What is audio mastering?
Mastering is the last stage in audio post-production to further enhance Your audio content. Overall goal should aim for a dynamically balanced musical performance / track / album with tailored clear sound, low noise floor and pleasant listening experience. Crafting a well-rounded and tonally even master requires high quality audio tools like EQ - Comp - Stereo enhancement - Limiting etc. With CloudBounce mastering you dress the best qualities of Your music to a professional, presentable attire.
How do I know when the file is ready to be mastered?
Master / Stereo bus. For the best possible starting point for your audio track to shine, it’s advised to eliminate any eq, compression, limiting or other effects from your DAW’s stereo master bus. CloudBounce’s mastering process will apply these and other needed mastering features to your track. However, if pre-mixed effects are Your sound, don’t let these guidelines hinder your musical expression.
Headroom. To avoid clipping of the stereo master bus
before mastering, make sure you leave at least from -6 to -10
dB’s of clean headroom for you pre-master stereo audio
track.
If your audio signal is redlining or peaking e.g. at 0 dB in
your DAW (e.g. in Pro Tools, Logic, Ableton Live or similar
digital audio workstation) it essentially means that you have no
headroom left and output adjustment is required. Decrease the
output to a healthier -1 to -3dB range, and you’re ready to
import your track for mastering.
Project file export / bounce settings. To get best results from CloudBounce’s mastering process, export / bounce your audio files using highest available bit depth (e.g. 16bit, 24bit) and sample rate (min. 44.1 kHz).
What happens to the dynamics of my track?
CloudBounce offers a few alternative mastering settings to choose from. This is a good way to tailor the dynamics and overall sound qualities to your liking. Mastering should usually offer subtle changes that make your audio actually better in every way. Our intelligent audio signal analysing process will follow the dynamic nuances and structure of the original recording. We have no intentions to just squash and ride the volume of your track, and call it a master.
How do I benefit from the CloudBounce service?
Our mastering tool offers a great platform for refining audio recording quality across the board, not depending on musical genre or artistic purpose. CloudBounce gives you a truly professional, cost effective, accessible and easy to use interface for publishing or presenting your audio effortlessly.
We encourage you to experiment CloudBounce mastering with all kinds of audio recordings, not just music; speech, live or private concert recordings, band practice recordings, DJ performances, individual audio tracks or radio / commercial use. Simply import any source of audio that benefits from refined sound and experience our world-class quality.
Why should I master with CloudBounce?
CloudBounce service gives you essentially a flexible, fast, affordable and professional quality alternative for mastering your audio content. You might not be completely familiar with mastering and prefer to leave it to professionals. Or, you want a cost effective and quick mastering solution that gives you that professional polished sound, so that you can publish your creations with confidence.
Despite we totally support the idea of booking an award winning mastering guru for your DIY production, there’s no excuse to make pro mastering accessible to everybody. When it comes to instant mastering, CloudBounce got you covered.
Quick FAQ: Mastering
Issue: halfway through the track my song starts again from beginning?
A: this is a phenomenon that might occur when mastering and downloading tracks via mobile devices, especially Android. We wholeheartedly always recommend using the desktop computers for mastering. If this happens, revert to your PC.
Issue: the audio crackles partly or throughout the track?
A: In some rare cases some audio crackling has occurred in the mastered audio file. Some bit depth and sample rate combinations may produce these issues, so we wholeheartedly recommend that you use and upload 44.1kHz / 24-bit stereo audio files in lossless format (e.g. .wav or .aiff) for mastering via CloudBounce.
Issue: file transfer or mastering process freezes or discards automatically
A: this is usually due to user having an adblocker app installed on the browser. These apps should be always turned off during mastering. Other potential contributor could be; i) slow or breaking internet connection ii) firewall settings iii) browser incompatibility (especially with IE / Edge but sometimes Safari and Opera).
Issue: mastered file not appearing to My Tracks -listing
A: this indicates that the processing has not been finalised successfully. You should receive an email notification from every completed final master. If this happens, please try to upload the track to initiate the mastering process again.
Issue: can’t hear audio on the mastering preview player, or sound distorts?
A: If the mastering preview player is loaded up correctly, it will produce sound at 192 kbps .mp3 quality. If you can’t hear the audio, please check your computer’s audio settings, or equivalent input / output settings on your audio device or soundcard.
There’s been some cases where slight distortion has been audible with the mastering preview on some devices. This is due to the file being “sample only” and lower .mp3 resolution. The downloaded final 24-bit Hi-Res & 320kbps .mp3 masters will be in perfect condition.
Issue: mastering process takes too long?
A: In case the processing takes much longer than anticipated, please make sure you check i) file format compliance (.wav / .aiff or .mp3) ii) that, file contains audio data iii) file is not too big to process (max. 1 hour in length), and iiii) make sure your internet connection works properly.
Issue: how many mastering options can be used?
A: there’s no limit to how many editing rounds you can do. For one processing round, you can select one genre setting + any combination of mastering options. You can rinse and repeat this process as many times as you want. Please note, that any re-editing with mastering options are added to the clean source file (pre-master) and the options are not stacked upon each other.
Issue: can I upload multiple tracks or an album (in a batch) at once?
A: No, this is not possible with the current mastering engine. This feature will be added in the near future with other improvements on the next generation engine version.
Issue: I am not able to download my track?
A: Please make sure you have a unique name for your track, and that you have not mastered the same file previously. You can easily rename your tracks from the Edit track - page.
If you have an album to master, you can still process the tracks individually. If you have a very consistent and balanced mixes between the tracks, optimal results can be achieved by using the same “genre” + “mastering options” for all of them. If the mixed pre-masters have a varying sound quality, you should set a target for all of the racks and select the most appropriate settings for each track. Make sure to experiment, listen and trust your ears.
Issue: since my last login, my tracks have disappeared from my account?
A: Early 2018 we made some changes to both the unlimited cloud backup and pricing. Currently, we only provide the cloud backup for subscription customers. As a non-subscriber you have 7 days time to download the tracks to your personal storage (e.g. computer, DropBox) after mastering. We have removed the $10.90 Pro plan altogether, and lowered the price of Infinity monthly to $21.90 /mo (from $29.90). More info on pricing here: https://www.cloudbounce.com/#pricing.
Disclaimer:
If you have an issue with mastering that’s not been covered here, please contact us via CloudBounce in-app chat or at feedback@cloudbounce.com.