Broadcast is the common style used in western pop music. The music is heavily compressed and driven to the maximum perceived loudness. Depending on the final medium and personal taste, this mastering style is the best choice when the aim is perceived loudness over sound quality. As audiophiles ourselves we do not believe in "louder is better", but if you are looking for loudness we can sure deliver hot masters.

Dynamic as the mastering style can be found more often again in alternative and popular music. This style provides powerful and energetic sound, audible dynamics and truthfulness, but does not lack in loudness at all. With this mastering style you get the best of all, dynamics and loudness.

Natural as the mastering style is best suitable for acoustic or classical music. There can be some amount of compression and limiting present, but the natural dynamics of the recordings are predominantly left untouched. This mastering style offers an open, lively and dynamic sound.

Vocal Up/Down mixes are created by simply adjusting the main vocal level and pushing it up by 1/2dB, 1dB or 3dB (Vocal Up Mix), or pushing it down by the same values (Vocal Down Mix). Due to dynamics processing and equalization during mastering, the vocal level often doesn't sit just right anymore, therefore it is useful to create alternate Vocal Up/Down mixes.

The TV-Mix consists of all instruments and processing, except the main vocals, but including background vocals and chorus. This can be achieved by simply muting the main vocals, making also sure all pre-mute sends from the vocal to reverbs or delays are muted as well.

The Instrumental mix is very similar to the TV-Mix but has all vocals muted, including backing vocals and chorus. Therefore only instruments are audible.

The Vocal-Only mix is often not required for further licensing, but offers great flexibilty once you have it. The mix includes the main vocals plus any processing, reverbs and delays. This can also come in handy once you are looking into remixes later on.

The 4 Pack, as we call it, is a time saving combination that offers the greatest flexibility. The 4 Pack consists of the Original Mix, TV-Mix, Instrumental and Vocal-Only. In this combination there is no need for Vocal Up/Down mixes, as these can be easily created by mixing the TV and Vocal-Only versions, with the major difference of having complete leveling flexibility. Once you deliver the 4 Pack to us, we can achieve the optimal sound in the end.

For Separation Mastering, Stem Mastering or Mix Mastering you will need to provide us with stems or submixes of each single group of elements within the song. One stem or submix could represent for example the drums section, the main guitars, backing vocals and so on. The usual candidates are as follows, but depend largely on the style of music and on the piece itself, for rock music it could be: Kick (separate), Snare (separate), Drum Overheads, Bass, Rhythm Guitars, Lead / Solo Guitar, Backing Vocals / Chorus, Main Vocals. For electronic music it could be: Kick (separate), Percussion Elements, Basslines, Atmos / Synths, Lead Elements, Vocals, Effects.

To produce stems, you will need to create a mixdown or submix for each group seperately. This can be done by running through the mixdown process over and over muting all elements not belonging to the specific group / stem. For a guitar stem, simply mute all drums, bass, lead guitars, chorus, vocals and any additional tracks, leaving only the rhythm guitars unmuted. All processing and effects used on the group elements (rhythm guitars in this case) must be unmuted as well of course. Make sure no sound goes into the effects units from muted elements (ie. through pre-mute sends). A second and faster option is to create subgroups within your mixing environment. By assigning each element of a mix to a subgroup and routing the effects (reverb, delays...) to their respective group (if possible), you can record each subgroup to a new track, which form the stems.

For both approaches it is absolutely vital that the stems have exactly the same start point, technically speaking start at exactly the same sample (digital) or frame (analog). In the digital world this can be easily achieved by creating a time selection and using that same selection for each stem when submixing to a new track. Even though the vocals might start two minutes within the song, the vocal stem needs to have the identical start point as the other stems. This is important, as the stems will be sample-accurately aligned for mixing, therefore we require the exact same start point, otherwise the stems will run out of synchronization.

As an example, if the guitars sound great in your mix, but sound just not big enough, do not apply any compression, instead leave the natural dynamics of the guitars untouched and 'raw' for mastering.

An exception would be the creative use of dynamics processing, such as creating a heavily over-compressed drum loop and adding it to the mix as a sound effect.

Using a compressor to level the vocals or any other instrument is fine, but be aware not to over do it. General dynamics processing during mixdown should be used with care and good thinking. To achieve a great mix and impressive musical piece, the overall leveling is way more important.

For the folder structure, the parent folder should be named after the project ("artist name" - "album title"), the subfolders should be named after the song titles or in case of a compilation again after the artist and song title ("track number" - "artist name" - "song title"). Inside each song folder should be the versions or stems of the song. The single files should provide details of the content, such as version name or stem name ("track number" - "song title" - "version or stem name"). A file name could look like this then:

"03 Empty Trash-Watch Out-TVMix.aif"

Once you have set up the folder structure and named the files accordingly, it is a good idea to create an archive of the files. The archive can be furthermore compressed using .zip, .rar, .gz, or .sitx file archiver, saving you precious upload time. The just named compression formats are lossless formats, meaning that the files after compression are still identical copies of the originals. No loss of data or sound quality occurs.