• Stem mastering studio with ATC monitors at Schaltgeraete Studios Berlin
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Schaltgeraete Studios

Stem Mastering

$224.00 USD
$224.00 USD
Sale Sold out
Stems

Can’t figure out why your vocal or kick drum is not working in your track? With stem-mastering we can work on a vocal or kick drum before it reaches the mastering chain and make sure the mix is on the next level while being on a budget. Including three revisions.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Recommended Stem Structures

Requirement 5-Stem Structure (Essentials)

1. Kick Drum 2. All Drums (without Kick) 3. The rest of the music 4. Lead Vocal (incl. FX) 5. Backing Vocals with FX

10-Stem Structure (Maximum Control)

1. Kick Drum 2. Snare 3. High Percussion (hats, claps) 4. Low Percussion (toms) 5. All Bass Instruments 6. All Guitars 7 All Pads (sustain keyboard instruments) 8 All Lead Synths 9 Lead Vocal with FX 10 All Backing Vocals with FX

Important Delivery Notes

  • **Consistency Check:** Please ensure that when the stems are played back together in a mixer, they sound **exactly the same as your rough mix**.
  • **Rough Mix:** Always provide your **final stereo rough mix** along with the stems for reference.
  • **Effects (FX):** Stems should include all desired effects (reverb, delay, etc.) baked in, unless otherwise specified.
  • Please deliver 24 bit wav files in the same sample rate you recorded or mixed in.
  • Please DO NOT normalize any of the files so the exported stems sound the same as the rough mix played back altogether.

You can upload a reference track or provide a Spotify or Tidal playlist.

Let us also know what you like in particular about your mix and what it is lacking in your opinion.

This both lets us better understand your vision of your song or album.

Included in the price are max. 3 revisions. So if you want your master a little bit brighter or the vocal tucked back a little bit, don't worry about it, we got you covered.

Vinyl is a unique medium. Due to the physics of the format, there is naturally less dynamic range and high-end clarity on the inner grooves of a record than on the outer edge. Furthermore, it is sensitive to out-of-phase signals, excessive bass, and sibilance; while phase and bass issues can cause the needle to jump, sibilance leads to harsh distortion.

This is why we strongly suggest booking the vinyl mastering add-on, so we can make the necessary technical alterations and provide dedicated master files for each side of the record. Lastly, a piece of advice: Sequence your album so the loudest, brightest tracks are at the beginning of a side. Save the quieter, stripped-back ballads for the end where the fidelity is naturally lower.

The Apple Digital Masters program was developed by Apple to ensure the highest possible audio quality for music on its platforms, including Apple Music and the iTunes Store.

Instead of simply converting a final master into a compressed format, the program provides mastering engineers with a set of guidelines and tools to create a high-resolution, uncompressed master specifically optimized for Apple’s encoding process.

We are certified by Apple to produce a dedicated ADM master file (Apple Digital Masters). Price is per track, as an add-on to a regular master.

Add the amount of mastering or stem-mastering to the basket and go to catalog and find product 'DDP Image'. This only needs to be added once to the basket per record.