How to prepare your mix for mastering

A good master starts with a clean export. Leave headroom, take the limiter off the mix bus, and bounce a 24-bit WAV at your session sample rate. Do that and the engineer works on your mix, not around its problems. Here is the full checklist.

1. Leave headroom. Aim for peaks around -6 dBFS and an average level that is comfortable, not crushed. Mastering needs room to work. A mix that already touches 0 dBFS leaves nothing to shape.
2. Take processing off the mix bus. Remove any limiter or heavy clipper on the master channel. Gentle bus compression or EQ that is part of your sound can stay, but bounce a version without the limiter. If you love your bus chain, send both: one with, one without.
3. Do not normalise, dither, or fade to silence unnaturally. Leave normalisation off. Let mastering handle final level and dither. Keep natural start and end tails rather than hard cuts.
4. Export the right file. Bounce a WAV or AIFF at 24-bit (or 32-bit float) at the session sample rate (44.1 kHz or higher). Do not convert sample rate on the way out, and do not send an MP3.
5. Name it clearly. Use artist, track title and a version note, for example DeadQuiet_TrackName_v1_nolimiter.wav.
6. Flag what you want. A one-line note helps: a reference track you love, any known issues, and the alternates you need (clean, instrumental, radio, vinyl).

Alternates to plan for

If you will need a clean (no explicit lyrics), an instrumental, a radio edit or a vinyl-prepped version, mention it up front. It is easier to line these up from the start than to chase them later.

Once your bounce is ready, send us the record and pick your engineer. If you want to hear a streaming-ready master instantly first, drop it into DQ Master Rack.

Written by the Dead Quiet engineers. Meet the engineers.