- Listen to your tracks on as many sources as possible outside of your studio. Your car, home stereo, a friends house, system with a sub. As many as possible. This will often show any glaring problems in the mix.
- Avoid clipping the signal in the master buss. You can go all the way to 0db. That’s fine. But don’t go above 0db. If you are unsure, leave -.2db headroom.
- Where possible send 24 bit or 32 bit WAV files for mastering. 16 bit files can be mastered but they don’t have the dynamic range and headroom that 24 bit and 32 bit files have.
- Mp3 files are not recommended for mastering.
- If want a pre-master for vinyl avoid stereo in the bass frequencies. Stereo bass content can be removed but if you have mixed your tracks with stereo bass information, chances are you did it for effect and emotional impact. If the stereo bass information is removed in mastering, the track will most likely be effected and loose some of it’s impact. So best you mix the track without the stereo bass information. Also avoid excessive harmonic distortion effects and super wide stereo effects. Basically the rule of thumb when preparing for vinyl is avoid extremes. Too much high frequency content or sibilance can also cause problems. Other than too much distortion and extreme psycho-acoustic effects, mastering can reign in all other problems for vinyl. But if the original track is changed too much in the mastering process, it will probably loose some of it’s impact. So best you avoid the current and popular bigger/better/wider/higher/deeper objective of current modern digital mixing and production if your aim is to print to vinyl. Or mix two separate tracks. One for digital delivery, and one for vinyl.
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