MASTERING is the moment for putting the final polish onto an album or single. The last opportunity to make sure that everything fits together seamlessly and that the sound does not vary from track to track. Successful mastering depends upon a number of things: the involvement of a highly trained, skilled engineer, the appropriate combination of traditional and state-of-the-art equipment, plus an ideal acoustic environment.

Abbey Road Online Mastering is an extremely efficient method of getting music mastered utilizing Abbey Road's mastering facilities via the internet. Clients upload their tracks onto our secure server and select products and services as required. These tracks are then mastered by one of our experienced engineers then returned to the client either as a download via the same website or by post for physical items. Additional copies can be produced on CD or Vinyl format.

Abbey Road has a fine and long tradition of combining great talent with excellent technical facilities - quite simply, Abbey Road is incomparable. Artists who have mastered at Abbey Road range from The Beatles and David Bowie to Basement Jaxx, Asian Dub Foundation, Lily Allen and Franz Ferdinand, among many other successful bands and solo artists far too numerous to mention. Many of the earliest cutting lathes - the tools for producing vinyl masters - were developed in part by EMI technical engineers and put to use at Abbey Road all those years ago.

Abbey Road's world renowned team of mastering engineers is extremely experienced and skilled in making artistic decisions that are appropriate to the style of music they're working with. Any member of the team will master your music to the highest of standards.

Abbey Road Online Mastering sessions are not available as attended bookings. If you would like to attend a mastering session, please call Mastering Manager, Lucy Launder on +44 (0)20 7266 7000 for prices and availability.

Once you've registered via the Abbey Road Online Mastering home page you will be able to upload up to 2GB of your music to our secure server. We currently accept uncompressed stereo WAV or AIFF files. Once you have uploaded your tracks, you will need to create a project and select which format(s) you want. Then add tracks to your format(s), drag the files to adjust track order and proceed to the secure online payment service provider, PayPoint, where you'll need your credit card details to hand.

Abbey Road Online Mastering should take a maximum of 5 working days, beginning from the point of payment.

We sincerely hope that this won't be the case. However, in the unlikely event that there is a problem or you feel that the mastering is not as successful as it ought to be, we will naturally do everything we can to make amends. If you provide us with details of any aspects with which you're displeased, we will master the material again, ensuring that we make the corrections as specified: this will be done without any charge. Once this process is complete, however, any further requests for alterations will be charged at the normal Abbey Road Online Mastering rate.

Abbey Road Online Mastering operates on a cost per track basis for CD mastering and a fixed price per format for vinyl masters. This means you will be able to manage your costs more effectively, knowing the final cost, including VAT and delivery, at the time of booking.

Please refer to the Products and Services menu for a complete list of our prices.

All Abbey Road Online Mastering work is carried out in Abbey Road's world class mastering rooms, all of which have a wide range of classic analogue equipment and the latest in digital hardware and software technologies. At the heart of each room we use the original and exceptional EMI TG mastering consoles with the SADiE 5 PCM8 digital audio workstation. We have Neumann cutting lathes for your vinyl, Meyer and B&W main monitoring, Benchmark A/D/A's, outboard from the likes of Prism, Weiss, Junger, SPL and TC Electronics and an extensive range of the CEDAR software plug-ins.

The Abbey Road Online Mastering site uses industry standard 128 bit SSL encryption to protect your personal site and restrict access to your account. The encryption will include all account and credit card transactions and file transfers ensuring audio is secure whilst uploading/downloading.

Your password will remain private and you can be reminded if you lose or forget what it is by using the link in the log-in section. For your own protection we advise you do not let anyone else have access to your account details.

Once you've registered via the Abbey Road Online Mastering home page you have 2GB of space on our secure server and 48 hours to select a service or product. If you don't get round to placing an order within 48 hours your audio will be removed from our server so you'll need to upload again if you do intend to use us eventually. Once your audio has been mastered and you have downloaded the results we will keep it available for you to download as many times as you wish for a calendar month.

No. As long as you send us files of a reasonable quality i.e. a bit depth of at least 16 bits and a sampling frequency of 44.1kHz and upwards, and the upload isn't interrupted then we will receive your files fine. Any incomplete uploads will be evident to our engineers so they'll be in touch if they have any queries.

We currently accept uncompressed stereo WAV or AIFF files. We expect the files to have a bit depth of at least 16 bits (no more than 24) and a sampling frequency of at least 44.1kHz - if you are unsure then either right click/properties/summary (PC) or get info (Mac) where a stereo 16 bit 44.1kHz file will also indicate a bit rate of 1411kbps. We would also prefer it if your mixes haven’t been pre-processed through any mastering plug-ins or hardware before being uploaded to our server – this gives us more to work with.

Apart from the CD reference you will receive for listening purposes, we will provide your finished CD master either as a DDP Image File or as an audio PMCD. It can be delivered to you via the website, or, should you prefer, we can make a hard copy on disc and post it to you. If you are confident in producing your own CD master and do not need us to make one for you, we will simply send your finished material to you in the form of .wav files. Vinyl will be provided in the format requested which can either be 7", 12" or Album length and will also be sent with an audio CD for reference purposes.

No, we currently only accept audio via the website. If you would like to post the audio please contact Lucy Launder on +44 (0)20 7266 7000 to make a booking.

We have gigabit (i.e. very fast) file transfer speeds between our mastering rooms and the secure server where you upload to and download from so transfer times are negligible once we have your files. The majority of households who have internet access in the UK tend to have asynchronous broadband connections i.e. the download speed can be anywhere between 8 and 40 times that of the upload speed therefore getting your tracks to us will invariably take longer than us getting them back to you. For example, an 8 Mb ADSL broadband connection may still only have an upload rate of 256 kbps so an unzipped 4 minute stereo 16 bit 44.1 kHz WAV or AIFF may take up to 20 minutes to upload to us and less than a minute to send back to you, subject to the contention ratio and volume of network traffic in your area. As we deal with relatively large files, if you have internet access via a dial up modem then uploading to Abbey Road Online Mastering may not be the way to go, however you can contact Mastering Manager, Lucy Launder on +44 (0)20 7266 7000 for prices and availability of a regular mastering session.

Once the tracks have been mastered you will receive notification that they are ready for you to download via email and via notification through your Abbey Road Online Mastering home page. The mastered tracks will be available for you to download (as many times as you like) for 1 calendar month.