Rob Small Mastering

Mastering is the refined technique, where the finer elements of raw sound recordings and deficiencies from the mixing process are corrected. It is also applied to tracks to make them a sufficient volume and minimise individual differences, for instance when they are released for retail as an album, EP or single.

The music industry is currently in a recession, and many smaller underground electronic labels try to make ends meet by cutting costs, which is understandable, especially with the vast majority of larger mastering studios charging hundreds of dollars, euro’s or pounds for sometimes poor quality masters. This unfortunately has resulted in an absence of in-house mastering with 90% of labels, which in turn means that there is a huge difference in sound quality between labels & artists.

Rob Small is a well-respected figure within the dance music community, with years of experience under his belt. As a dj and producer, he has toured all over the world alongside the best in the industry, and has produced and remixed over 70 successful releases of his own, not to mention countless material for others. He currently masters for some of the finest House & Techno labels in the world, such as Jamie Anderson’s ‘Artform’ label (UK), Monique Musique (CAN), Tom Budden’s ‘ALiVE Recordings’ (UK), Elevation Recordings (IRE), 3am Recordings, Ricky Ryan’s ‘Sick Watona’ label (ESP), Strom Recordings (NL), Blockhead (USA), Modern Playground (NL), Variante Music (DE), and literally hundreds more respected labels and artists. His masters go on to be played by the biggest names in the scene, at the biggest festivals and clubs that the world has to offer.

Here at Rob Small Mastering, we are currently focusing on the costs and expenses that digital record labels have at the moment. We are trying to be as competitive as possible with our prices and fee’s without compromising quality, thus making it more affordable for smaller artists and labels to achieve a professional sound and industry standard quality that works within a tight budget.

We run an affordable analog & digital mastering solution that caters primarily for electronic music. We use a combination of high-end analog mastering equipment with the highest quality software to achieve a clean, warm analog sound that most studios would charge in excess of £40 per track for. We concentrate on stereo width, definition, sound character, mixing, and bringing out the finer elements in a mix, rather than just making your records sound unnecessarily loud and over compressed - like most mastering engineers do at the moment.