Mastering is the final artistic and technical production step a song or record goes through before master files are sent to the manufacturing plant or distributed to streaming services. 

During mastering Tom's focus is on good balances, appropriate power, and honoring the sonic world of every song. 

Having an experienced set of ears listen to your music in a true critical listening environment provides the opportunity to assess how the music will translate to the wide range of playback situations in the world. If things sound great, terrific! If things need a little, or a little more than a litte help, that will be clear as well. 

A DDP fileset (see DDP FAQ) is created for all cd projects, as well as 16 and 24 bit WAV files, and 320kbps MP3 files. Other formats can easily be supplied as needed (FLAC, AIF, etc.). 

Final files go into Dropbox, a cloud storage service, where they remain for at least a few years. Links are provided to download the files (no Dropbox account needed), and the links can also be used to send the music to reviewers, record labels, your mom, or your agent.

Clients who are making cds have had good luck with Discmakers, Atomic Disc, and TSI. AtoZ Media is excellent if you need a more boutique package.

Sign up with an aggregator. Many clients like Tunecore and Distrokid. cdBaby seems stuck in the past as of this writing and only accepts 16bit files which keeps your music out of the "high resolution" bins in streaming services like Tidal and Qobuz, but some people still like cdBaby. 

After working with several aggregators over the years, Tom moved all his music to Downtown Music Services.

Each aggregator has different methods and financial practices.

A DDP is a package of files containing all the audio parts needed for a manufacturing plant to make cds. The Disc Description Protocol has been around for ages and works quite well to deliver audio and metadata (see Metadata FAQ) to the plant in a fairly bulletproof way. A .zip file of the DDP folder that can be sent directly to the plant can be downloaded from Dropbox, or you can simply send the plant a link to the file in Dropbox. Easy!

Metadata is information about information. When it comes to music,  metadata is text (and, ideally, the cover art) which gets embedded in the audio files. Artist names, album names, track titles and times, year of release, composer credits, and ISRC (see ISRC FAQ below) codes are all typically embedded in the DDP (see DDP FAQ above) and in the individual exported track masters.

An ISRC code is a unique alphanumeric identifier that travels with each track in the streaming world. ISRC codes also get embedded on physical cds. Visit www.usisrc.org to learn more.

Usually Tom can master a record in a day, unless there is a lot of clean up to do. Cleaning unwanted sounds out of recordings, like clocks, birds, or cars driving by adds time to the process. Tom strives to create an experience that is free of “what was that?” events. Anything that breaks the moment has to be questioned and cleaning those events out of a record takes time.

Some music can be made pretty loud without any downside,  some music just doesn’t want to be loud because it's supposed to be peaceful, and some music starts to lose the intention behind it as it’s made louder. With most music there is a sweet spot where things feel full but not processed. 

Usually the loudness of the finished work is determined by that musical sweet spot, but a target loudness can be requested. For the streaming world -14 or -13LUFS (see what’s a LUFS? FAQ) is a reasonable ballpark. For CDs there is no standard loudness level.

Sounds & Substance is an approved Apple Digital Masters mastering studio. Usually your aggregator has to jump through an extra hoop to supply these files to Apple. Every master from Sounds & Substance meets the standards for ADM.

Yes. The goal is making great sounding records that connect with people. Whatever can be done to help an album arrive at the best version of itself is on the table.

Mastering is about being able to hear everything that is there in the music and having a vision for what can be done from that starting point. That requires an excellent critical listening situation, which is what Sounds & Substance was built to be. Monitoring starts with the brilliant Cranesong Avocet IIA (Quantum DAC) digital to analog converter, which feeds an SPL Crossover. Main speakers are Hothouse powered Dynaudio Acoustics M2 mains with stereo Dynaudio ABES ii subwoofers. The Dynaudio tweeters are legendary and the dome midrange drivers in these speakers are incredibly revealing. The four 12" drivers in the subs easily reproduce clean and articulate low end. The system is completely analog after the Avocet, dead quiet, very full range, and capable of reproducing the finest details at any sane level effortlessly.

Secondary monitors are Munro Egg150, and Dynaudio BM6p. All of the speakers in the room are Andy Munro designs.

LUFS, or Loudness Units (relative to) Full Scale, is the most current audio loudness measurement unit. With digital audio, because we need to represent the loudness of an audio signal with a fixed number of ones and zeroes, there's a limit to how much information we can store. Full scale, or 0dBFS (no decibels away from full scale) is when the medium has reaches its limit in terms of representing data. Typically we reference downwards from full scale when discussing the peaks and averages of digital audio. We might say a peak is at -1dBFS (one decibel away from being out of room to store more loudness), or the average level is -20dBFS. LUFS are a "weighted" way of measuring loudness, meaning that LUFS take into account how we perceive sound. Some streaming services, like Spotify, adjust the music they play to have an average level (the average loudness of the entire piece of music) of -14LUFS, and one audio format in particular (Dolby Atmos) has very strict loudness specs, so it's helpful to have a sense of where the loudness of a master is when considering how it will be heard out in the world. I have LUFS and peak meters running constantly, but I am not working to a particular average value (unless directed to do so) as I'm quite used to how much sound my monitors should be producing at a particular monitor gain setting. So I work by ear and experience, and oddly enough, the vast majority of my world lands around -13LUFS, just a little louder than the -14LUFS that Spotify uses. For more info on LUFS iZotope has a good primer here.