Mastering is the final process in all professional recordings. "Mastering" is often a mystery to many people. However, the goal of mastering is quite simple, to take a song and make it reach its greatest potential. Getting the best sound out of your newly mixed songs generally requires a third party, a mastering engineer with a fresh set of ears, one who has not been immersed in the process of tracking and mixing those songs. Many recording studios do not specialize in mastering, which also creates a need for a proper mastering studio.

The process of mastering is about objective listening, adding a third party to the table also adds another way of thinking about the big picture. Second in importance to a mastering engineer's finely trained ears, are the tools of the mastering engineer. This includes an accurate well-tuned room (listening enviroment), an extremely high quality monitoring path including extremely accurate Analog to Digital and Digital to Analog converters, and high fidelity accurate mastering quality monitors (speakers). These are the basics for listening and playback. Additionally, professional mastering often employs EQ, Compression, and other processing. In general, we prefer to use analog mastering tools instead of their digital counterparts when it comes to processing.

Although mastering takes generally less time than recording and mixing of any project, it is no less important. The whole goal of mastering, is for your music to have a national sound, a professional final master ready to be sent to duplication. We create consistent volumes between songs, we can make songs louder, we employ consistent equalization (i.e. bass, mids, highs), we smooth transitions between songs (fade ins, fade outs, standardized or custom space between tracks). Often times, songs are too "bright" or "bass heavy" before mastering, that also can be remedied. The talent of a mastering engineer lies in knowing what is called for in a particular situation. The creativity lies in adding warmth, depth, widening the stereo image of a recording, and masterfully using EQ to bring out the best in a song. The end result of our mastering will add a theme of continuity in the entire project and from one song to the next.

Mastering Engineer - Nathan Eldred is well known and respected nationally among audio engineers for his knowledge and expertise in the field. Nathan Eldred has over 9 years commercial mastering experience. With his experience, golden ears, and our arsenal of true mastering quality gear you can't go wrong with Atlas Mastering, we gaurantee it!

You need to have your project mastered by a professional...

Mastering can do the following things:

1. Stereo Editing rearrange songs, intro fades, end fades, space between songs.
2. Create Volume Consistency between all songs.
3. Maximum Volume Levels to be equal with professional national standards. We avoid over compression as a rule unless otherwise requested.
4. Change Sonic Character of songs through use of high quality EQ.
5. Stereo Compression and Limiting to make your songs "radio ready".
6. Add "Sonic Glue" this can include using analog tape & DSP processing.
7. Add "Warmth", Create "Depth" to your music.
8. Improve Overall Stereo Imaging of your music.

Atlas Mastering Suite Features:

• Acoustic design by Nathan Eldred, professionally tuned to maximize accuracy, clarity, and precision of the listening and recording environments necessary for all stages of the recording and mastering process.
• Uniquely designed mastering studio which features a completely new listening room. The listening room is equipted with and professionally tuned.
• Analog mastering! Racks full of the BEST gear money can buy, tube and solid state gear, eqs, compressors, plus analog tape.
• We use audiophile mastering monitors. The PMC AML-1 Monitors are critically acclaimed and designed especially for use in mastering. PMC monitors are used by Abbey Road Studios, Brian May (of Queen), Crystal Method, DigiDesign - UK, Dolby Europe, Dolby Laboratories - San Francisco, Lucasfilm, Paramount Mastering- LA, Polygram - NY, Sony Broadcast - UK, Sony Mastering- NY to name a few.
• We only use the highest quality mastering equipment. Our Mastering Equipment includes:

Klein & Hummel O300D Monitors
PMC AML-1 Mastering Monitors
Millennia Media NSEQ-2
Crane Song Trakkers
Crane Song HEDD-192s
Chandler TG-1
Chandler TG Channels
TubeTech CL1Bs
Ampex ATR-800 1/4" 2 Track Analog Reel to Reel
Lavry 4496 Blue Series Stereo A/D
Lavry 4496 Blue Series Stereo D/A
Mytek Stereo192 ADC
Mytek Stereo96 DAC
Plus way more, check out the A Rate Gear List!
Over 9 years experience mastering music!


Digital Processing:
Weiss Digital EQ1-DYN Dynamic 96kHz EQ
Kurzweil KSP8
Sonic Timeworks Mastering Limiter
Waves "Masters" w/"Lookahead" Function

• L2 Limiter
• Linear Multiband Compressor
• Linear Multiband EQ

Digital Editing:
Samplitude 7.12 (Most current version)