Your client stays your client. In writing.
You already know why most engineers stop sending work out. It isn’t the quality. It’s the third email, six months later, where the mastering guy has gone around you.
The non-solicitation commitment
This is a term of the contract, not a promise on a website. When you refer a project here:
- I will not solicit your client for mastering or anything else outside the project you referred.
- I will not contact them for any purpose unrelated to doing the work you sent.
- That holds for twelve months after the project is delivered or cancelled.
It’s Section 11.3 of the Terms of Service. Read it. It binds me on every referred job automatically, without you having to ask for it or negotiate it, and it’s there specifically because a mastering room that poaches is worth less than no mastering room at all.
The limits are stated honestly too: if a band finds me on their own, or comes back to me years later without you pointing them here, that’s not covered — nobody can promise otherwise and mean it. What’s covered is the thing that actually goes wrong.
White-label, if you’d rather
Some studios want mastering to be part of what they deliver, full stop. Agree it in writing before the project starts and the master comes back with no credit attached and no trace of this room on it. I won’t identify myself to your client as having done the work. The record goes out as yours.
Otherwise the standard credit applies — “Mastered by Smithingrecords” in the release metadata — which most engineers are happy to carry, and which some prefer because a named mastering credit signals that a record was finished properly. Your call, both ways are normal here.
How a referred job runs
- You send the mixes and the notes. Direct from you, or from the band with your instructions — your choice. If you want to be the only point of contact on the project, say so and that’s how it runs.
- You get a written quote before anything starts. Whether that quote goes to you or to the band is up to you.
- You hear the master first, before your client does, unless you tell me otherwise. Nothing goes to a band you referred without your eyes on it.
- Notes come back to me from you. One contact, one direction, no committee. If the band wants a change, it routes through you.
- Delivery goes wherever you point it — to you to pass on, or straight to the client with your name on the job.
Tell me how you like to work and it gets worked that way. Some engineers want to be invisible to the band on this leg; some want to be cc’d on everything. Neither is a problem.
Trade terms
Priced per job. No retainer, no volume minimum, no agreement to sign before the first one, and no penalty for sending one record a year or none at all. Send the ones that suit; keep the ones that don’t.
Published rates start at $110 for a single. Trade work is quoted per project — scope, deadline, and how the job is structured all move the number, in both directions.
Included at no extra charge: vinyl supplied as-is from the standard master, and full deliverable set on every track. Dedicated vinyl pre-masters, stem mastering, alternate versions, and expedited deadlines are quoted separately. Deliverables and technical detail →
Reliability
When you refer a job, your reputation is on it, not mine. So: quoted turnaround is what I can hit on a bad week rather than a good one, most records leave here inside two weeks, and if a timeline moves you hear it from me the day I know — not the day it’s late. If I can’t take a job on your deadline, I’ll say no rather than take it and hope.
Mastering isn’t paying my mortgage. That’s an odd thing to advertise, but it’s the reason none of the above is under pressure: I take the work I can actually do properly, on the schedule I actually quoted.
Hear it on a mix you know
Not an excerpt, and not one of my demos. Send a full track you’ve already mixed and had mastered somewhere else. You’ll get the whole thing back mastered here, free, and you can put it up against the version you already have.
You’re the person in this transaction best equipped to hear the difference, because you know exactly what that mix is supposed to sound like. If the version you already have wins, that’s a straight answer and it cost you nothing. If it doesn’t, you’ve found a mastering room without spending a client’s money to test it.
The sample is yours to keep and reference. It just isn’t cleared for release — that needs a paid engagement and your client’s rights sorted.
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) for comparison.
Use headphones or speakers you know. Press play, then switch between
Mix and Master while it runs — both versions
are playing in sync.
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.
More before-and-afters → · Credits →
The chain
An analog signal path. Every tonal and dynamic decision is made in hardware — no plugin doing an impression of a box. The peak ceiling is set digitally after conversion, which is the one stage that isn’t hardware and which you’d have worked out anyway.
SPL PQ. SPL Iron. SPL BIG. API 5500 and 550A. Shadow Hills Dual Vandergraph. Rupert Neve Designs 542. Antelope conversion.
Why those boxes and how they get used →
What I’ll tell you about your mix
The truth, before the invoice. If something in the mix is going to cap what mastering can do — a buried vocal, a mix bus already limited flat, phase problems that collapse in mono — you’ll hear it from me while you can still do something about it. Not as a note in the delivery email.
That works both directions: I’m not going to pretend a mastering chain can fix an arrangement, and I’m not going to quietly rescue something and let you ship the next one the same way. What mastering can and can’t do →
Send files as 24-bit WAV or AIFF at session rate, around −6 dB of headroom, no limiter on the bus. You know this. Full specs, for forwarding to whoever’s bouncing →
Terms, briefly
- The client owns the masters on payment in full. No rights retained here, no points, nothing to buy out later.
- Unreleased material is confidential. Mixes, titles, artwork, and release plans aren’t shared or posted.
- Credit is “Mastered by Smithingrecords” unless a white-label engagement is agreed in writing before work starts.
- Deposits are non-refundable once work begins, and fees are non-refundable once final masters are delivered. If I cancel or fail to deliver, you’re refunded for undelivered work.
- This is not an archive. Delivery links run 30 days; project files may be deleted after 90. Keep your own copies — you already do.
All of it in full: Terms of Service.
Send a track
Or email directly — engineer to engineer is usually faster: thaine@smithingrecords.com
