The Parlour is not just a recording studio, we also offer mastering services. At The Parlour Mastering Studios we can turn your demo into a more polished, commercial sounding record. This is done using subtle EQ, compression and limiting. For CD mastering we use the finest quality hardware to create a polished sound. We use a CraneSong HEDD for its world-class D/A and A/D. The HEDD also has a superb tape emulation function that works wonders on certain program material. It also acts as one of the most transparent limiters available.
The mastering studio also has an Avalon AD2055 mastering equaliser to make sure your CD has a flat frequency response and sounds great on any system. When you record at home your acoustics and monitors may not be up to scratch and you may make wrong decisions. We monitor on very high quality monitors in an acoustically-treated room and can make our EQ decisions with confidence. We also use a variety of high quality, analogue mastering compressors to even out the dynamics and make the audio louder and more exciting. We can go from transparent to dirty and in-your-face depending on the material.
As a musician, you may often find the technical talk of mastering and mixing a little perplexing and possibly tedious, and we of course appreciate that your priorities may be to deliver a superb performance rather than technical perfection, but this is why mastering studios serve such an important purpose. Think of mastering as you would the frame around a painting. It exists to show off your painstaking work in the best way possible, enhancing what is already superb and ensuring that the recording is a true, dynamic and clear reflection rather than one that is spoilt through a lack of attention to detail.
Once your audio is sounding as good as it can we will burn a Red Book CD with ISRC codes and also print off a PQ sheet (required by duplication companies). Just mail us the unprocessed files on CD and we will mail you back the mastered CD.