General Guidelines

Please provide a 24-bit (or 32-bit floating point) WAV or AIFF file at the same sample rate as your mixing session. mp3 files (or WAV/AIFF files converted from mp3) will not be accepted.

Ideally the mix has no peak-limiting, clipping, maximizing, or other loudness processing on the master fader or overall stereo mix. Providing a mix with dynamic range/headroom to work with will usually produce the best end results. Don’t worry if it’s not yet as loud as another mastered song that you are referencing. The final loudness can and will be addressed in mastering.

• If you or your mixing engineer have been mixing with a peak-limiter or other loudness processing applied, please send both a version with and without it for evaluation and reference purposes.

• Send the mix at the same sample rate as your mixing session. Don’t convert the sample rate to anything different which can degrade the audio. For the bit-depth, save at the highest bit-depth your DAW allows. Regardless of the recorded bit-depth (often 24-bit), please set the bit-depth of the final mix/render/bounce to 32-bit floating point. REAPER and Cubase users have an option for 64-bit floating point as well. Most DAWs allow 32-bit render/bounce/export. 
The reason for this is that most DAWs process audio at 32-bit floating point (or higher), so even if the recording setting is 24-bit, your mix is happening at a higher bit-depth which should be preserved. 

• Provide any special notes in the notes section before adding to the cart, or you can add additional notes via the file upload page. You’ll receive an email after you've successfully uploaded your file.

Special Notes

Special notes may include other songs to reference while mastering, certain issues that you’d like to address with the sound, or if any noises before or after the song should be removed or left in.

• If your song has any potentially unwanted noise at the start or end from things such as recording equipment, a guitar amp, room noise, etc, please leave a few seconds of ONLY THE NOISE at the start or end of the mix file. This allows us to do some detailed and transparent noise reduction to eliminate the noise. Leaving a few seconds of just the noise with no musical sounds is important. Trimming is easy so when in doubt, leave some heads and tails for us to work with.

• Please carefully listen to the actual mix file you are submitting to be sure there are no errors, problems, or issues that need to be addressed before mastering. Sometimes a DAW or plugin can produce an error on the render/bounce/export that isn't present on playback in the DAW while mixing. Doing a quality control listen of your actual mix file before uploading will help ensure that the mastering doesn’t need to be redone because of an issue with the source file.