- Does Guest House Studios do mastering?

 
Yes and no. 

No, Guest House Studios does not do the full-service mastering that a dedicated mastering studio with dedicated mastering engineers do on a day-to-day basis.  We perform a basic capability we call “express mastering” that provides you with a “good-enough” quality mastered demo CD that allows you to copy, package, and distribute for promotional purposes, getting gigs, or selling at your local gigs.

However, we do offer the option of sending the pre-mastered CD from Guest House Studios to an independent mastering studio for those who want to produce an entire CD for the purpose of mass distribution and sales.  Keep in mind that the cost for this service significantly increases the total cost of your project.  If at all possible, it is highly recommended that you have your CD mastered at a dedicated mastering studio if the CD is expected to be more than a demo, promotional, or EP CD.

Yes, Guest House Studios provides a basic “express mastering” capability as mentioned above.  We provide you with a quality CD that can be copied, packaged, and distributed for promotional purposes, getting gigs, or selling at your local gigs.  We provide you with the master CD plus 5 copies on CD. We highly recommend you safeguard the master CD for future purposes.

NOTE: If you're offered a Mastering service using the same recording engineer for tracking, mixing, and mastering....that is NOT true professional mastering.  So please keep this in mind. If the same recording studio is "mastering" your songs in the same studio with the same engineer, then it is an "express" method of mastering.

 - What is the Guest House Studios mastering process?

Guest House Studios provides two options for mastering:

(1)   Express Mastering (in-house)

(2)   Full-service Mastering (done at independent mastering studio

Express Mastering.  We do Express Mastering in house using Sonar Producer 7, UAD Virtual Plug-ins, Sony SoundForge, and Sony CD Architect.  The purpose is to sequence the songs, add some finishing touches, and to get the CD to a point where it’s listenable on a wide-variety of media.  After the mixing is complete and the songs are in a stereo WAV file, we put it aside for 24 to 48 hours to give our ears a rest.  A standard industry adage is that it is never a good idea to record, mix, and master on the same day. 

Once we’ve rested our ears, we re-listen to the songs to determine if there are any areas, glitches, or problems we may have missed during the mixing process.  We use a combination of Sonar, UAD Plug-ins, and SoundForge to refine the songs.  Next we group the songs together and determine the song order. We typically take your recommendation for song order as a starting point.  If there are any major discrepancies between your preferred song order and our recommended song order we’ll contact you to discuss our rationale. 

Next we determine the amount of quiet space and fade-in/out between each song.   Then we use CD Architect to group the songs together and establish the song order and the amount of quiet space between each song.  After the songs have been properly sequenced, using CD Architect we adjust the volume levels of each song to ensure there is no discernible difference in volume between all the songs.  Every song so be at the same perceivable level.  The last thing we want is to have the listener adjusting the volume know between the songs on the CD.

Once all the levels are set, we burn a pre-master CD to Red Book specifications. At this point we provide you with a copy of the pre-master CD to evaluate for yourself.  We recommend you take a few days to listen to the pre-master CD.  Listen to it on as many sound media as possible.  If you feel some changes are needed, please write them down in as much detail as possible so we can quickly find the spots you are referring to on the CD. For example, if a song sounds good in all locations except for maybe the bass doesn’t come through on the boombox in your den, then we’ll do everything we can to figure out what’s causing that song to not sound good.  In some cases it may be that the environment in which you are listening to the CD is not conducive to any music.

If the pre-master CD is okay, then we’ll make five additional copies for you.

Full-service Mastering.  For full-service mastering, we send the final mix CD  or song (we do song-by-song as well) to a mastering studio that is designed, constructed, equipped, and staffed to handle all the tasks it is required to produce your material for wide-spread distribution, typically for commercial or indie release.  The mastering studio takes this CD and uses its special equipment and experienced engineers to improve the sound quality, determine track order, and amount of quiet time between tracks.  Once complete the mastering studio applies industry standard codes such as ISRC codes, PQ codes, CD text, index marker locations, hidden tracks, etc.  Once this is complete, the mastering studio burn a final CD, which is called a pre-master. At this point the pre-master is sent back to Guest House Studios or to a duplication company, depending on your needs.  If you decide to send it to a duplication company, ensure that you have your artwork ready to go.