The monetary cost of mastering...
I have been considering the price point of mastering recently as a small creative based business would always do. Mastering prices roughly range between £10.00 and £100.00 per track.
If you bear in mind the average hourly rate of an experienced sound engineer (10 years plus) is £25.00 per hour.
Lets start at the bottom: £10.00
At this price point you will encounter a few problems such as:
1)An incredibly inexperienced chancer trying to earn a few bob on the side by slapping on a limiter and calling it mastering, if you are lucky, at best on a set of Yamaha NS10's.
2)A mix engineer (of unknown experience level) doing the mastering and almost certainly plug ins only. The problem is mastering is not mixing and it is doubtful that the consideration to resolution of equipment, monitoring set up, techniques used on stereo 2 track material (which differ greatly to mixing), and acoustics has been taken care of (in both the above instances).
3) An engineer learning the ropes of mastering, good intentions but lacking equipment, knowledge and experience.
£25.00 -£30.00 track
At this price point you will also get a wide variation in engineer experience level, however the person at the controls should at least have a very good professional grounding and a wide experience of various types of sound engineering such as recording and mixing. In addition you should be looking for places that have well treated rooms, reference quality monitoring, high grade DSP (paid for software, shock horror, yes it does happen ) and analogue equipment (i.e. EQ and compression). They should have a nice list of clients and real world experience before you hand over your hard earned. Always get a free preview at this price point as a
way of sorting the men from the boys. The website should display some images of the engineer and some evidence that the equipment mentioned actually exists ! i.e. high resolution speakers, equipment racks and room treatment.
£45.00-60.00 per track
At this level it would be normal to see dedicated facility for mastering (no 24 channel mixing consoles stuck in the middle of room) bespoke designed rooms with very high end monitoring of £10K + and normally you would expect considerable DSP and analogue choices available to the engineer as this really is quite a lot of money for mastering a track based on the £25.00 per hour for the engineers labour fee.
£60.00 - £100.00
World class dedicated mastering facility, well known named engineer with all choices available in
the £45-£60 category above.
Summary:
Ultimately it is an issue of budget......... or is it? If you are considering £45.00 - £60.00 mastering you owe it to yourself to get a preview from a well reputed £25.00 per track mastering studio, the difference can be zero and it will largely be the skill and time taken by the engineer that will produce the results. So do get a preview master and compare and contrast.
Barry Gardner
http://www.masteringmastering.co.uk/
If you bear in mind the average hourly rate of an experienced sound engineer (10 years plus) is £25.00 per hour.
Lets start at the bottom: £10.00
At this price point you will encounter a few problems such as:
1)An incredibly inexperienced chancer trying to earn a few bob on the side by slapping on a limiter and calling it mastering, if you are lucky, at best on a set of Yamaha NS10's.
2)A mix engineer (of unknown experience level) doing the mastering and almost certainly plug ins only. The problem is mastering is not mixing and it is doubtful that the consideration to resolution of equipment, monitoring set up, techniques used on stereo 2 track material (which differ greatly to mixing), and acoustics has been taken care of (in both the above instances).
3) An engineer learning the ropes of mastering, good intentions but lacking equipment, knowledge and experience.
£25.00 -£30.00 track
At this price point you will also get a wide variation in engineer experience level, however the person at the controls should at least have a very good professional grounding and a wide experience of various types of sound engineering such as recording and mixing. In addition you should be looking for places that have well treated rooms, reference quality monitoring, high grade DSP (paid for software, shock horror, yes it does happen ) and analogue equipment (i.e. EQ and compression). They should have a nice list of clients and real world experience before you hand over your hard earned. Always get a free preview at this price point as a
way of sorting the men from the boys. The website should display some images of the engineer and some evidence that the equipment mentioned actually exists ! i.e. high resolution speakers, equipment racks and room treatment.
£45.00-60.00 per track
At this level it would be normal to see dedicated facility for mastering (no 24 channel mixing consoles stuck in the middle of room) bespoke designed rooms with very high end monitoring of £10K + and normally you would expect considerable DSP and analogue choices available to the engineer as this really is quite a lot of money for mastering a track based on the £25.00 per hour for the engineers labour fee.
£60.00 - £100.00
World class dedicated mastering facility, well known named engineer with all choices available in
the £45-£60 category above.
Summary:
Ultimately it is an issue of budget......... or is it? If you are considering £45.00 - £60.00 mastering you owe it to yourself to get a preview from a well reputed £25.00 per track mastering studio, the difference can be zero and it will largely be the skill and time taken by the engineer that will produce the results. So do get a preview master and compare and contrast.
Barry Gardner
http://www.masteringmastering.co.uk/
