Abbey Road Studios in London is throwing open its doors to musicians and producers worldwide this month with the launch of its online mastering service, which offers the opportunity to have recordings mastered by Abbey Road Studios’ award winning engineers in their famous mastering suites. The online mastering service will operate on a cost per track basis for mastering with a fixed price per format for vinyl masters, making it easier to calculate mastering costs within a fixed budget. Final delivery will take a maximum of five working days beginning from point of purchase.
The online service means that the millions who are recording and mixing music miles away from traditional studios will now have a chance to join the ranks of talented artists who have been mastered at Abbey Road, including The Beatles, David Bowie, Basement Jaxx, Lily Allen and Franz Ferdinand.
After creating a user account, customers can upload 2 GB of audio onto a secure server where products and services can be selected as required before making payment. Files for upload have to be uncompressed stereo WAV or AIFF files, with a bit depth of 16 or 24 bits and a sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz and upward.
Abbey Road online mastering work will be carried out in its mastering rooms, which house a varied range of classic analog equipment and the latest in digital hardware and software technologies, such as the original EMI TG mastering consoles with the SADiE 5 PCM8 digital audio workstation. The studios are also equipped with Neumann cutting lathes for vinyl; Meyer and B&W main monitoring; Benchmark AD/DA converters; outboard equipment from the likes of Prism, Weiss, Junger, SPL and TC Electronics; and an extensive range of CEDAR software plug-ins.
Once tracks have been mastered, users will receive notification that they are ready for download via email and a message through their Abbey Road Online Mastering home page. Tracks will be available for download for one calendar month. Abbey Road will also provide a reference for listening purposes and the finished master either as a WAV, downloadable DDP Image File or an audio PMCD. Abbey Road Studios will provide vinyl in the format requested, which can be either 7-inch single, 12-inch single or LP album. Additional copies can be produced on CD or vinyl format.
“We are delighted to launch our online mastering service and offer the expertise of our engineers to producers and musicians anywhere in the world,” says Jonathan Smith, Abbey Road Studios’ general manager. “Abbey Road Studios is dedicated to inspiring great new music and we see this as a fantastic opportunity to make that Abbey Road sound available to emerging talent whilst continuing our tradition for innovation within music technology.”
For further information, visit www.abbeyroadonlinemastering.com.
