Preparing audio files for online mastering

Hi everyone I am a new member (Barry) and just wanted to write a few lines for you. I have been lucky enough to record some African musical warriors as well, Tony Allen, Mulatu Astatke and Baaba Maal, all live London performances so I have some experience with the wonderful music of Africa. I am not a beginner, lol.

Preparing music for mastering

Once you have mixed your audio tracks they are ready to be despatched for mastering.(or self finalizing) Prior to delivering your files it is recommended that you make sure that any loudness maximizers and limiters are switched off on the stereo master bus as the mastering engineer will be able to make this up again using limiters specifically chosen to suit the audio material at hand. When you remove a limiter do consider that this might mean that the signal level could easily clip the master bus output. (this means the signal level has exceeded digital zero (0dBFS). here is usually a indicator red light on the output meter in applications such as Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Fruity Loops , Reaper, Reason, Sequoia. Clipping can be identified after exporting by zooming into the resultant files waveform and checking the peaks of the waveform for "squaring off". Clipping means that the finite amount of numbers in a digital system has been exceeded and therefore the audio signal is no longer accurately represented and is instead just given the last numerical value. Successive clipping points result in a square topped waveform which only drops when the signal level goes below clip point. Re-balancing the mix at this stage is impractical and complex so it is suggested that the master fader be pulled down by the no. of decibels to stop the incidence of clipping. This is a compromise which will have very little effect on the audio quality.

The preferred file formats for mixes are .aiff and .wav.These are both high quality audio file formats which aresuitable for mastering.Ideally the files will be at 24bit resolution. (In your digital audio workstation you will find that when you export / bounce your tracks you can choose between 16/24 bit. Choose 24 bit. In addition check that your workstation is set to export "Stereo Interleaved" files. This means that the left and right channel will be locked in time and exported as one single file which is perfect for mastering. The audio sample rate can be left at the same sample rate as the project (i.e. 44.1kHz/ 48kHz/ 88.2kHz/ 96kHz)

It is not ideal to send MP3, Ogg Vorbis or .WMA files for mastering. These file formats are lossy formats using (lossy codecs). This means that the data that comprises the music is compressed and some of the data is lost when the audio is data reduced. The algorhythm's employed throw away sonic information which is deemed unnecessary in order to reduce the file size. This means the files are not of the best possible quality and this is not the best for mastering which is trying to maximise your mixes sonic potential.

cheers and have a great day everyone.