Audio Mastering in Fort Collins, Colorado

Mastering is the last step before your music reaches listeners, and it's most of what I do. You hand me a finished mix. I hand you back a release: balanced, loud enough, clean, and built for wherever it's going, streaming, vinyl, CD, or broadcast. I'm Jeff Burchett. I've been mastering since 2015, and the work has run across studio albums, live recordings, national TV and radio commercials, game audio, audiobooks, and podcasts, for Fort Collins bands and for clients I've never met who live a few thousand miles away.

A music production studio setup featuring a computer monitor, speakers, audio interface, mixing console, microphone, headphones, and various cables in a dedicated room treated for critical listening.

What Mastering Actually Does

A master is not a second mix. It's the final polish and the technical handoff, and those are two different jobs. I set your level so the song stands next to professional releases without getting crushed flat. I balance the tone so it holds up everywhere people actually listen: monitors, car, earbuds, a phone on a kitchen counter. I catch the small problems a mix can hide. Then I build the exact files each platform wants, because they don't all want the same thing. Mastering assumes a solid stereo mix going in. If the mix isn't there yet, I mix too, and a combined mix and master is usually the better deal.

In the Room or From Anywhere

There are (at least!) two ways to work, but both get you the same result. Only one lets you pet cats, though.

Come sit at the desk with me. You hear the master on Neumann KH 310s in a treated room, which tells you the truth about your song in a way a laptop never will. You hear every change the second I make it, and we finish the record together. Many of my mastering clients prefer to work this way.

Or, we can work remotely. Send the mix and I deliver through Highnote, where you drop notes on the exact spot you want changed instead of writing "around the second chorus, maybe?" For live sessions, I stream studio-quality audio through AudioMovers ListenTo, so you hear the master in real time from anywhere. Some of my longest-running clients I've never met in person.

The Room and the Chain

For mastering, the room matters more than anything, because I can't fix what I can't hear. Mine is treated and tuned by Music City Acoustics, with room correction by IK ARC, monitored on Neumann KH 310s. What I hear is what's actually there, and what you approve will translate everywhere else.

From there I run a hybrid chain, analog hardware where it earns its place and top-tier digital where it doesn't. The hardware adds the things plugins still don't do as well: harmonic color, weight in the low end, glue that makes a song feel like one piece instead of a stack of parts. I use SSL and Empirical Labs hardware for that, and premium conversion in and out so nothing is lost on the way. The digital side handles the surgical work, the precise moves that need to be clean and invisible. None of that matters to most people, and it shouldn't have to. It's there so your record sounds like it should.

Rates

Mastering is priced per song, and the price drops as the project grows:

  • 1 to 2 songs: $150 each

  • 3 to 9 songs: $130 each

  • 10 or more songs: $110 each

Stem mastering, for projects that need work across grouped stems instead of a single stereo file:

  • 1 to 2 songs: $245 each

  • 3 to 9 songs: $210 each

  • 10 or more songs: $170 each

These are estimates, not quotes. A complicated record can run higher. Get a quote for yours.

Formats and Delivery

Every master is built for a destination. Most artists releasing to Spotify, Apple Music, and the other streaming services need only the standard master, and that's what the per-song rate covers. If your song is also going to vinyl, cassette, CD, broadcast, or an Apple Digital Master, each of those is a separate finishing step, priced below. If you're not sure what you need, tell me where the music is headed and I'll tell you.

The standard master is one version, mastered for digital streaming and delivered as a 48 kHz / 24-bit WAV, or matched to the sample rate and bit depth you need.

Additional formats, priced per song:

  • Vinyl, $50: mastered for a vinyl cut and delivered as WAV sides with a cue sheet, ready for the plant.

  • Cassette, $50: mastered for tape.

  • Apple Digital Master, $35: mastered and encoded to Apple's certified spec.

  • CD, $25: delivered as WAV sides with a cue sheet, ready for replication.

  • Broadcast, $25: mastered to broadcast loudness spec, for radio, TV, and film or video placement.

Alternate versions, priced per song:

  • Alternate render, $25: a second output off the finished master, like a clean or radio edit that reuses the same mastering.

  • Alternate master, full per-song rate: a version that needs its own mastering pass, like an instrumental. It's a different piece of audio, so it's mastered as its own song.

Revisions and Turnaround

Most first drafts go out within a week, often sooner. Two rounds of revision are included, so a typical project wraps in about two weeks depending on how fast feedback comes back.

Recent Work

I've mastered across a wide range, electronic, experimental, rock, ambient, and plenty that doesn't sit still in one genre. Recent projects include Death Disco Club, Dethsoul, TotoRobyn, and Disconnected Frequencies.

"I have worked with a number of mixing and mastering engineers. Jeff easily ranks among the very best." — Justin Smith, Subsoma

Start Your Master

Send me your mix and tell me where it's headed. Get a quote, or hear samples of finished work first.