onestone said:
I have two questions.
1) Do you master your own stuff or send it out?
I always give my mixes a little tweak here and there, but I used to work as a mastering engineer and so I know what NOT to do, and how far to go. The whole point of mastering [assuming you're not pressing to vinyl which is an entirely different kettle of monkeys..] is to run your mixes by a dispassionate third party who can bring them into focus and compensate for any deficiencies in your work that you may have overlooked due to being too close to it.
By the time you render your master to stereo, you have probably listened to your tune upwards of 200 times and your perspective is almost certainly a little skewed.
2) Do mastering companies specialise in a type of music?
Different mastering engineers will tend to excel in different types of music. The majority will have a bash at just about anything.
3) How do you select the company?
Look on the sleeve of a record you really like the sound of and see who mastered it. Alternatively, ask people who's judgement you trust to recommend somebody for you.
"Hallucinogen in Dub" was mastered at Abbey Road in about 2 hours. The guy took one listen and said "Sounds great - nothing I can add really." and encoded it to Exabyte.
"Blumenkraft" was mastered by a guy kcalled Kevin Metcalfe at "The Soundmasters" on a recommendation by Simon P - who is one of the few people whose ears I really rate.
It took 10 hours and cost £200 an hour [I wish I'd been in the office @ Twisted when that invoice came in...] and was worth every penny.
The first thing he said on hearing it was "Ahh yes - this is right up my street..." and he then proceeded to get stuck in as if I wasn't there - tweaking this and filtering that until he'd wrung the full potential out of every tune.
I laid on his comfy leather settee at the back of the room, smoking his weed and going "Fucking yeah..!" and "Not half mate!!" every time he looked round for approval. It was really very rewarding listening to him turning my rather good mixes into bloody excellent masters and I left a very happy client.
Two grand very well spent.