How much does a mastering engineer cost?

Mastering is not a one-size-fits-all process, in the sense that every project is unique and every mastering engineer has their own take on how a given audio project should be mastered. Furthermore, every mastering engineer is working with a different level of experience and specialisation, and from different studios. This all points to the cost of mastering being based on a number of factors. These factors may include project scope, delivery time, experience and status, and equipment and facilities. Below is some discussion about the factors affecting the cost of mastering:

Project scope — A music mastering project might be a single, an EP, an album, a double album, or perhaps a remaster of an entire bands catalogue (at the extreme). Though the underlying goal of a mastering engineer remains the same regardless of the project scope, the complexity and duration of the project is governed by its scope. On the more complex end, an album that was recorded over five years, across ten different studios and a bedroom might take a little more consideration when mastering to get the songs to sit on the same album. On the shorter end, perhaps a 3-minute single that sounds incredible already, and the mastering engineer just makes the slightest of adjustments and adds metadata. When you discuss your project with a mastering engineer and the project scope becomes apparent this will influence the quoted price.

Delivery time — As with many services if you want things quicker you tend to pay a premium. A mastering engineer can work quite quickly compared to a mixing engineer, or a recording engineer due to the nature of the task. But, we are dealing with music, a medium that has duration, and thus there is a minimum time that’s required to achieve a good result. A common scenario might be an EP master. If you give a mastering engineer a deadline that’s a month or two away, then all is well and that engineer will slot the EP into their schedule. On the other hand, if you want it done in 24 hours that’s going to require a bit of overtime, or a schedule adjustment from the mastering engineer, and most engineers will pass this cost on to the client. Some mastering engineers do advertise a ‘rush’ mastering rate for projects on the timescale of hours or days.

Experience and status — Over a career a mastering engineer develops elite skills, and their ability to provide value to your audio project increases. Furthermore, the mastering engineer might become the go-to person for a given sound or type of audio project – holding some special status in the industry. This kind of specialised, elite skillset, and guarantee of quality attracts a premium. Therefore, you may pay less for a first year mastering engineer, and you may pay a great deal more for a mastering engineer with 20 years experience and four Grammys to their name.

Equipment and facilities — In symbiosis with the experience and status factor, some mastering engineers work in huge spaces with hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment, property overheads, and employees. Others, are one-person operations perhaps simply with a laptop, digital to analog converter, and pair of headphones. Both ends of this spectrum have the potential to make a great master, but one of these mastering engineers is going to have a ‘cost price’ that is way higher than the other and this will be reflected in their mastering rate.

In Summary

To get the best value for money make a self assessment of your project before putting it forward to a mastering engineer. Consider questions like: What is the scope of the project? When is the deadline for the master? Is your audience for your music going to appreciate the extra sonic qualities a top-end mastering engineer will provide?

Then get in contact with a few mastering engineers and get a few quotes. Then you can assess the value of these quotes in relation to your project and your desired outcome.

“Yes, but…how much does a mastering engineer cost?”

For a piece of music under 5 minutes in length, expect to pay somewhere between $100 and AUD $500 [USD $80 – $360]. Below $100 I’d say the results may be unpredictable, perhaps amazing value, or maybe hit or miss; over $100 stable and professional; and, approaching $500 you’re talking to big name mastering engineers. Undoubtably, you could pay less that $100 or more than $500, but somewhere in that range is common and would allow you to find a mastering engineer that’s a good fit for your project.

orphans — acquiescence/coalescence

The new orphans album has been a long time coming. Recorded in early 2019, and having congealed, fermented, and matured, it is out Friday May 21st. The album continues Dom Barrett (guitar), Ben Greene (drums) and Dan O’Connor’s (trumpet) exploration of sound and texture, constantly alluding to vision and narrative. The record liner notes read:

The departure from, and return to a singular, innocuous point in time—without moving, without thinking, without duration.

orphans often craft a situation or imagined context for their recorded work in order to anchor the art, and perhaps provide a starting point for the listener. On acquiescence/coalescence the band consider the instantaneous and the possibility of perceiving time outside of its regular flow. The situation is captured in crayon by artist Holli Scott for the cover artwork and the music is best consumed in one sitting and via headphones.

The first track acquiescence is streaming now on Bandcamp. It hits all your favourite streaming sights on Friday, May 21st.

Who is the best mastering engineer?

There are many fantastic mastering engineers in the world! When we discuss mastering we are talking about art, sound and music, and so there is no real framework to decide who “the best” might be. However the field does have prominent practitioners who have carved out a space for themselves through long careers, groundbreaking albums, adoption or development of state of the art technology, or great educational initiatives.

So, here are five excellent mastering engineers that are prominent and well established in the industry today (presented in alphabetical order). All have their unique approach, check out the recommended recordings for a sense of their work, and follow the links for more information.

Heba Kadry — Kadry is a Brooklyn, NY-based mastering engineer working on a wide range of music that often leans towards boundary pushing indie artists, her discography almost seems like the catalogue of an adventurously and forward looking record label. Kadry notes that she only works on music that she really likes, and I’d suggest this approach is the best way to build an amazing and unique discography, and it certainly amplifies the creative spirit in these records. From cadre’s vast discography Gordi’s Our Two Skins (Jagjaguwar, Liberation, 2020) sounds great, and is Australian, so is recommend.

Bob Katz — Katz is a multi-Grammy Award winning mastering engineer working out of his Digital Domain mastering house in the USA. He is an active educator and spokes person for audio quality and high fidelity. His book Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science is a much lorded, in-depth look at the mastering process. Katz’s work spans multiple genres having worked with artists and ensembles around the world. One of my more recent favourite Katz masters is Huntsville’s For The Middle Class (Rune Grammofon, 2006).

