mastering drum and bass

Mastering drum and bass:

If you are looking to get your drum and bass track mastered you have just ended up at the right website.

Mastering dnb needs an ear that understands the genre, the sub bass present in Jungle and dnb is critical to the momentum of the music. In addition the punch and rhythmical attributes of the mastering must fall into place with the forward moving drive of the breakbeats/beat structure. It is important to ensure that high levels of punch are maintained and yet retain competitive perceived levels.

Mastering drum and bass also often benefits from the use of high end analogue equipment (such as equalization and compression) which can help reduce the harshness that is sometimes associated with in the box mixing. Judging the right level of bass is also critical. The music whilst created with skill, passion and enthusiasm may not have been produced in an acoustically optimized room. When mastering drum and bass this means special attention to the low frequency content is required to ensure that the music will translate as well as possible to all reproduction systems, including club systems.

I am using PMC IB1S monitors which are perfect for the genre as they offer scale, have a wide frequency response with an excellent low frequency output, crystal clear mid range and detailed top end. Of course they are also accurate throughout the response. Stereo imaging is excellent and it allows me to hear deep into music mixes so the subtle adjustments to the music add up to create a much greater subjective improvement to drum and bass masters. Especially important for mastering dnb is a properly acoustically treated room. I have no less than 11 bass traps in the room all created from RockWool RW3. All corners have floor to ceiling in-fills for excellent and accurate, low frequency definition and response. This is very important for translation to club type reproduction situations.

In addition I have a ceiling cloud and side wall absorbers (10cm thick RW3) which keeps an accurate and comb filtering free monitoring position along with perfect stereo imaging.There are additional bass traps at the front of the studio and where the walls meet the floor/ceiling.

Ensure the mix you have created is the very best you can achieve and then upload the full track for a free preview.For less experienced drum and bass producers a useful suggestion when you are getting your mix ready for mastering is to reference a track/s you like and respect mix wise and that has a good bottom end response. So in your mix project import a track and lower it's perceived volume to match your mix down.(Please remember I require your mix without a limiter and no clipping on the stereo master )Then you can judge more easily whether your bass level is in the right ball park on your own studio monitors. This greatly assists mastering drum and bass as when I receive your file I can focus on sonic enhancements instead of being too concerned about huge bass frequency eq changes. These are never ideal in retaining the sonic integrity and balance between bass line and kick drum. If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me.

When working with the low frequency content of your mix pay close attention to the sub content of your bass line and your kick drum. One of the worst scenarios is when you have a bass light kick drum and a bass heavy bass line or vice versa. Any changes to bass levels in stereo mastering obviously affect both the kick and the bass line. So if I add sub to a kick it affects the bass line too. An additional suggestion is to double check your mix against others on decent quality headphones (not earbuds).When you get your drum and bass tracks mastered at SafeandSound you are sure of a skilled engineer who loves the genre and has been listening to (and also involved in producing) drum and bass since the origins in Hardcore circa 1990.

If you are experiencing continued problems of balance consider stem mastering.

Mastering drum & bass is best performed on 24 bit audio files that do not have a limiter on them and that do not have any clipping. This will create the best sounding, clearest and punchiest masters possible.