A mastering studio based on the west coast of Finland, in the Jakobstad/Pietarsaari region.
Whether you are a band who wants their EP or full length album mastered, a singer-songwriter who wants to give that final polish and balance to your upcoming single release, a choir who wants your recorded live concert cleaned up or a producer for a television or radio show who want to take your final product to the next level,
Backstreets Mastering offers You high quality professional audio mastering services tailored to your specific needs.
EQUIPMENT
Professional grade mastering environment with Avid Pro Tools and state of the art digital and analog mastering tools and AD/DA conversion.
Analog tape, Studer B67 1/4″ Master recorder along with RMGI Studio 468 and Emtec Studio 911 master tapes.
Transfer and quality check, Sonoris DDP Creator, Plextor burner with PlexUtilities quality check, Taiyo Yuden Master CD-R as well as Apple Audio Mastering Tools.
RATES
Simple pricing, straight forwardfixed rates without percentages needed to be calculated depending on track length etc.
Methods of payment include Bank Transfer and PayPal.
APPLE DIGITAL MASTERS / DIGITAL DELIVERY
With digital distribution being the most popular and widely used way to consume music today Backstreets Mastering will provide you with up to 96kHz 24-bit digital WAVE files that are ready to be submitted to iTunes, fulfilling the requirements for the Apple Digital Masters standard.
These audio files will not go through the down-sampling and dithering process that is normally needed when creating the 44.1kHz 16-bit audio files for the Red Book Standard Master Disc that is going to the pressing plant and will instead provide higher resolution masters for the ACC encoding process that files submitted to iTunes will go through, resulting in better sounding digital masters available for Your customers.
Backstreets Mastering include the encoding tools provided by Apple in the mastering process to be able to check the quality and the sound of AAC files and ensure that the digital releases will be sounding just as outstanding as the physical CD.
Even though the Apple Digital Masters initiative focuses on bringing the best sounding AAC encoded files to iTunes other digital relases will also benefit from Apple’s specifications as we no longer use 16-bit files for digital release, but instead provide You with 24-bit files tailored for encoding to portable formats, eg. MP3, OGG and similar formats that are used in the digital domain today.
1-5 tracks – 60.00 € per track (excl. VAT) • Satisfaction guaranteed (if you aren’t satisfied and decide to not use the mastered tracks you don’t need to pay).
6 tracks or more – 50.00 € per track (excl. VAT) • Satisfaction guaranteed (if you aren’t satisfied and decide to not use the mastered tracks you don’t need to pay).
STEM mastering – 80.00 € per track (excl. VAT) • Satisfaction guaranteed (if you aren’t satisfied and decide to not use the mastered tracks you don’t need to pay).
DDP & RED BOOK STANDARD MASTER CD
The Red Book Standard is the world wide audio CD standard in the music business. The master CD will at your request include PQ, ISRC, UPC and EAN codes needed for reproduction, release and resale. The Red Book Standard Master disc will also be delivered as a digital DDP-image to You or directly to the pressing plant for duplication.
Backstreets Mastering use Taiyo Yuden discs that are widely known for best overall quality and highest reliability in the media industry.
60.00 € added to total (excl. VAT) • Satisfaction guaranteed. • Includes a phsyical master CD shipped worldwide. • The master as a DDP-image for duplication purposes. • Includes digital delivery files up to 96kHz 24-bit, meeting the requirements for Apple Digital Masters.
HOW-TO
DELIVERY OF DIGITAL MATERIAL
WAV-, BWF-, AIFF- or high resoultion 1-bit DSDIFF-, DSF-, WSD-format. 16-bit 44Khz or higher. Leave out any heavy stereo bus compression or limiting. Turn off all normalizing, maximizing and dithering.
DELIVERY OF ANALOG TAPE
If you’ve recorded or mixed to analog tape Backstreets Mastering also accepts 1/4″ tape and can master Your tracks directly off tape and deliver them back to you in either digital format or master back to 1/4″ tape.
For more information and details send an email and we’ll discuss the matter further.
In special cases, where the material consists of eg. old live recordings that needs to be cleaned up or rescued, the material may be of lesser quality. Leave out any heavy stereo bus compression, limiting, normalizing, maximizing and dithering of your mixes prior to sending your tracks for mastering.
The mastered tracks will be available for You online on a secure FTP-server, Dropbox or sent via WeTransfer.com in 24-bit WAV-format suitable for digital distribution.
If you plan to send your material to a pressing plant, at your request, a Redbook Standard Audio Master Disc can be encoded and sent to you by mail along with a digital DDP-image of the physical master disc uploaded together with the digital master tracks. (read Rates for more information).
LUDVIG NYLUND
I founded Backstreets Mastering back in 2011. During the years of operation tracks ranging from debut releases of upcoming local musicians to songs produced by multi-award winning producer Jimmy Westerlund and eight-time Grammy Award winner Jay Newland have been mastered at Backstreets Mastering.
During the winter of 2012-2013 I moved temporarily to Hollywood, Los Angeles to work as a Recording Engineer for Finnish Producer Jimmy Westerlund.
Years 2016-2019 I worked as a Studio Engineer and Audio lecturer for the Sound Design & Music Production programme at Arcada, University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki, Finland. Prior to that as an Gear Administrator and Audio lecturer for the University. During these years I also ran a Media part of Backstreets and did quite a few recording and mixing projects, both in studio and on location as recordist or boom operator.
