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| EUROPE'S MASTERMINDS BEHIND THE SCENES |
Test: Online Audio Mixing and Mastering
| Unexpected Results: Best Audio Mixing and Mastering Studios in Europe |
| You are looking for a studio that mixes and masters your audio material online? You want professional results - not just for private usage but eligible for distribution, airplay, and films? But where to start? We have good news for you: We have covertly tested European Online Audio Mixing and Mastering Studios and compared their services. Read about the unexpected and surprising results! Find the detailed article with evaluation charts below (PDF version). |
| Mixing and Mastering are not about great equipment. Mixing and Mastering are about knowledge, experience, practice, well-trained ears, and, last but not least, acoustically linear environments that display every single note exactly the way it is! Some studios have been built for millions just to ensure that the acoustic resonance is perfect. Thus, professional audio mixing and mastering can hardly be accomplished in acoustically questionable home studios. Big companies and artists with ambitious goals delegate this important step - the crafting of great sound - to specialized audio engineers. |
| Within the last 10 years a lot of audio mixing and mastering studios have decided to offer their services online: These studios offer anyone the stunning opportunity to upload very raw audio material. Then, after a couple of days and dependent on the quality of the source material, the client can download the great sounding, mixed and mastered results! At least, this is the theory. What about the practice? Which of the online audio mixing and mastering studios have the best skills? |
| And how is the situation at the front, 6 years after the broadcast standard EBU R 128 has been established in Europe? This norm is especially interesting for crafting music, for it is supposed to end the loudness war and allows for highest quality audio productions. |
| We have covertly tested European online audio mixing and mastering studios. To prevent companies from giving Music Today a special treatment, we took over the role of a client that has to make decisions solely on the basis of the info that audio mixing and mastering studios freely publish online. Thus, we visited websites, gathered information, and evaluated the results! |
| 1. We focused on the published demos (that are marketing instruments and, thus, represent the best quality the studios can craft) and objectively analysed them in an acoustically linear studio with expert staff. Since we were testing online audio mixing and mastering studios, our main focus was, for sure, the audio quality of the demos. |
| 2. Besides, we have focused on the business transparency of the online audio mixing and mastering studios: What services are inclusive for what prices? |
| 3. Moreover, we checked which valuable additional services the online audio mixing and mastering studios offer. |
| Results in short (details in the PDF version): |
| All tested demos are transparent and free of artefacts. All tested online audio mixing and mastering studios craft a good sound and can be recommended! But, surprisingly, only one of them creates marvelous results. |
| The audio mixing and mastering studios on places 10 to 2 craft good productions that, surprisingly, are too loud at the expense of the sound quality that suffers from a diminished dynamic range. All tested productions disregard the quality-preserving broadcast standard EBU R 128 but opt for loudness. That is even more surprising if we take into account that giants like Abbey Road Studios are among these companies that miss the chance to make a change. | ||
| The unexpected overall winner of our comparison, Diamond Roses Records, crafts tailor-made quality productions with an intact, lively, exciting, and ready-to-be-aired sound that is in line with broadcast standards and does not suffer from any of the mentioned problems. No other tested online audio mixing and mastering studio handles audio material in such a quality-preserving way and offers so many services. With a test result of 97%, we recommend Diamond Roses Records to anyone with high standards or ambitious goals in music! | ||
| BEST EUROPEAN ONLINE AUDIO | ||
| MIXING AND MASTERING STUDIOS 2018 | ||
| No. | Name | Quality |
| 1. | Diamond Roses Records | 97% |
| 2. | Miloco Studios (Group) | 79% |
| 3. | Mastering Online | 78% |
| 4. | Peak Studios | 74% |
| 5. | Abbey Road Studios | 74% |
| 6. | Mondstein Records | 72% |
| 7. | Konbeatz | 70% |
| 8. | Audio Mixing Mastering | 70% |
| 9. | Milian Mastering | 63% |
| 10. | Online Mixing | 61% |
| Author: MTME | Date: 07.07.2018 | Version 1 | |||
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