Vinyl Mastering Option at Qrates
About Vinyl and Mastering
To get the sound right on your vinyl there is actually some specific knowledge and experience required. The reason for this is vinyl cutting is a very technical mechanical process in which extreme limiting, low-frequency phase issues or extremely loud frequencies, both high and low, can cause needle skipping, noise in the program signal, lowered overall program volume as well as other issues.
There’s a lot to cover about this topic. However, we would like to stress that if you decided to master your own audio for vinyl pressing and you lack the experience and knowledge in the area, you are risking the worst-case scenario of making a record that is unplayable. We can not be held responsible for less than optimal sound quality or skips due to poor vinyl masters. For this reason, Qrates highly recommends our mastering service to ensure the sound quality of your vinyl.
How to order vinyl mastering for my project?
You can select our mastering option via EXTRAS in the Vinyl Studio when you create your vinyl project.
Submitting your audio (for those who have opted for mastering):
- Don’t allow peak levels to reach 0 dBFS. ( -1 to -0.5dBFS is ideal, lower is no problem ).
- Try to avoid the use of peak-limiters or other similar plugins as well as any plugin that will add distortion or clipping on your master channel.
- 24bit, 44.1hz, WAV, or AIFF are ideal file specifications for mastering submissions 16bit, 44.1 is also acceptable). Please do not submit compressed audio formats such as mp3 or MPEG-4 for mastering.
- Please submit all files in a compressed folder (.zip or .rar are best). Tracks directly uploaded to a file transfer protocol risk data corruption and will not be accepted.
- PLEASE NOTE: any requested changes to the mastered audio may incur additional charges for providing newly mastered audio.
Recommended track length per side for each vinyl size:
[12" Vinyl]
33rpm 19:30
45rpm 14:30
[10" Vinyl]
33rpm 13:30
45rpm 10:00
[7" Vinyl]
33rpm 7:00
45rpm 5:00
*Please don't exceed more than 10% of the recommended length.
*For best results we recommend 45 rpm for all Vinyl pressing.
