Hear it both ways
Every example below is one track twice — the mix as it arrived, and the master that left this room. Both are matched to the same integrated loudness (LUFS), so the only thing that changes when you switch is the mastering. Loud sounds better for about four seconds. Matching the levels takes that off the table.
Use headphones or speakers you know. Press play, then switch between Mix and Master while it runs — both versions are playing in sync, so the change lands instantly.
All examples mastered on the chain described above.
Loudness matching here is for listening, not for delivery. Delivery targets are set per record.
No audio? Check that your phone isn’t in silent mode.
These are published with permission. Clients grant the right to use short excerpts of the released master alongside the original mix for exactly this purpose — and any client who’d rather not can say so before work begins, in which case their record never appears here.
An analog signal path
Every tonal and dynamic decision on your record is made by hardware. The equalization, the compression, the stereo work, the saturation — all of it happens in boxes with transformers and tubes in them, before the audio is ever converted. No plugin is doing an impression of a box. The box is the box.
To be precise about it, because engineers ask and they should: the final peak ceiling is set digitally after conversion. That’s the one stage that isn’t hardware. Everything that shapes how the record sounds happens upstream of it, in the analog chain.
The chain
- SPL PQ — mastering equalizer
- SPL Iron — valve mastering compressor
- SPL BIG — stereo width
- API 5500 and API 550A — equalization
- Shadow Hills Dual Vandergraph — compression
- Rupert Neve Designs 542 — tape emulation
- Antelope Pure 2 — conversion
Why these boxes
Two families of tone, chosen so they disagree with each other. The SPL side runs on high-voltage rails and stays clean and dimensional under load — useful when a mix is already dense and you need to open it without smearing it. The API side is the opposite temperament: proportional-Q equalization and a discrete op-amp bite that puts weight and forwardness into a guitar record. The Shadow Hills sits between them, and its transformer switching lets you dial in how much iron the program material gets. The 542 adds the tape behavior — the head bump, the soft top end, the compression that happens before you’ve asked for any.
None of it is on by default. Most records use a fraction of it. Having the range means the record picks the tools rather than the tools picking the record.
The room and the monitoring
A mastering decision is only as trustworthy as the room it was made in. If the low end lies to me, it lies to you three months later when the record is out and can’t be changed.
- Yamaha HS8 Pair & Yamaha HS8 Sub — Nearfield 2.1 Main Monitors
- AKG K240 Studio — Studio Headphones
- Sennheiser HD240 Pro — Studio Headphones
- Full Room Acoustic Treatment — Frequency Dampening & Absorption
- Studio Monitor & Headphone Calibration — Full Spectrum Flat Frequency Response
How I work
I listen to the record before I touch anything — at conversational volume, without reaching for a knob. Most of the decisions get made in that pass. Then the chain gets built for that specific record and nothing else, starting from the smallest move that solves the biggest problem. If a compressor isn’t earning its place in the path, it comes out. A record that needs three decibels of one shelf gets three decibels of one shelf, and I stop.
Sequenced releases get treated as one object rather than a folder of separate songs — level, tone, and spacing carried across the whole thing so it plays as a record instead of a playlist.
What mastering can’t fix
This is the part most mastering pages leave out, so here it is plainly. Mastering works on a finished stereo mix. It moves the whole thing at once. That means there are problems it genuinely cannot solve:
- A mix already crushed by a limiter. Dynamics that were destroyed before the file was exported don’t come back. There’s nothing left to work with.
- Clipping, distortion, and bad edits. Damage in the source is damage in the master.
- Arrangement problems. If two instruments are fighting for the same space, they’ll still be fighting afterward, just louder.
- Phase problems and mono collapse. Some of it can be improved. Much of it has to be fixed in the mix.
If your mix has an issue that’s going to cap the result, you’ll hear it from me before the invoice, not after. Sometimes the honest answer is “go back and remix this one thing first” — and it’s cheaper for you to hear that from someone who isn’t relying on your project to pay rent. Mastering is a dedication to a craft here, not a thing needed to keeps the lights on.
What a project actually looks like
- You send a track for a free sample. It comes back mastered, no charge and no obligation. It’s yours to keep and listen to — it just isn’t cleared for release.
- If you want the record done, you get a written quote first. Scope, price, and turnaround agreed in an email before any work begins. No surprises on the invoice.
- The record gets mastered. You receive a preview so you can confirm it matches what was agreed.
- You pay, and the final masters are released to you. Payment comes before the full-resolution files, not after.
- Revisions open at that point. Rounds of revision are included with every paid project, and they run from the moment the final masters land. If you go quiet after delivery, the master is treated as accepted after a short window — so if something’s wrong, say so.
Singles from $110. Most records leave here inside two weeks. Longer releases, hard release dates, catalogue work, and anything unusual get quoted individually rather than forced into a standard rate.
Full rates, turnaround, and terms →
Hear it on your own record
Every comparison on this page is someone else’s band. The only one that matters is yours.
