Visiting a Mastering House

Two weeks ago my band, Last Relapse, finished mixing our first EP Glass Empire. We messed around with minor changes swapping out guitar solos and layering vocals till finally we were happy with the final mixes. So what next after that?

We then entered the process of mastering and sent our 24 bit mixes over to Scott Pinder at Polyphonic Mastering Labs. Mastering is essentially the process of applying precise EQs, compressors and limiters to create a stereo audio file that sounds great and loud on a wide range of systems. 

A big selling feature thsy attracted our business to Polyphonic Mastering Labs was the premium analog gear that is used in house. Analog mastering is simply in parelelled: you get the warm sounds of natural tape compression that sounds incredibly smooth to the ear. The instrument of choice to achieve this effect is the Manley Slam ADA Converter, which takes a digital signal and cycles it through an analog signal chain bringing out all the nuances and buried harmonics. 

After this conversion is complete then the signal moves through a couple premium EQs where slight corrections are. Made with great precision. Then back in the digital real, the audio is converted back to Wav digital audio where it enters the SADIE disk editing system. 

This was the point where Nolan and I jumped in to name our songs and come up with the order of songs to appear on our EP. Thankfully we had an idea. We decided to make the first song end right close to the beginning of the second song so they almost blend together: that was a pretty spur of the moment creative call the turned out great. 

Lastly we updated the ISRC codes, which actually tracks each audio file and how many times the song is copied ect. We printed two disks after Scott shared a story of how a previous client slipped getting into his car and ran over his only copy and had to come back. 

The EP will be available this weekend!