Frequently Asked Questions

DOES MY TRACK NEED MASTERING?

Well, the short answer is Yes. 

The long answer is Yes, because tracks published in today's media landscape, which is extremely competitive, need to be more polished than ever. Tracks that are released after mixing (without being mastered) sound quiet, dull, and underwhelming. But "polishing" that mixed track is much more than making it louder and brighter. It involves selective and judicious equalization, analog love, and a mastering engineer's general understanding of how to make music transfer across systems properly. If you want your music to be as good as it can possibly be, you need to get your music mastered by an experienced mastering engineer. 

There's a very good article from Pitchfork that delves into the dark art of mastering music that you can read here. 

HOW DO I PREP MY FILES FOR MASTERING?

If you are working within a DAW like Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton, or any similar workstation, export your mix as a stereo .WAV file at the sample rate of your session and at the highest bit depth that you can. Make sure that you aren’t clipping the output. It’s generally a good practice to leave at least 3dB of headroom (the highest peaks in your track should not exceed -3.0) and that there is nothing in terms of loudness or maximization plugins on your main mixbus output. 

Refer to this checklist to make sure that your mixes are ready for mastering.

If this is giving you any trouble, let us know so that we can help you out.

Before your tracks are mastered, we will get in touch with you to confirm that the mixes were delivered properly.

CAN I REQUEST A SPECIFIC FORMAT? (.DDP, VINYL, etc.)

Absolutely! Before delivery, we’ll ask you how you’d like your masters formatted. Currently, we offer the following formats for masters:

  • .WAV or .AIFF files at 16, 24, or 32-bit depth from 44.1k to 192kHz for digital distribution

  • .WAV files at 24-bit depth at 96kHz for Apple Digital Masters

  • .DDP images for CD-R manufacturing

  • .WAV files at 24 or 32-bit formatted for lacquer cutting. Sides A and B will be different files with a cue sheet (.PDF) for the manufacturer.

If you don’t know what format you need, let us know. We can help you out.

WHAT ABOUT APPLE DIGITAL MASTERS?

We are an approved Apple Digital Masters provider. Apple Digital Masters do not incur an additional charge, but we no longer deliver these files by default. If you need files suitable for Apple Digital Masters, just let us know and we’ll include them in your _DIGITAL delivery.

When delivering these files to Apple, they will request the following information to confirm that the Apple Digital Master was created by an approved mastering house:

Name of Mastering Engineer: Sam Kumar Tandon
Name of Mastering House: Rose Quartz Mastering
Engineer’s Email Address: sam@rosequartzmastering.com

WHAT DELIVERY FORMAT DO I CHOOSE?

It completely depends on how you intend to distribute your project. Making CDs? Request a .DDP master. Cutting vinyls? Request a vinyl master. Going straight to streaming platforms? Request a digital/streaming master.

It’s important to note that you can typically send the manufacturer CD quality master files (44.1kHz and 16-bit) instead of a .DDP, but you may not be able to encode your own ISRCs/UPCs or control transitions between songs.

It’s also important to note that vinyl records can be cut with our default hi-resolution production master format (Digital/Streaming if using our submission form).

However, the vinyl record won’t sound as nice as it could if the vinyl manufacturer was provided with a separate, purpose-crafted master. Vinyl masters typically need extra care in order to preserve dynamics, control sibilance, and reign in excessive bass and treble. In addition, you may not be able to specify spreads between tracks or sidebreak without a cue sheet, which is provided in our _VINYL delivery. If you want a vinyl that’s audiophile-grade, ask about a _VINYL delivery.

If you’re unsure, please let us know so that we can help you out.

HOW DO I GET MY ALBUM INFO ON ITUNES?

In order for your album's information to show up on a CD player's screen, your car stereo, or your computer, you need to submit your album info to Gracenote's online database. It's completely free and you can do it from iTunes. We assume no responsibility for submitting your information to said database. 

Gracenote’s database is not metadata. We will embed as much or as little metadata as you’d like in your production masters.

WHAT ABOUT LOUDNESS? (LUFS/RMS)

There is a lot of information about this topic on the internet. It is our philosophy that the best LUFS level is dictated by the song and typically falls within a range that has a correlation to the song’s macrodynamic, microdynamic, and spectral profile. Sometimes, that LUFS matches normalization standards. It often does not. That being said, it’s your song, so if you have a specific LUFS or RMS target in mind, let us know and we’ll hit it.