Questions and Answers

Mastering audio is the final stage of audio production. Read more about mastering and online mastering.

Nowadays almost every mastering studio offers online mastering services. Read about how it works at Red Mastering Studio.

Ordering at Red Mastering is really easy. All you need to do is to complete and SUBMIT a Job Order via CART for the service you require, and you will be able to make a payment via bank transfer (free/no fees! if you are UK based, for USA citizens and EU based Clients, there is option to pay via Transferwise (you could pay in your original currency, therefore saving on exchange, as we have bank accounts in USA, Australia, Europe). That transaction is also the cheapest one on the market, less then 1% fee. The last option will be to pay via Stripe (the most popular, safe, and secure payment), which is also the most comfortable, as it will be done entirely from within our page)

1. Your mix should be created in the same frequency your project has been mixed. If you have mixed in 48kHz or 96kHz, do not convert to 44.1kHz. Do not convert your mixes/files to 44.1 kHz or to any higher resolution as it will only add zeros and won’t change audio quality.
My advice – always record and mix at 24 bit resolution. Even if you have recorded at 16 bit, mix it at 24 bit to give plugins more headroom.

2. Do not use any effects such as limiting, heavy compression, clipping, etc. on you stereo output track. If you really like the sound of your mix with them on, please send two files – processed and unprocessed.

3. Make sure that there is no digital clipping on your individual tracks and on the final mixdown. Make sure that at the highest peak the song does not hit 0.0 dB fsd and if it does, drop the level few dBs and bounce it again. I would advise to leave anything between -12dB to -3dB fsd of headroom, especially if you work with 24bit mixes.

4. Please send one stereo file rather than two mono tracks.

5. Deliver your mix in WAV or AIF file format. No mp3 please! MP3 is a lossy compression format, therefore quality and fidelity suffers

6. Zip your file before uploading it to wetransfer.com.

You do not need to have a Stripe account to pay for Red Mastering services. You can also pay using a valid credit or debit card. All payments are secure and protected by Stripe. Or if you choose direct transfer via your bank or Transferwise – it’s all safe, reliable and convenient. We have chosen this new way of payment after being with Paypal for almost 15 years, their services recently went downhill, to the extent, that Ebay is parting with them.

It is a technical checkup and review of the client’s mix. The client will receive a report with pointed out mistakes and suggested changes to make the mix sound better.

It is very helpful and beneficial to the music – small changes during re-mixing can improve the final master dramatically.

I normally advise to take the Mix Review option. However, a Mix Review report won’t teach you how to mix. If you are not an experienced mixer, you may not be able to apply the suggested changes to your mix and the Mix Review will become a formula you don’t know how to apply. Please bear that in mind when ordering.

Delivery times have been updated in our new service. We decided to give Clients much more choice, depending on their requirement and budget. Now you can save some money when ordering any service, simply choose longer delivery time, if you are not in rush. Delivery time starts from 10 days delivery (cheapest and longest time of delivery) up to 48h if you have an urgent work to be done. (most expensive) Please bear in mind when changing time of delivery, final price will change too. The exact date will be shown on your Job Order/CART. You can always change it.

We understand the music business, being there for many years. If you need work to be done within weekend (as a standard we don’t work during weekends) or you need work to be delivered 24h, please get in touch with us and we let you know if we can do this for you. This obviously will cost extra.

Accordion ContenMix Feedback, is our new service, you can choose Mix Feedback when ordering Audio Mastering for each song).

It literally is a few sentences comment on mix provided by client. The difference between Mix Feedback and Mix Review is that Mix Feedback is delivered always, after initial master, just a comments to the quality of the production and mixing. Where Mix Review is delivered BEFORE mastering audio, plus there are comments about how and what can be done (by the mixing engineer) to improve the song. Client get the email with comments (MIX REVIEW) and work on improving the mix, and then send new one for master. Mix Feedback, is an information about what was wrong and what was good in your mix, it can give you some extra information about quality of the mix, therefore you can improve it in the future.

No, We don’t. Since 2012 We have been offering online mastering services only but if you would like to have a look at my studio, please watch this Red Mastering Studio video.
If you live in London and would like to meet in person to discuss mastering of your album, please get in touch.

Since the beginning of 2019 we stopped this service. We have been offering mixing and mastering audio services since year 2010, served over 1000’s clients from all over the world. Our Studio received over 50 reviews (Google Business), all with 5 stars. If you value our work, and you have full album to master – we encourage you to order a single mastering, to see what we can achieve, and after that, make a decision to use our services for entire album mastering or not.

You must always complete a Job Order first and upload your files/mixes via wetransfer.com, first. Please always use wetransfer, or any other company like dropbox, google docs, etc to upload your files, don’t send files via email, as our server will reject them anyway

If you have not received an order confirmation from us  but your payment was successful then the email address provided on your Job Order was incorrect, although, in such case you wouldn’t be able to submit Job Order, or/and make a payment. Anyway please get in touch with us asap, via email – studioATonlinemastering.org.uk, and we will try to resolve the problem asap. We are here to serve you and to help you!

please get in touch 

We are very well established Mastering Studio, well known in London/UK and all around the world, we are not here to take your money and run away:)! 

So please be patient, let us know about the issue, and relax waiting for response. 

We do check our email every 10 min, but if you live in USA/west coast, Asia, or Australia, please take into the account the time difference.

The basic price for a single master starts from £30 but the final price depends on the Delivery Time, which you choose. Optional extras are available. ie MFiT, DDP, RedBook, mp3/flac conversion, high resolution masters, etc. Please refer to  Services and Job Order/CART for details. 

To quickly check the price of your order, select the relevant service from the Job Order menu and enter the number of songs. Choose Delivery Time, best suitable for you. Please remember to select the additional options, like MFiT, DDP, etc

Yes, there is. Mastering for vinyl needs a slightly different approach than mastering for digital release. The main differences are:

1. narrower lowest octave
2. LPF at 15kHz
3. minimal to no compression, no limiting nor clipping
4. avoiding excessive sybillants ‘S’
5. high resolution (24/48, 24/96, etc.) file delivery for the cutting plant

Please read more details here

Audio mastering is not magic. If your mix is inferior, the mastering process will not transform it into a first class one. It will make it sound better but probably not to the extent you may be expecting. My advice is to always work on your mix until it sounds exactly how you want it, or as close as possible. There really is no point in spending money on mastering when the mix itself doesn’t work, and I can almost guarantee that you will end up being disappointed with how the master of your mix sounds.

You can get an instant quote by choosing the service you are interested in from the Job Order/CART menu. All you need to do is to enter the number of items (songs) required in the Order Details section, choose delivery date and your price will be shown in the Order Summary section.

For a more detailed quote, complete all the fields in the Order Details section, including the optional ones if required (mix review, stem mastering, extra loud master, non-standard file format, Red Book/DDP, Mastering for iTunes).

Yes, but why? That’s what the volume button is for!

There has been a lot of talk about the so called loudness war which has been going on for the past few decades. I think most people involved in audio engineering are aware of the loudness war, yet many of them still chase their own tail, why is that ?
This is really complicated issue, not easy to resolve, but seems it went so far, that it became a noticeable problem for all music lovers. …..tbc:)

We aim for the best service possible! If you haven’t got a chance to read what other people think about Red Mastering Studio,

please check testimonials of our Customers, here, over 50 reviews we collected in last 6 years. All reviews are left only by Clients ordering LP or EP audio master