What we do
At Peerless, our whole team is ready to help make your project sound incredible. That’s what we do. If you’re new to this, we’ll demystify the mastering process and help you make the best decisions. If you’re been through this process before, we’re committed to meeting or exceeding your expectations.
Our main goal for every project is to make sure we provide a personalized experience. Whether you are contacting us for stereo mastering, spatial audio/Dolby ATMOS mastering, making an ATMOS version of your mixes, Restoration, or transferring your old tapes or records, we want to ensure you have open communication with us. To help facilitate this, we encourage you to set up a video chat to discuss your project with an engineer before you even make a decision on mastering. Then, we welcome feedback at any stage of the project. We even offer free revisions on the mixes we master for you! Schedule a time to talk to us now.
Our staff is exceptional at giving our clients the best quality and service, guiding them through the final phase of their sonic process with ease and expertise. We are uniquely equipped to provide the highest quality mastering available anywhere. We have the expertise, equipment, and skills to achieve the full sonic potential of your music. As more and more artists choose to record in project and home studios, high-quality professional mastering in an acoustically accurate room has never been more critical. Working at Peerless' state-of-the-art studios with our highly trained engineers, you can realize your sonic vision and make your recording sound as full, warm, punchy, and clear as possible. We will guide you through every step of this final phase of your project, and you will be truly amazed when you hear how incredible your music can sound.
These are our primary services:
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Our highly trained mastering engineers work closely with each client to understand their needs and their vision for each project. We offer the highest-end digital and analog processors to master your material without the risk of sonic degradation. Because every project is different, we have a wide range of equipment to meet different mastering needs.
Whether your recording needs a lot of attention or just a few tweaks, Peerless Mastering has what it takes to achieve the sound you're looking for.
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Spatial Audio is an exciting new format that has the promise to become the next big audio format after stereo.
We offer full Dolby ATMOS mastering. We master adm files generated from Dolby ATMOS mix sessions and ensure your mixes sound their best and work together as a finished album. We use the best analog and digital processors to add warmth, dimension, and depth to your mix, as well as make sure that it sounds its best in every environment.
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If you don’t have access to a full spatial audio mix room, we will create ATMOS mixes/masters for your project from stems. By using stems, we are able to keep the sound and integrity of your stereo mix, while creating an immersive experience. We aim to create spatial audio/Dolby ATMOS versions of your songs that complement the stereo mixes and maintain the aesthetic you worked so hard to create. This is an affordable way to get great-sounding spatial mixes that fully take advantage of the format. We will work with you and your engineers to ensure that we achieve your artistic vision with this new format.
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Peerless Mastering is dedicated to providing the highest quality audio restoration. We have vast experience working with material from many different sources and transforming the audio to sound as pristine and clean as possible. We have mastered material from old vinyl, DAT tapes with dropouts, sources with extreme digital distortion, old reel-to-reel tapes with hiss and/or dropout, and even cassette tapes.
With each project, we work to meticulously remove the unwanted artifacts resulting from the age and quality of the original media. We use the highest-end Cedar restoration processors for removing hiss and other artifacts. We can remove clicks and pops, and help reduce the effects of dropout and distortion. Our engineers are highly experienced in restoration to help you achieve the best possible results.
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Sometimes our clients only have vinyl (45, 33, or 78) as a source for their project. In many cases the original tapes were destroyed or lost.
We understand the importance of getting an optimal transfer in order to present the music at its best. All records are meticulously cleaned manually and with our VPI HW-16.5 record cleaning machine before we begin. Then we use a VPI HRX turntable with a JMW 12.6 Tone arm, a Benz Micro cartridge, and a Manley Steelhead pre-amp to take care of business.
We can get good transfers of warped records with our periphery record clamp and center record weight. The better the transfer, the lighter the restoration work we need to do.
When we are working from old reel-to-reel tapes, we will bake them before transferring them to prevent the tape from shedding. We also will redo any tape splices that break due to their age. That usually will suffice, but in extreme situations, we’ve cleaned up moldy tapes, tapes that were improperly stored, and repaired broken tapes. We've also restored music off of cassette tapes, CDs, and DATs, as these are sometimes the only surviving sources.
Optimizing Masters for Different Formats
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We’ve found that using a less digitally loud and more dynamic version of the master for cutting vinyl or recording onto cassette tapes makes recordings sound much more spacious and alive. When vinyl and cassette were the main formats for distribution, mixes had much more dynamic range. As the loudness war became the norm in the late 90s, we discovered that printing quieter, more dynamic mastered mixes sounded better when cut to lacquer.
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We are certified by Apple to create Apple Digital Masters (ADM) for selling and streaming through Apple Music.
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Regarding Spotify and other streaming services: We have not found that making masters for specific streaming services helps our clients stand out more on that platform. That said, we are familiar with the specifications for how the streaming services determine loudness and can make an additional version of the mastering to suit any specifications.
Interested in learning more?
“I’ve been working with Jeff and Maria at Peerless since the beginning of my career. Not only are they some of the nicest people in the audio industry, they are also fantastic mastering engineers! Having my projects mastered at Peerless has made me a better engineer, Jeff and Maria have always worked with me to make sure I get the very best result for my projects. They both stay on top of every new piece of gear and software to make sure they can deliver the best results for their clients.”