Audio Mastering.

OK - you have a great album recorded, and you are ready to get those CDs selling. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the recording story. No matter how pleased you are with your tracks, there remains one important step before commercializing your sound - audio mastering.

 

Who are we?

My name is Jim Bruce, musician and founder of YouTune Records. Together with Ken Mayall, award winning blues harmonica player, we're known as the Acoustic Blues Travellers. We started YouTune because we had difficulty getting a recording contract. We put down fourteen tracks and played the disc to a friend of ours, Paul Redman, who said 'Great, but it needs mastering!'

After completely losing us in studio jargon, he agreed to master our album. (Paul is a retired sound engineer and drummer. He has worked with a host of famous names in the 70s while working in a well-known London studio.) The result was astonishing. Some changes were obvious, but others were quite subtle. Vocals came alive and the overall balance gave the sound a new warmth.

 

Other artists started to join YouTune, sending us MP3 files for their albums. We found that most of them hadn't been masterd and need the 'treatment'. Finally, Paul agreed to join the team and we now offer what is probably the most cost effective mastering solution for the broke and hungry artist trying to sell his first album on a limited budget.

 

What is mastering?

This is the process that brings your music alive. Track volumes are equalized and overall volume brought up to commercial levels. Volumes across various audio frequencies are sampled and adjusted so that the overall effect is coherent and integrated.

Of course, the quality and balance on your original recording must be the best you can get - it's not possible to enhance a voice, for example, if totally drowned by drums and guitar! The process also ensure that listeners get good result whatever their listening equipment.

 

If you are serious about your music, you want to present it in the very best possible light. A mastered disc shows the difference between the amateur and the pro musician.

 

No matter what you are planning to do with your music - MP3s for download, demos or selling cds, you need to make that all important great first impression.

 

How long does it take?

It takes about  four days to turn your cd around.

 

What will it cost?

We have yet to find a lower priced service in this field. Average prices in this market are around $50 per track - we charge just $250 per cd!

 

How does it work?

Best results are obtained by analyzing music files in WAV format, but we can give you good sample results with an MP3 file with bitrate of 192Kbps to 320Kbps . Just send us a track for us to master (even a standard MP3 file) - we will master it for free and send it back to you for you to hear and feel the difference.

 

Better still send us an unconverted file using a service such as 'Yousendit' - it's free, and you can send large audio files. We will send it back to you (quality is never lost in the email process) and you can decide if you want to use us.

 

If you 're happy, mail us your cd ( address provided by mail), or send us the audio files, and we'll take it from there .

 

Mail sample track here....................CD MASTER

 

Take it easy,                                  

Jim Bruce