Audio Mastering

Starsound Studios has high-end mastering equipment and takes an immaculate sonic approach to mix and master audio. Starsound Studios melds them together. We blend it instead of taking the traditional, combining the audio of a song independently of mastering. Then, open another program to master the music separate from the mixing stage. We do it all together at once.

We first run the summed audio out of the analog summing box into our analog 500 modules. It goes through our three Rupert Neve Designs modules and the Analog Designs Black Box. An auxiliary track brings the analog stereo result back inside Pro-Tools.

The audio then receives further digital processing by plugins on that auxiliary track. The new processing would include our custom-made pre-set on the Studer tape plugin. We then use a very surgical approach with our Sum and Side plugin. Last but not least is the audio limiter. Using a limiter at the end of the chain will bring a song track up to that competitive radio level.

Our mastering process is comprehensive. First, we start with the usual plugins on the master AUX channel. Then, we bounce the master AUX track to a second AUX track with three plugins to reach exacting LUFS and genre-specific tonal balance. Of course, those three plugins are in a specific order for a particular reason. Izotope’s Ozone 9 Advanced EQ is first. The second is another excellent product of Izotope is Tonal Balance. The third and most important is Process Audio's Decibel. The Ozone products speak to each other. That inter-plugin communication lets us use Ozone's research into hundreds of thousands of songs within Tonal Balance to see if we have reached the same EQ balance as their research. Usually, we are close if not achieving their exact target. Ozone's Tonal Balance speaks to Ozone 9's EQ if we do not hit the precise target, and we can correct that without leaving Tonal Balance. The last plugin in the chain is Process Audio’s Decibel. Decibel is a powerful audiometer that lets us achieve exacting LUFS social media standards.

Using these three plugins allows for strict LUFS mastering standards and genre-specific EQ. The final step is to bounce the meter AUX track to an audio track to record every LUFS goal to stereo audio. WAV masters. You receive one for every social media standard. There are three targets, and they are -11 LUFS, -14 LUFS, and -16 LUFS. Next, we make MP-3's from the. WAV LUFS standard masters. Then, we make the MP-3's masters in the standalone Ozone 9 Advanced. Ozone 9 Advanced creation of MP-3’s sounds better to our ears than simply bouncing out of ProTools. We like the metadata creation within Ozone 9 as well. The process is long and tedious but well worth the time spent.