Analog mastering. Hybrid chain, one engineer, Frankfurt.
Analog mastering means the signal actually leaves the computer. Your mix runs through real outboard - transformers, tubes, discrete circuits - where tone, glue and weight happen in a way plugins still approximate. Then it comes back in and I use digital only where digital is genuinely better: surgical EQ moves, true-peak control, loudness that behaves on every platform. One engineer, one room, one pass tuned to your song.
- HOFA-certified
- Apple Digital Masters
- 48–72h
Outboard, in the box, or an algorithm: those are the three options, and only two of them involve a person. Outboard gives density and depth for free. ITB gives precision and recall. An algorithm gives you a statistical average of other people's records. I use the first two, in that order, and never the third.
Weight you can hear, not a preset.
Hardware behaves. It saturates, it leans, it holds the low end together at levels where a clean digital chain starts to sound stiff. That behaviour is the reason the analog stage stays in the chain - not nostalgia.
Compare it against an automated service or read how the full online mastering workflow runs.
- ✓Real outboard for tone, glue and three-dimensional depth
- ✓Digital used only where it is more precise than hardware
- ✓Every setting made for your song, never recalled from a preset
- ✓Decisions made on precision monitoring in a treated room
- ✓Codec preview before delivery so nothing collapses on AAC
- ✓One engineer from first listen to final file
Not anti-digital. Anti-guessing.
An in-the-box master can be excellent. What it usually lacks is the density and the front-to-back depth the analog stage adds for free - and what an automated chain always lacks is someone who heard your reference and understood the record you were trying to make.
Also in this room: Vinyl mastering · Techno & house mastering · Stem mastering · Pricing
- Chain
- Analog EQ, compression and summing, digital where it is more precise
- Monitoring
- Kii Three, PSI AVAA, Trinnov room correction
- Conversion
- High-headroom AD/DA, one pass through the chain per song
- Deliverables
- 24-bit streaming master, optional club, radio or vinyl premaster
- Turnaround
- 48 to 72 hours standard
- First master
- Free 60-second test master, no card