First post of 2024. We started Stockholm Mastering in February 2009 so we’re approaching the 15 year mark. 😱
Before Christmas we promised to share more of what is happening in the studio. Lately we have spent a lot of time perfecting our workflow and software and also done some good old sound engineering philanthropy. 🙂
Workflow
From around 2016 up until now our workflow has evolved a lot as we have merged our capabilities. We now work together from start to finish on every record, sharing the projects between us and working until we are both 100% satisfied with the result. Sometimes projects end up looking insane with markers and comments all over the place.
We usually do two quality controls, one initial and one final, with the mastering and discussions about details in between. Our goal is to make sure that the master both conserves the good qualities of the mix while sounding objectively better. Often this requires a lot of work.
We also do quite a lot of restoration in the projects to clean up clicks, noises etc. This gives that extra layer of clarity that is really nice to have.
Check Your Master
Last year we built the web app Check Your Master to make it easier for you to evaluate the masters from us without being affected by loudness bias. It’s really hard to evaluate two audio files at two different loudness levels and this app solves that problem. You can also use it to check how your master sounds against other tracks in a loudness matched environment like Spotify.
Custom software
At some point the old-school analog workflow became too limited for what we wanted to accomplish at Stockholm Mastering. Previously we built and modified analog hardware to optimize our setup. Nowadays we have moved on to building custom software instead.
Some of our custom software has made its way into various other places. We created the Mastering Starter Pack to make it easier for anyone to use Reaper for mastering. This has been downloaded by at least 1249 people so far. 🙃
E-learning
In 2020 during covid we launched the e-learning site Mastering Explained and a YouTube channel with 11.2k subscribers today.
Other pros have reached out to us and thanked us for being a good source of curated information. We really appreciate the support from the community. 💜💜💜
Future
Going forward we will continue mastering your records, make a few YouTube videos and also move further into the tech world.
Have a nice day! ☀️
💚 Sofia & Thomas
