One point that many mastering engineers tend to agree on is that mastering is generally considered to be transparent work, that a mastering engineer should not influence the sound with any artistic judgement. Mastering should be a clean and clinical practice. This is not my philosophy. I don’t claim to be a transparent mastering engineer. Typically, quite the opposite. Because I am an artist myself I cannot help but to approach projects from that perspective… to explore different paths and to bring forward the artistic concepts inherent in the music.

It’s important to clarify, however, that every mastering job is taken with the best approach needed for that particular project.  Sometimes it’s a very rich, warm, analogue process and other times a very precise, clean, digital process. Sometimes transparent, sometimes colored, very often, some sort of combination of the two. Every song, every album is different and there is no single approach. There are no presets.

When you have spent months or more obsessing over the final details of your music, it’s great to have another set of ears to give an unbiased listen to your mixes. A mastering engineer with high quality speakers in a well-designed room can hear weaknesses in your mixes that you may have become accustomed to and that can be addressed and corrected during the mastering stage. Conversely, they may also tell you just how good the mixes actually are! An un-biased opinion is an important and really beneficial thing to have at this stage of your project.

The first thing I often listen for when I begin mastering is what, if anything, needs correcting in the mixes. Common problems include resonant frequencies that poke out and cloud or cover a mix, an imbalanced stereo field, phase issues, or excessive build-up in common problem frequencies such as bass or muddy low-mids. Every song is different and has different needs and I approach every song on its own terms.

Following the corrective moves I then listen for the best ways that your mixes can be enhanced. I pay close attention to achieving a sense of space and detail in the mastering. My style could be described as one of clarity and a sense of physical, tactile sound.

I have a few credos relating to mastering. First is that subtractive EQ’ing is more effective than EQ boosting. For example, to gain more clarity in the high end I usually start by looking at low-mid areas to ease back on as opposed to immediately grabbing a high frequency boost. Second, I’m quite sensitive to phase issues in sounds. Low and low-mid phase incoherence sounds unnatural to me, excessively wide, often. I like to say that nature isn’t out of phase and also, if everything is wide, nothing is wide. And finally, I am not a mastering engineer who likes to fight the loudness wars. I prefer dynamics and transient detail over loudness-for-the-sake-of-loudness. That does not serve your music well. Volume dials were invented for a reason and, if everything is loud, nothing is loud.

One of the most important, and most time-consuming, stages in the mastering process often gets overshadowed by the glamour of fancy equipment, and that’s making sure that your album, from song to song, flows like an album. The building of the final playlist pays attention to relative track volumes, spacing between songs, and creating an overall dynamic flow from start to finish to present your complete story in the most natural way. Also, it is in this stage that details such as track crossfades, ISRC coding, CD-Text and other subcode editing is applied.

The final stage of the mastering process is the creation of your production files for the replication plant or cutting engineer. For CD manufacturing this can be in the form of a CD-R or, more commonly now, a DDP file set. For vinyl cutting, masters are delivered as single, per-side .WAV files. Whatever formats are needed can be delivered. Additionally I will create any individual high-resolution FLAC and MP3 files for your digital distribution or press needs. I am also certified by Apple to provide Mastered for iTunes (MFiT) formatted masters.