If you’re sending me a mix for mastering, here are some considerations, thanks!

Please send me:  

• One stereo file for each song. 
  • Wav or AIFF preferred 
  • Don’t dither or convert the sample rate, leave it at whatever you mixed it at (44.1k to 96k PCM digital audio files)
  • Leave plenty of headroom in the mix, leave about -3 to -6 dB of headroom (or more!). I can’t do very much if there’s no headroom left to work with. Don’t use any normalization, compressors, limiters/brickwall limiters, or loudness maximizers on the master fader. The mastering stage is a much better time to address these things than during mixing. We don’t need it or want it loud going into the mastering process. If you’re not sure whether any plugins or effects on the master bus are improving the sound, then just leave them out. 
  • Do your best to get the mix exactly where you want it before sending it over. 
  • Make sure you carefully listen back to your mixes before sending them over to me. That way, you’ll catch any flaws or glitches that might have come through during your bounce-down process. Check that you don’t have any clipping/peaking in your mix, and listen carefully!   
• A  final tracklist with correct titles, album, and artist name, as well as track order
• Mastering notes/ideas/suggestions that could be useful during the session. For example: “I’m really happy with the bass in this track” or “I’m having trouble reining in the bass.” Or, you could put notes like “please keep the noise in this track,” or ask to avoid or include fade ins/outs at the edges of the song. Sometimes something that one person might consider to be an error, is another person’s intended compositional element, so it’s always good to include notes on what you do and do not want! 
• Album or song references you’d like for me to reference during the session