• when you send in your master for mastering, provide a track sheet listing the artist name, project title as well as the start times, end times and duration of each song. also jot down any instructions you may have for the mastering engineer.
• if you are mixing down to DAT, record all your DATs at 44.1 kHz.
• record one to two minutes of silence at the beginning of each tape.
• make sure that the DAT has A-time (absolute time) throughout and start IDs at the beginning of each track.
• leave 1-2dB of headroom on your DAT. overs are difficult and time- consuming to fix and the meters on many DAT machines are imprecise. the headroom will be made up transparently on the final master.
• when mixing, use a quality commercial recording in a similar style as a reference. this will enable you to keep perspective and achieve greater tonal balance & clarity in your mix.
• don't risk doing manual fades at mixdown. good fades are quick and easy to do during mastering.
• once your mix is in the digital domain (i.e. on DAT) keep it there. further D/A and A/D conversions will adversely affect the clarity and quality of your sound.
• do not EQ, compress or otherwise process your stereo mix. this type of processing is best done at the mastering stage. if you do process your mix, bring copies of the unprocessed versions with you to the mastering session so that the engineer can go back to them if necessary.
• if you're using a digital editor to compile your project, use it just for that don't use it for adjusting volume levels, processing, doing fades, normalizing or dithering. eEvery time you process and then return to 16 bit audio you will get increased graininess, loss of resolution and digital coldness. the only way to get around this is to do all the digital processing in one step at a minimum of 24-bit signal resolution.