Hello! This is my handy guide for ensuring you have everything in order before sending me projects to mix, if you have any additional questions please feel free to write them below or send me an email!
_____________________________________________________________________________________________ What I need is all of your tracks rendered/bounced/printed from your DAW, all starting at exactly the same time so that the timing lines up. There should be a 2 bar silence before any audio plays (count in) FILE TYPE Files must be in a lossless format for mixing. WAV is my preferred file type. Please do not send mp3 unless it is absolutely all you have. SAMPLE RATE Send your files in the same sample rate that they were recorded at. Do not convert to a different sample rate before sending. I will do any conversion that may be necessary. Acceptable sample rates include 44.1k all the way to 192k. (My preferred sample rate is 48k or 44.1k) BIT DEPTH Render your tracks at at least 24bit. Please do not send your tracks at 16bit unless that is all that you have. LEVELS / CLIPPING Please try to make sure your tracks are not clipping (going over 0). It is preferred that peaks for each file be hitting somewhere between -3 and -10. That will give me a good healthy level to work with. STEREO / MONO Please do NOT send a stereo file for mono content. Send a mono WAV for mono sound and a stereo WAV for stereo sound. You can also send stereo tracks as 2 different tracks with an L and R in the file name to indicate that it’s stereo. Some DAWs (Logic) are notorious for always exporting all files as stereo and if that happens it’s fine, I can deal with it but please don’t export as stereo when it’s really mono if you can help it. FILE NAMING This one is very important. Please take the time to name all files in a concise way that makes sense. Examples: 01 Lead Vocal.wav 02 Lead Vocal Double.wav 03 Guitar Rhythm L.wav 04 Guitar Rhythm R.wav 05 Snare Top.wav 06 Snare Bottom.wav Please do NOT send files like: v dup dup2.wav FOLDER STRUCTURE Please send a main folder with the album name. Inside that folder should be subfolders for each song with the track number followed by the song name as the folder name. Please do NOT separate all types of instruments into their own folders within that subfolder. Just put all tracks for each song in their own folder. Example: Album Title\01 – The Sky is Gray Album Title\02 – Why So Grey? Album Title\03 – The Sky is Blue Now MAKE SURE THE TIMING WORKS This is critical. Make sure that all tracks start at exactly the same time and are the same length. You can load all tracks into a new session on your DAW to verify and playback to make sure it lines up before sending. EFFECTS I prefer tracks to be as clean and dry as possible with little to no effects applied. There are situations where you may have a rhythmic delay or other effect that is crucial to the feel of the song and if that is the case feel free to leave it on there. If there are tracks where you have built a really cool effect with reverb, delay, etc that you want to show me as an example please render two versions, one wet and one dry so I can have the flexibility in dealing with those. Example: 01 Cool Guitar Part (without FX).wav 02 Cool Guitar Part (with FX) DI It is very very important to send all DIs along with the rendered mic tracks (either from a real amp or from an amp sim) to give me the most flexibility as well as allow potential reamping and make editing more efficient. This is crucial for both guitar and bass. MIDI Please send MIDI (as .mid files) along with any key/synth parts in addition to the rendered audio files. In most cases I will use the audio file provided for keys/pads, but having the midi as an option to correct any issues helps. If you are using programmed drums please send the MIDI for those as well. TEMPO MAP please send the tempo map (as .mid) if you have one. TEMPO AND KEY It is very helpful for you to include a text file in the main folder that has the full tracklist and lists the tempo and song key if you have those. It is not required if you don’t know them. PREPARE ALL FILES FOR SENDING Once you have everything ready and have checked to make sure all file names are concise and make sense, please compress the entire album folder into either a .ZIP or .RAR file for easy and safe transfer. Google Drive, WeTransfer & Dropbox are all good services for this. If all else fails or you cannot get to a good connection you can mail me a USB drive with the files (ask for the address).
For any additional questions please contact me at :
Fern@FLRecordings.com
