An Accurate Listening Environment

Critical listening is probably the single most important part of any studio. You cannot correct what you cannot hear accurately. Our room is carefully treated for mastering. Renowned studio designer and acoustics consultant Jim Keller at Sondhus has extensively analyzed our studio for room modes, natural decays, and early reflections, laser aligning the monitoring speakers placement. This maximizes our stereo image “sweet spot” and addresses any constructive (or destructive) speaker boundary interference response (SBIR). Any measurable flutter echo, comb filtering, and standing waves has been eliminated with acoustic wall panels and bass traps from GIK Acoustics, thus creating a neutral environment for listening to your tracks.

Full Range Monitoring

Our monitoring path consist of dedicated mastering grade digital-to-analog converters, studio monitoring controller and high-end speakers. We've chosen the Barefoot MicroMain 27 speakers as our main monitors for their amazing transparency and accuracy translating to other listening environments and systems. They have an even frequency response 30Hz to 45kHz (±3dB) - from a big bottom, warm punchy midrange to a wide clear top end, at both low and high playback levels. They are a wonderful mastering reference speaker. As the saying goes: “Barefoots don't lie”

As a backup reference, we have a pair of Tyler Acoustics D1's, a quintessential speaker system at many world-class mastering houses. For crosschecking on headphones, we utilize a pair of Audeze LCD-X Headphones – arguably one of the finest sounding headphones in the market.

Signal Path

The audio leaves the computer via CraneSong's HEDD 192, a high-end AD/DA converter considered by many to be a workhorse. From the converter, it goes through a 100% analogue mastering console hand-built by Maselec. In the console's inserts, we've added premium and customized hardware: it's got everything from tube compression and valve equalizers to tape reel saturation. This can add lots of character and warmth to any recording, though most significantly to digital audio recordings mixed in-the-box. Once the signal is processed, it goes back to the HEDD, and into the computer for any final edits. Depending on the situation, project, and content, we may utilize mastering software applications for very transparent processing, fine editing, and precise sequencing.

Mastering Console

We've selected a Maselec MTC-1X as our master transfer console. It's a very neutral piece of gear with mastering-grade gains, a stereo width control, M-S with gain controls, parallel processing, cut-off filters, and an elliptical filter for vinyl cutting. The advantage of this console is having all the mastering gear connected directly to it, thus avoiding any potential signal degradation.  It is also fantastic for A/B comparisons at every stage of the chain, you can always reference back to the original mixdown rather easily, making the workflow efficient.

Mastering Equipment List