Preparing Your Mix for Mastering
Getting your mix ready for mastering is mostly about avoiding preventable issues. This guide covers best practice for exporting your stereo mix so it is ready for mastering and can achieve the best possible result.
Introduction:
Preparing a mix for mastering is generally much simpler than preparing multitracks for mixing, but there are still a few important things to get right. The aim is to provide a clean, high-quality stereo file that gives the mastering engineer enough room to work without unwanted processing causing problems.
While the below covers best practice, there can of course be exceptions depending on the project. If you have any questions at all, please do get in touch.
Master Bus Processing:
Remove any limiter from your master bus before export. This is one of the most important steps when preparing your mix for mastering, as heavy limiting can reduce dynamics and make it harder to achieve the best possible result during mastering.
It is also recommended to remove any non-essential master bus processing. For example, if you have added compression, EQ, saturation, stereo enhancement, or clipping purely to make the rough mix louder or more exciting while producing, these should generally be turned off before export..
However, if a particular master bus effect is a deliberate and essential part of the sound, you may wish to keep it on. In this case, it is often best to export two versions of the mix, one with the processing left on and one without it. Clearly label these versions so the mastering engineer knows which is which.
Headroom:
Leave at least 3 dB of headroom on your final mix export. In practical terms, this means the loudest peak in the song should stay below -3 dBFS.
This helps avoid clipping and gives the mastering engineer enough room to apply final processing cleanly. There is no need to make your mix as loud as possible before sending it for mastering - that is part of what mastering is for.
If your mix sounds quieter than commercially released music, that is completely normal.
Export Settings
Export your final mix as a stereo WAV or AIFF file.
A minimum sample rate of 44.1 kHz and a minimum bit depth of 16-bit is acceptable, though 24-bit is preferred where available. If your project was recorded or mixed at a higher sample rate, it is generally best to export at that native sample rate rather than converting it unnecessarily.
If your DAW has a normalise option when exporting, please turn this off.
Make sure you are exporting the full final mix from the very start of the song to the very end, including any reverb or delay tails.
If you are sending multiple songs for an EP or album, please label each file clearly with the artist name and track title.
References
If you have a rough mix version that you have been listening to throughout production, it can be helpful to include that alongside the clean export for mastering. This gives the mastering engineer a sense of the balance and energy you are used to hearing.
You are also welcome to include a text file or PDF with any relevant notes, such as the artist name, track title, BPM, and any specific concerns or requests for the master.
Feel free to also include links (YouTube is fine) to professionally released tracks that reflect the tone, loudness, or overall feel you are aiming for. Providing Mick with these reference tracks will help him to better understand the sound you are after and deliver a final master that translates as well as possible across different listening systems.
Need mixing first? Read: Preparing Your Multitracks for Mixing