SONAMAX is an independent CD mastering suite located in the inner-west suburb of Balmain, Australia. Established in 2000, the facility was designed and built to service the increasing demand for international quality mastering at an affordable price.   SONAMAX offers the world’s finest mastering technologies, coupled with highly accurate monitoring and excellent room acoustics designed by Chris Morton of ARO Technology. Years of research has resulted in a state-of-the-art mastering suite matching the finest in New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, and London. The result is an honest and accurate listening environment coupled with a sonically transparent processing path, allowing superior mastering that translates faithfully to the widest range of playback environments: from hi-fi and home theatre systems to clubs, car radios and music video programs. At the core of the SONAMAX mastering system is a custom-built Crookwood mastering console with integrated analogue/digital signal routing utilising the shortest signal path possible, with monitoring via ATC SCM50A active monitors and sub woofer. Sequoia software is used for the recording, editing and assembly of masters. Of course, such a system is useless without skilled engineers. SONAMAX’s head mastering engineer Adam McElnea has over 20 years of audio mastering experience. At Sonamax we master a broad section of musical genres and will give your recording a unique sonic signature based on your style of music.

MASTERING is the final creative process of making a record, and is the last chance to modify a recording before manufacture. Mastering is the intricate process that creates a record from a collection of recorded songs by matching the tone, volume and spacing of each track. This is achieved by applying judicious amounts of EQ, compression and limiting, using only specialised mastering gear, to make a project sound like a complete record. The mastering engineer provides a level of objectivity and experience to the record making process based on their experience of having heard good recordings of a wide range of music in a neutral listening environment. Mastering should take place in a studio with an accurate monitoring system, in a studio free of the acoustic influence of the recording console and other equipment of a mix studio. This monitoring system should faithfully translate on a variety of playback mediums. At Sonamax we can:

• Increase the presence of vocals, guitars and other instruments.
• Increase the punch and tightness of a recording.
• Add analogue fatness, density and warmth to tracks using valve EQ’s, compressors and a vintage Ampex 1/2″ tape machine.
• Remove sibilance and excessive brightness from vocals and hi-hats.
• Widen the stereo image and increase the ambience of a recording.
• Increase the perceived loudness of a recording.
• Carefully match the perceived loudness and sound balance from track to track.
• Create maximum sonic impact for radio & TV.
• Increase the harmonics & “air” in your sound.
• Crossfade songs together and create hidden tracks.Remove noise, clicks and crackles from a recording.
• Create 24 bit CD re-issues from old masters and recordings.
• Make adjustments to a previous master without remastering.
• Enter CD-Text and ID3 tags for correct album information essential for downloading.

Accepted Formats: Ideally you should bounce (mix down) your project as 24 bit stereo WAV or AIFF files at the original session sample rate. Please remove peak limiting and leave 3dB or more headroom so the master fader does not clip. Don’t worry about level, that’s what mastering is for! Clipping will destroy transients and distort the signal. Please take the time to ensure you have the correct tracks that are clearly labelled. Accepted file formats are 16, 24 or 32 bit stereo WAV, 16 or 24 bit stereo AIFF and Audio CD. Mastering for Vinyl: Mastering is essential for vinyl due to the complicated phase relationships. Sonamax has many years of experience mastering for vinyl. Contact us now to discuss you next vinyl project.