Safe&Sound music mastering

Cascade Records, France : “Awesome work ! We are very happy with the results. Once again you managed to exceed the speed of sound.”

1 Track £30.00 / 4 Track £112.00 / Album £230.00 no tax added.

Allow me to exceed your expectations.

Online music mastering will ensure your tracks are sounding as best as they possibly can before release. Mastering engineer Barry Gardner is highly experienced and has many 100’s of clients. After mastering your music will be optimized for all reproduction systems. Online music mastering adds value to your tracks and takes them to their maximum sonic potential. (Mix appraisal inclusive when requested)

Our music mastering service aims to be the best possible, we use high end analogue equipment, true reference grade monitors (PMC IB1S) a fully treated room and I have many years of full time professional audio engineering under my belt.

I am comfortable working with all musical genres, spanning from dance music through rock and acoustic compositions. I keep the studios overheads low and pass these savings on to my clients. I master music singles, EP’s and albums to high standards and have an extensive clients list to prove it. (See Mastering engineer experience and clients list page on left hand side bar)

In short send your 24 bit, unclipped, unlimited mixed audio files using your favourite file transfer service. I recommend and use www.wetransfer.com.

Payments can be made by Paypal on this page:

Buy mastering

I can be contacted on 0044 (0) 7810271371 or safeandsound123atgooglemail.com (at being @)

A highly useful and interesting frequently asked questions page is right here:

Mastering FAQ’s

Choosing music mastering

If it’s your first time looking for online music mastering I suggest choosing with care, as part of my plan as a full time dedicated online mastering studio I need to be aware of who and what my competition is doing. This is typical of any industry and it has benefits of course to the operation of any small business venture. During research it has come to my attention that anyone choosing online music mastering should do so with great care. There are a number of reasons.

In the very first instance be wary of websites with text only, without pictures of equipment, studio or engineer, if there is 1 sole thing that should ring alarm bells when it comes to online mastering it is this.There are also “mastering” studios operating with small sized speakers this does not cut the mustard for understanding the scale / low frequency response of music on large format systems. Serious monitoring = serious mastering.

1) Some of the people operating ‘online music mastering’ studios clearly demonstrate a complete lack of basic audio engineering knowledge. It is shocking to see some of the beginner type posts on some audio forums from people who supposedly master audio and operate at rates similar to myself.Audio mastering is my full time professional work, I am not a part timer, studying or using this as a supplementary income, the studio is specifically designed and equipped for music mastering full time.

2) If you don’t see the analogue equipment listed appearing on the website in photo’s, assume it does not exist. That is the safest thing to do. Why would a serious music mastering studio be unwilling to show their equipment ? These sites are easy to spot, they are text and graphics based only, no photo’s of equipment will exist. (or they will be stock manufacturers photo’s) You want to see them in a rack, in situ, in the studio. There are a few sites out there that try to convince musicians analogue equipment does not matter. To me this demonstrates inexperience and lack of hearing acuity. Ask yourself why all serious mastering studios use analogue equipment ? It is because it has the capability of adding subtle enhancements to the music that plugins fail to. I believe my clients are worth that investment. Another “curiosity” that some online music mastering studios use to impress the unwary is to add a picture of a flashy mixing console to the front page. It is rather strange because such mixing consoles have absolutely nothing to do with mastering a stereo audio file. Mixing, yes – music mastering, not at all.

3) Monitoring makes a difference. Large scale, high resolution monitoring is fundamental in being a master of audio. The physical size of a loudspeaker system to a large degree determines the low frequency output. A small bookshelf type speaker is not going to produce deep, accurate low frequencies. You cannot correct that which you cannot hear.

I am using PMC IB1S monitors, professional 3 way speakers with carbon fibre 10 inch bass drivers, built uncompromisingly for the job of music mastering. Coupled with 200 Watts RMS per channel of high end amplification.

4) Check the engineers background, check recent client list and professional engineering experience.

5) Get yourself a free preview, this gives you a clear indication of the quality of work you can expect. Do not judge purely on perceived volume (loudness). Listen to space, depth, clarity, tonal balance and punch. Try and listen to the master preview on a variety of sound systems such as in car, good quality hi-fi, good headphones and your home studio etc. If at all possible a large scale loudspeaker as well so you can get a feel for the translation onto a PA type audio system.I am happy to provide a single free preview (time permitting) Free preview does not apply to stem mastering work.

6) I suggest speaking to the mastering engineer on the phone, this will give you an indication of the engineers competence and confidence, why not discuss your project requirements. Just because the music mastering service is online based it does not mean that all communications must be online, this will give you a feel for the engineers knowledge related to online music mastering.

You have to ask yourself why you would compromise with your track/album mastering when you know there is a studio with all of the factors in place. Choose online music mastering with your eyes wide open and apply common sense.

Online music mastering seeks to enhance your music and ensure that they can sound as good as possible, it is highly recommended that you choose a music mastering engineer who has a lot of professional audio engineering experience and is correctly equipped to produce the desired results. Online music mastering can save money but it is very important to make a prudent decisions when making a choice of studio for your track or album. At Safe&Sound mastering we can make your music punchy, clear, deeper, louder and more expensive sounding.

What is music mastering capable of?

After the mix down stage comes mastering, using sophisticated reproduction equipment that covers the full audio spectrum a music mastering engineer will ensure the music will reproduce as well as the mix possibly can on many different types of play back system. This can be purely technical and problem solving but at this stage there can also be subjective enhancements applied. The music can be tonally tweaked to add body, warmth, clarity, depth and detail to the music. Music mastering aims to add value to the final results by ensuring the music is presented in it’s best light. Music mastering also helps with perceived volumes in todays market and can also add a certain ‘Je ne sais quoi.’ by the use of high end analogue signal paths. Quality analogue equipment with valves and transformers can add its own subtle but audible character to the sound. Just passing through a euphonic audio circuit can add a quality that is not obtainable from plug ins alone. On top of all the sonic enhancement music mastering offers quality control and the correct encoding of the audio onto a CD-R, DDP or MP3 master format. Get in contact today for serious equipment, a serious mastering engineer and some of the industries truly lowest music mastering rates.

Professionally equipped and at your service: PMC IB1S speakers, MANLEY Massive Passive, Hardware, Crane Song Solaris Quantum DAC, Sontec custom equalizer, Summit Audio DCL-200, Vari Mu compressor.