Professional Mastering Prices??? anyone know??

[Target Earth Ent]

I posted this question on a post with another subject...sorry... but umm... I need some answers to the following question...

How much $$$ does it cost get a full LP of roughly 19 tracks at roughly 4 minutes per song mastered at a professional mastering lab???? an approximation please

[gerax]

I don't know if this could help, (it depends on the city you're living in) but go check out www.masterhouse.com : it's a professional mastering facility in Miami and they're showing their rates on the website.

Hope this helps

L.G.

[Target Earth Ent]

great....thanks for the link...
but umm....
too bad I "no habla espaniol"
lol [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
whole site is in spanish...
I only speak english and jive

[Bastiaan]

Gerax,


Your website is wrong......it leads to a Peru site concerning bank-loans and mortgages.....

Bastiaan

[JMS40]

Here's a site provided by Altavista that will translate web sites into english. It really comes in handy. http://world.altavista.com/
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by Target Earth Ent:
great....thanks for the link...
but umm....
too bad I "no habla espaniol"
lol [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
whole site is in spanish...
I only speak english and jive<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[keny]

The top of the line places charge $100 - $150 an hour. I did a full length CD at $750.

Budget a thousand dollars and you'll probably get what you need. Expect to pay $50 for the master CD and $10 each for copies.

BTW hardware mastering kicks the tail of software mastering.

If that is out of budget, you can probably get somebody to software master the goods for you for less.
http://www.airshowmastering.com
keny

[Target Earth Ent]

now that's the price range I imagined...
however...
I been foolin around with this C4 in the Waves Gold Bundle. And umm... if the song I just did came back to me from a mastering lab... I would be satisfied and feel I got atleast 80% of my moneys worth [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
A damn good mix requires less mastering...
so ummm.. I'll stick to the damn good mixes of damn good songs. unlease until I can afford to have it mastered via hardware mastering.

[keny]

I found that using the waves mastering plugins work but the studio I worked with didn't recomend I do anything past the mix.

I used the C4 and the L1 maximizer anyways on the mixes because the engineer I work with there said that I should get it as close to the final product as possible.

In retrospect, I found the L1 a little harsh of a limiter for *not* the last link in the chain. However if you are mastering yourself, It makes an excellent choice. Especially if you are dithering down to 16 bit 44.1.

so now I have two scenarios:
Home mastering:
C4 multiband compression
L1 Maximizer with IDR set to 16 Bit
Burn final mix to HHB Burn It from sp/dif output.

Professional Mastering:
C4 at my place,
Light or none L1 limiting, O gain
Mix to Dat at 24 bit/48k (tascam Da45HR)
Taken to Airshow (the mastering studio) where they have a
L2 maximizer from waves (10x more detail than L1 - same algorithm)
Weiss eq and compression
Sonic Solutions software

One of the benefits I found from the real mastering house was
that it's real good to have someone check your work. This gives me a chance to learn what i could have done better, so If I've done things wrong, they won't happen more than once.

BTW always leave -.2db output volume on the L1. Some CD players that have cheap DAC's will distort if the cd is too loud.

[gerax]

Sorry Guys
You were right, I posted the wrong address; Here is the right one if somebody still needs it: www.masterhousestudios.com

Again Sorry

L.G. [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img]

[Sabe]

Hi all,

I have had excellent results using a T.C. Electronics Finalizer 96k for "mastering". You can make the "mastering" as subtle or hard compressed as you like. I plug it into the Digi001 breakout box via sp/dif digital (rca) connectors. This unit is a bit expensive, but in the long run you will save.

I setup an Aux L/R channel and bus all the tracks to it. Then patch in the Finalizer to the Aux L/R channel. And finally, assign the outputs of the Finalizer channel to the Master Fader. I know, it sounds confusing (especially the way I described it) but it is quite simple in practice.

Just thought I would suggest a "hardware" alternative to using a "mastering house" or "software mastering".