FAQ

Mastering is the final creative step in making an album. We take your mixes and make them sound like more fully-realized versions of themselves, addressing issues in the mix and bringing cohesion to a collection of songs from start to finish. Mastering is also a crucial transitional step into manufacturing an album. You will walk away from mastering with the peace of mind that you have exactly what you need for streaming, vinyl, CDs, or cassettes. And yes: we make it louder.

Yes. We can give you digital files appropriate for vinyl pressing.

As of May 2025, we are no longer cutting lacquers. Co-founder Bob Weston took his Neumann VMS70 cutting lathe with him overseas. He is expecting to have the lathe operating again soon.

32- or 24-bit WAV files at whatever sample rate the material was recorded and mixed at. AIFF, SDII, CAF, and BWF are also acceptable. Do not sample rate convert. 16-bit wordlengths are acceptable if it’s somehow impossible to provide 24-bit. MP3 and lossy file formats are not ideal, but we can master from that if lossless audio is not available.

We can! We have an Ampex ATR-102 that was recently refurbished by Greg Norman.

We can accept both 1/2″ and 1/4″ tape widths. Please ensure that there are proper alignment tones present: a minimum of 1kHz, 10kHz, 100Hz, and 40/50Hz (30 seconds of each) at your tape machine’s 0VU reference input level. Any other tones (60Hz, 16kHz, a full sweep, etc.) are helpful; the more the merrier. Multiple tones between 20Hz and 250Hz are a big help. It is also very helpful to include 10 seconds of recorded silence after the tones which reflects the level of hiss or thermal noise your mixing chain and tape recorder bias creates. This is often very helpful for creating smooth and natural spacing during sequencing. If possible, please let us know in advance what tape speed, reference level and equalization standard you are using. Please label each tape box and reel flange with all this information and the location of alignment tones (AT THE END OR BEGINNING OF A REEL IS THE BEST PLACE FOR TONES – after/before a long piece of leader or blank tape).

We’re also happy to receive tapes that are already edited and sequenced in the correct running order with the spaces and fades between songs as you’d like them to appear on the finished master. For all analog master tapes, please include digital backup copies of the tape mixes made from the same machine they were recorded on originally (and keep a copy of these digital backups at home as well, in case the package gets lost in the mail). Number your tape reels and boxes and include song titles and lengths on each tape box.

We can accept source on DAT, vinyl, CD, or a hard drive. Please reach out if you have something else or have specific questions.

So long as the mixes are not ultra loud and clipping, it’s not that big of an issue. We request you leave at least 2 dB of peak headroom on your mixes.

If possible, please do not use any peak limiting on your final mixes. Compression, saturation, equalization, just about anything on your final mixbus is fine, but limiting does tie our hands a bit and can lead to crunchy, unmusical artifacts in the final master.

Bob moved to Portugal in the spring of 2025 and transferred ownership of the business to Greg Obis. Bob is setting up a new shop in Portugal which should be operational in the near future.

Yes. We do not explicitly guarantee that we hold onto your mastering project files forever, but in practice we do. We can make production masters for vinyl, CD, or cassette 4 weeks, 4 months, or 4 years down the line. You get the picture.

Turnaround depends on a multitude of factors, so it varies from project. That said, we generally ballpark around 2 weeks for the mastering process and another week for quality control for an album. For singles, probably about a week. If you are in a rush or working around deadlines, let us know when you reach out. We will do our best to accommodate your schedule.

Not at this time.

Yes, we take interns on a quarterly basis for one day a week. Email a resume to info@chicagomasteringservice.com.