Mixing/Mastering Your Home Session Files
Kensington Sound specializes in “Vintage-Vibe” mastering. Our masters will be less hot, warmer, and have more dynamic range. We use Neve bus compressors and vintage Ashley parametrics, to get our sound insead of a million plug-ins. Instead of the loudness competition usual in most mastering houses, Kensington Sound completes your tracks with a focus on making them “more open sounding”.
THE PROCESS
We will be mixing your songs on a Mac, using Logic Pro. Though mixing in Pro Tools, or another system is an option, the results we get with Logic Pro are superior. Feel free to sit in during the mixing session, or let us spend time on it alone and present you with a first draft.
If you have recorded files that you would like to have mixed and/or mastered at Kensington Sound, please follow these simple step to ensure a smooth transition to our system:
THE FILES
1. If working in a program other then Logic Pro or Pro tools, please consolidate all files and audio instrument tracks so each file starts at the same time. Do this so the files are unprocessed (ie. no eq/compression/reverb etc) unless the sound you used on a particular track is a “character” effect that you really like and would be hard to duplicate. If this is the case it would be preferable to have the processed sound and unprocessed sound for maximum flexibility.
2. Even if you’re giving us your synth tracks in audio format try and give us a standard midi file as well. We have thousands of great sounds and you never know when we could replace a part or two with a new killer sound that you didn’t have available to you.
3. When consolidating tracks be mindful of whether it’s a stereo or mono track and give it to us as such. It will take more time to transfer your files and process them if you make them all stereo which is wasteful if they are not truly stereo.
4. If you can, clean your tracks!
- Make proper crossfades at edit points
- Make fade ins/outs at the beginning and end of audio objects so there will be no clicks.
- Get rid of any “dead air” in between parts on a track to make sure there will be no equipment hiss, headphone noise or performer shuffling.
5. Don’t be afraid of doing a bit of submixing before giving us your files. Keep the important stuff separate but if you have 3-5 takes of the same vocal harmony please just bounce it to a stereo track with no processing.
6. Write down the tempo of the song as it is in your audio software
7. We can accept files in Wave/AIF/SD2, 16/24/32 bit, 44.1/48/88.2/96/176.4/192khz.
8. When naming the consolidated files name them like this (Instrument (Part)), for example:
- Drum (Snare)
- Guitar (Lead)
FILE TRANSFER
1. If bringing us the files on a CD make sure it’s a data CD not an audio CD (ie a CD you can play in your cd player). Audio CDs tend to put 2 seconds of space at the beginning of each track which could cause the files not to line up properly. DVDs are also fine.
2. USB keys/drives are fine but it is suggested that you have a CD/DVD backup just in case the drive is not compatible with our system. It’s rare, but it happens!
3. You can also upload the files to an ftp site or via a service like yousendit.com
