Mastering is often talked about as some sort of technical dark art. And while I enjoy geeking out occasionally, at it’s core I am just a lifelong music fan hearing your work for the first time and making moves so you’ll feel confident that your record is ready to put into the world. I have a couple pointers for delivering mixes to mastering:

• Avoid sending mixes that clip your master bus. However, there is no need to lower the loudness or create a certain amount of headroom.

• You can leave on any mixbus processing. Ideally and if possible, send both the limited and unlimited mixes with screenshots of your limiter settings.

• Send your mixes as a .WAV (preferred) or .AIFF file at the sample rate and bit depth you worked at.

• Avoid upsampling or downsampling. 24 or 32 bit are ideal, but if you worked at 16 bit, that's fine too.

• Send mixes through a filesharing service (wetransfer, dropbox et al). Sending through messaging apps might compress and reduce the quality of the file.

• In case of albums or EP’s, make sure to include the track order. If you have specific wishes about transitions, make sure to include those too.

• If you are pressing vinyl or cassette, include the A and B side in your track listing.

• Make sure to include ISRC codes if you want them embedded in your tracks or CD pressing.

• If you are sending a new mix version or alt (instrumental, a capella etc), match the file length and start time of the original version.