
If anybody got questions, feel free to post them or to contact me directly.
All the Best
Georg Weiss
Office Manager
what sort of gear do you use generally?
Dear Kain,
depending on the track we use a mixture of analog audio mastering gear and digital mastering tools:
On the analog side, we often use Manley Vari-Mu and Manley MassivePassive EQ (both in the mastering edition and with extra selected tubes), SSL and Massenburg, VertigoSound and the Drawmer S3 multiband dynamics.
On the digital side, we use: Weiss DS-1, TC M6000 and Cranesong HEDD192 coupled with state-of-the-art software tools (e.g. Algorithmix RED, BLUE, ORANGE EQ, K-Stereo, SplitCompressor)
Hope that helps ;)
George –
Really appreciate the reply and feedback. Good to know you’re out here answering and addressing aquestions and comments for clarity. ;^)
Jon
Thanks, Jon… Sure thing ;) As we are no quick-and-dirty home studio mastering studio with a website, we have the goal to convince both, with sound and service.
Audio mastering is such an important process, that good communication is absolutely essential, if you want to do it online (without the client being in the studio when the mastering is done).
We want to get as info from the customer about his sonic ideas / sound suggestions / favourite references as possible. You can also upload one or more reference tracks, that you like in terms of frequency response / loudness level / amount of compression…
The more info you provide, the better the mastering engineers can work ;)
Nice poast.
Online-mastering.com was one the first companies to offer music mastering via internet.
He has a very rich portfolio, and is recommended for all.
Nice business model. Surprised nobody thought of it before.
Soon, I shall begin my career as a rockstar!
Good Day,
I was wondering, do you return the material/cd/usb… after you are done with them, and if not what do you do with them? My question is more geared towards proprietary rights as oposed to quality.
Sincerely,
Martin Ferreira