Mastering may include many different treatments to your final mixes. If you’re expecting your record to be competitive with other national releases, you absolutely want to invest in the mastering process. It simply provides sonic treatments and corrections that are more refined and exact to create the very best sound for your track.
If you are putting out your first record and are “testing the waters” of your commercial viability, the mix master that is created for you at Tanglewood should be fine. We’ve turned out many CD’s for our clients that have gone directly to duplication and been quite successful. If your album should happen to get the attention of a big record label, they’re going to have the whole album mastered anyhow. The mix master that you receive from Tanglewood will be optimized so that your tracks are all speaking at proper levels and equalization within your collection of material. Tracks will be timed so that you have a smooth transition between songs and even fade-throughs from track to track when it’s appropriate. Your disc can also be formatted with ISRC and UPC codes to make you fully ready for the duplication process.