Bob Ludwig — Ludwig is one of the biggest names in the business having mastered may chart topping records for artists like Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Tori Amos, Bee Gees, Beck, Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead and so many more. He continues to master at the highest level out of his Gateway Mastering Studios in Portland, Maine. Radiohead’s In Rainbows (Radiohead, 2007) is a favourite.

Emily Lazar — Lazar is prominent in the billboard charts working with huge names like Coldplay, HAIM, and Jacob Collier. She founded The Lodge Mastering in Greenwich Village, NY and continues to work out of there. Lazar has a Grammy for work on Beck’s Colors (Capitol Records, 2019), and I love that album, so recommend checking it out.

Piper Payne — Payne is a prolific mastering engineer in Nashville, TN working under the Infrasonic Mastering banner. Payne is also highly active in education and in shaping the recording industry for the better, holding prominent roles in the Recording Academy and Audio Engineer Society. For some wild choral music listen to Volti’s This is What Happened (innova, 2017).

Katie Tavini — Tavini is a London-based mastering engineer and founder of the Weird Jungle mastering collective. She is currently dominating the indie band scene working with Bloc Party, Be Gregory, ARXX, and We Are Scientists. The Pillow Queens record Leave The Light On (Royal Mountain Records, 2022) is a winner from Tavini’s catalogue.

digital penetration — strata

strata is the new video album from experimental vocalist Sage Pbbbt, working under the pseudonym digital penetration. Pbbbt pieces together this sonically rich, glitchy record from acoustic and electronic samples manipulated in Reaper, and accompanies the work with visual component created in the same fashion. The pace and repetition of the music allows the listener to shift between the audio strata and engage at different time scales over the album. Also outstanding is the variation between tracks which reveals some heavy drops and disorienting moments, ultimately feeding anticipation for whatever might happen next.

strata is out now on Tone List

Produced by Sage Pbbbt
Mastered by Dan @ENCODERSound

strata will premiere in at the Audible Edge Festival 2021, April 17th, at Backlot Cinema

What does a mastering engineer do?

From a production perspective, creating a contemporary music release can be roughly divided into three main phases: recording, mixing, and mastering. In the recording phase individual instrument and vocal parts are recorded into a Digital Audio Workstation (or onto a physical format). In the mixing phase these parts are combined and balanced to the elicit the desired experience for the piece of audio. And finally, in the mastering phase the many songs of a project are brought together into a cohesive whole and considered in the context of the wider musical and commercial world. The mastering engineer is the person who finalises the audio, both sonically and in terms of format, utilising analog and digital audio signal processing to optimise audio for the maximum enjoyment of the listener, however they choose to listen.

Key to the mastering process is the engineers fresh perspective, trained ears, and specialised tools that ensure a level of professional quality and listener satisfaction in the finished audio media (music, podcast, film sound, etc.). To this end, a great mastering engineer possesses a wealth of accumulated listening experience that allows them to have a sense of how any recorded audio should be adjusted in order for it to translate to the end listener optimally. In most cases this listening experience has come from a true love of music and many years of listening to music of many genres and styles.

As a mastering engineer begins to work professionally they start to accrue thousands of dedicated listening hours in the same listening environment, which in the best cases is a professionally designed acoustic space with a very accurate monitoring system. Having heard a great deal of music and other audio in this same accurate listening environment a mastering engineer develops a mental sonic imprint of how certain program material, of varying genres and styles, could sound.

When a finished mix is presented to the mastering engineer, the mastering engineer considers this new piece of music in the context of this mental sonic imprint and makes subtle changes to sonic characteristics of the music such that it sits comfortably for them in their listening environment, and therefore comfortably in the wider world.

In making changes to the sonic characteristic of audio material the mastering engineer requires specialised signal processing tools, which can include:

Equalizer (EQ) — A filter that adjusts certain frequency bands by adding or removing energy from the specified frequencies. Perhaps the low frequencies of some piece of music are generally overpowering the midrange, a mastering engineer might use an EQ to reduce the level of the problematic low frequencies.

Compressor — A processor that sdjusts the dynamic range of a signal relative to the input level of the signal. A compressor begins to act on a signal when it reaches a given input threshold. When this threshold is crossed gain reduction is applied to the signal. A compressor also allows the mastering engineer to adjust the speed with which this gain reduction occurs, essentially shaping the envelope of transients above the threshold.

Limiter — A processor that prevents a signal from exceeding a specified level. Often in mastering this level is somewhere close to digital zero (-1.0 dBFS, for example). The limiter provides a safety that prevents levels going over the nominated ceiling (which if left would produce obviously poor playback artefacts) and also allows the average signal level to be increased above what would otherwise be possible. In the latter situation the overall level of the material is increased but anything hitting the ceiling is attenuated.

Although these signal processors are also used when recording or mixing the equalizers, compressors, and limiters in a mastering studio are often made to higher specifications and closer tolerances to facilitate very detailed work. Additional to the common mastering processors above, mastering engineers may employ processor made for harmonic saturation, and stereo width adjustment, and in the majority of cases some combination of the processors listed is used. Processing can occur in the digital and/or analog domain.

A mastering engineer is the final person to adjust the sonic characteristic of audio material and finalise digital audio files (or analog media) ready for production and/or digital distribution. This may include addition of metadata, the production of a DDP file (used to produce CD), or the cutting of a lacquer (which is needed to produce vinyl records).