Essential To-Do's Before Sending Your Track To Mastering

The guys from our mastering studio mentioned some helpful tips on how to prepare your tracks for mastering in an audio/video. Summing them up briefly :

Here are some essential tips:

• Make sure that there are no effects on your master channel when you bounce (export): 
• In case you have essential effects on your master, send 2 versions:
• fx mix, giving your engineer an idea of the effect
• no fx mix, giving him the opportunity to apply his effects
• however: don't leave any limiter in place

• Make sure the level of your track peaks somewhere between -6 and -3dB
• If the peak level of your track is higher than -3dB, reduce the levels of the single tracks rather than lowering the master fader
• Eliminate unwanted noise within your mix (for example by applying low cut and try to keep your mix clean and dynamic
• Leave some silence at the beginning and at the end of the exported track (2 - 8 bars)
• Bounce your track in the format your used audio samples where saved in (24 bit is the most common and adequate)
• Don't normalize or apply any dither when you export
• Think about realistic and relevant reference tracks that you might be able to suggest to your mastering engineer.

Remember: Mixing should be done before the mastering process. Make sure to find the right balance for your track (volumes and eqing of the individual tracks) before sending it to mastering - the mastering engineer will only be able to treat the sum of your efforts, not the individual tracks/channels.

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