Online Mastering - Pricing Tiers Explained.

Mastering of audio is the final process before music is distributed. The pricing for audio mastering varies. This short article will explain what can generally (fairly loosely) be expected within each price band in terms of studio acoustics quality, engineer history equipment quality and skill levels.  No guarantees are made and it is up to the record label or musician to choose services they feel are right for them.. This serves as a rough industry guide and not a recommendation.

A) £70.00 - £120.00  /$112.00 - $190.00 1 Track (Exchange rate will vary)

The engineer should have twenty + years plus mastering experience, it may be a multi room facility with beautiful decor in a central city location, it will have top tier high end mastering monitors, many analogue equipment choices, acoustically designed room possibly by a named acoustician and you should be getting your music mastered by an engineer who is well known in the mastering industry and that has a track record of hits and very well known past clients.

B) £39.00 - £59.00 / $62.00 - $94.00 1 Track (Exchange rate will vary)

There are many operators in this price point and you will find, high quality mastering grade monitoring, plenty of analogue equipment, a beautiful decor (which you in part will be paying for), custom built room. Mastering quality should be high but as always choose with care. Flashy websites and glossy website photo's and racks of equipment may not tell the full story. Mastering clients should be well known musicians and labels. Get a mastering preview and compare with the tier below. The differences may be considerably smaller than you think. (or possible none at all).

C) £24.00 - £31.00 / $39.00 - $47.00 1 Track (Exchange rate will vary)

This sector of the market is where you can expect to see engineers with greater experience operating (above entry level), the rates fall in with the hourly rate of a professional sound engineer. You can expect to see high resolution and high quality mastering grade speakers (not smaller bookshelf types). High end analogue equipment should be present and suggests that the engineer knows about the benefits of analogue equipment. Rooms should be fully acoustically treated with plenty of bass trapping in corners which demonstrates a concerted effort to resolve acoustic problems. This provides an accurate response in room for making decisions. In some cases you may get a real bargain in this sector with an engineer who has had many more years of experience and high quality equipment. Free previews should be
possible (Time permitting normally) so you can hear the quality on offer. Do look into the past clients of the online mastering studio as this will be revealing as to level of quality.

D) £6.00 - £21.00 / $9.00 -$33.00 1 Track (Exchange rate will vary)

In the budget sector of mastering you will find many different types of cheap and cheerful online mastering, it will be very rare to find a mastering studio offering attended mastering sessions at this price point. You will find that largely the mastering engineer will be relatively inexperienced with maybe 1-3 years of  audio engineering experience/possibly at student level. The studio may not be particularly well acoustically treated and it is highly likely that this will be a plug ins based operation without  analogue equipment and bookshelf type speakers. When choosing this type of mastering choose with care.

SafeandSound Mastering is a low cost, truly professional, online mastering studio. Price Tier C) aiming for Tier B) quality, click link to visit site:
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