London’s recording complex Abbey Road is launching new, improved on-line mastering and mixing services with a completely rebuilt file-sharing interface that allows users to send and receive tracks more easily.
The result is a faster, thoroughly modern service allowing musicians around the globe easier access to the studio’s world-class equipment and internationally renowned team of engineers, with feedback and communication between customers and engineers at the heart of the experience.
Users of Abbey Road’s on-line services can send notes for the engineers and reference tracks along with their material. The redesigned on-line mixing and mastering services actively encourage direct interaction between clients and engineers.
The price starts at £90 excluding VAT (approximately US$130 at the current exchange rate) to master a single track in stereo. Modest additional fees are incurred if users wish to use a specific engineer chosen from Abbey Road’s selection of nine experienced mastering engineers. Prices for on-line mixing will vary according to the size and complexity of the project.
Abbey Road has offered on-line mixing and mastering since 2010. From the start, key attractions of the on-line services have been that musicians can make use of them irrespective of their geographical location, and for a fraction of the cost of attending a mixing or mastering session at the studios in person.
Since the debut of the on-line services, there has been huge growth in the user base taking advantage of the studios’ collective technical expertise and its first-rate assortment of vintage and modern kit, including SSL mixing consoles, EMI TG12410 mastering consoles, vintage compressors and superbly serviced Neumann vinyl lathes.
“Since we launched our on-line mastering and mixing services over half a decade ago, there has been an explosion in intuitive, app-based file-sharing services like Dropbox that the musicians of today are familiar with,” explains Lucy Launder, Abbey Road’s head of mastering. “It was time for us to upgrade our original FTP-based systems and make the whole service more intuitive and quicker to use. We’re aware that there are automated ways to get your tracks mastered on-line these days, but nothing beats having one of our experienced team of engineers work on your tracks. You can’t tell an algorithm how to master your songs. In contrast, we listen to your music and find out what you want from our services before we start work, and you’ll also have an opportunity to tweak what we do if you’re not entirely satisfied the first time. Automated services simply can’t do that.”