Concise and direct to the point mastering information about my services and what I require from you.

My credentials, gear and service details:

1T £37.00 4T EP £120.00 Album 9 to 12 Tracks £230.00 (DDP in all cases £35.00)

20 years professional (verifiable) audio engineering experience.

10 years working as head of engineering at large audio production company in London, trained at audio engineering school, then trained by former BBC studio manager for 3 years. Recorded and mixed many famous artists, both multitracked and direct to stereo. (see my biog on mastering engineer page). Mixed 1,000’s of hours of BBC and commercial radio programming for R1, R2 R3, R4 and World Service.

Specialized in mastering solely. Not just a bolt on “money spinner” to a mix studio.

Mastered a Top 10 charting/selling U.K. album. (Public Service Broadcasting)

Mastered RTE Choice music prize album of the year 2020

12 years working solely as a mastering engineer, 1,000’s of clients and projects completed.

Further information

Great rate for a serious professional mastering proposition.

PMC IB1S, Hypex amps, Crane Song Solaris Quantum DAC, Mytek ADC.

Fully acoustically treated room, 28 bass traps. (RW3, RW45 and 28/kg m3 traps) Largest trap is 1.8M deep. Full corner infills (and doubled) to reduce SBIR to remove null. Both diffusion and absorption. Room flat to 25Hz. Large ceiling cloud.

Sweet spot free from any obstacles in line of sight to monitors. A comb filtering free monitoring position.

Analogue rack includes Manley Massive Passive – legendary mastering equalizer, Summit Audio DCL-200 (valve comp), HCL Varis Vari mu compressor, Sontec stereo stepped switched EQ.

Ear selected mastering plug ins, (DDMF plug in Doctor checked for quality coding) regularly updated/improved. I have a plug in from every developer, some excel at dynamics, equalization multi band process or stereo image manipulation.

Inclusive mix appraisal/advice if requested.

Instrumental version (at discretion) included in the mastering price.

Revisions free if necessary, within reason.

Quality control against glitches, clicks, pops, extraneous noises included (at discretion – excessive restoration defects my incur a restoration fee, though this is rare). Basic audio occasional restorations inclusive. (de click/de-pop)

Approx turnaround time : 1-3 days for a single, 2-4 days for an E.P., 1 week for an album (slightly longer if a DDP is required)

Mastering can be tailored for streaming, Beatport (loud volume), Soundcloud and for £15.00 per track a 24 bit quality controlled vinyl pre master version can be prepared.

Audio restoration projects undertaken – priced competitively per job.

What I require from you :

Payment via Paypal schedules all jobs. This keeps me totally focused on paying clients (that includes you !) that support my sole income.

24 bit .wav or .aiff files at the sample rate of your DAW session. No clipping or limiting on the DAW output. Exact headroom below 0dBFS not critical as long as there is no clipping on the peaks.

Please listen to your actual exported/bounced file for errors before uploading. (Listen for clicks/edits, excessive mouth sounds in vocals and leave ample silence at start and end of the file.. including allowing space for decay at end of your tracks)

Please provide any information about your intended distribution means, i.e. Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud only, etc. As the master can be tailored a little for working with these services. Secondary master can be made for a small fee but I suggest in 2019 that one good master of moderate volume will suit all streaming and download purposes well.

ISR codes (ISRC) if required, intended track running order, additional information about removal of “count ins” or other track specific information. Please feel free to provide concise notes about any specific concerns relating to you music. Do not hesitate to provide a reference track for the purposes of showing your anticipated perceived volume needs.

My mastering philosophy :

My goals are to provide the best possible mastering end results at a great price. If you go too cheap it is either not real mastering (lacking high levels of pro audio engineering experience, analogue equipment, and real mastering grade monitoring.) and at an expensive rate you are paying for how a luxurious room looks (which you won’t hear on your master) I have positioned myself in the market to be affordable to all. This great rate in no way means lower quality control standards. So labels can proceed with confidence and reduce their label operating costs dramatically, without detriment to quality and service levels.

Call me and have a quick chat, you will quickly understand you are speaking to a professional who knows their job inside out.

Contact : Barry Gardner | safeandsound123 at googlemail.com | Tel 0044 (0) 7810271371 | Send files using https://wetransfer.com/