Sound competitive.

Sound timeless.

Give your digital mixes an analog finish.

Only $60 $39 per song for the month of November.

Free 60-second mastered sample. Unlimited revisions.

*To prepare your mix to become the best master possible:

Please upload either a “32-bit floating” or 24-bit file at the same resolution you used to record (ie. 44.1khz, 48khz, 96khz).

Fadeouts should be left several seconds too long (for now) and free of clicks, noises, and abrupt cut-offs. Be sure to leave some silence at the beginning and end of each song if possible.

Please make sure your vocal tracks are edited for pops, clicks, creaks, rustling or mouth noises in between phrases. Please gently manage excessive sibilance with a de-esser plug-in on the vocal tracks as well.

One final thing: Please choose a reference track from another artist, preferably a fairly recent release, that you like the sound of (ie. the general vibe, and the bass and treble balance). I’ll refer back to it as I work on your music to give me an idea of your tastes and your vision. Thanks!

“Sounds amazing. I worked with two different high profile mastering guys for my last two projects and yours gives me the feel I'm looking for… yours just has a richness to it!”

-Caleb Russell Kennedy, Tyranny & What Good Am I?

“Keith, you killed it... Appreciate you greatly, mate. That’s exactly what I am looking for.”

-Dylan Case White, Remind Me Your Name

“I love it! Wow, that really glued it all together…”

-Jonathan Puckett, Boast In Weakness EP

Why choose Silver Seas Mastering?

  • Every song is treated with the reverence of a classic. I will always anticipate that people will be listening to your music for decades to come!

  • I know how much this means to you. Your songs are a deep reflection of who you are. I will always honor your artistry.

  • It may be the right time in your journey as an artist to move beyond using high-speed online facilities or automated algorithms to master your songs. A good album or single is worth doing right with attentive, analog mastering.

  • Unfortunately, many other mastering studios still produce insanely loud, squashed, distorted masters. It’s not the 2000s anymore! I’ll make your music competitively loud while sounding great!

  • I take a hybrid analog/digital approach to bring out the best in your music. This means that corrective processes are accomplished digitally, while tone adjustments such as equalization and compression are performed in the real world with mastering-grade analog hardware.

Elysia Xfilter Mastering Edition

Legendary engineer Bob Katz literally wrote the book on mastering (“Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science”). He also commissioned German high-end audio company Elysia to build this high-fidelity and sweet-sounding equalizer to his own specifications. I personally love how this EQ completely merges with the music passing through it, never sounding like it’s “extra” or “on top” of the sound. It also features their Passive Massage circuit, adding a beautiful and subtle sheen to the top-end.

Tegeler Audio Créme

Another hi-fi piece of hardware made in Germany, the Créme borrows from a couple of well-known studio classics and recreates them in versions even better suited for mastering. It features a stereo Pultec-style EQ section in addition to an SSL-style VCA compressor. In my opinion, SSL brand compressors, although they’re great, often sound a little too glossy and “pinched” for mastering. Thankfully, Tegeler Audio has instead designed an open-sounding circuit capable of smooth and/or punchy dynamic control, with that famous ability that we love about SSL to “glue” together a mix. I’ve yet to hear a plug-in that can do what a good analog mastering compressor can do!

My name is Keith Hartman. I’m a mastering engineer in Charleston, South Carolina.

I’ve been a musician since 1997, beginning on guitar and moving onto bass, drums, piano, singing, songwriting, recording, and of course, mastering. I release my own songs under my artist name, Sherman Hesse. I’m also the former electric guitarist in the band The Joy Eternal.

I first became interested in the mastering process while present with Grammy-winning engineer Gavin Lurssen in Hollywood, CA as he mastered my first solo album. For the past 15 years, I’ve been recording, mixing, and mastering for other artists and myself, investing in schooling and ever-greater mastering tools. In 2021, I furthered my audio education by completing a 3-month mastering mentorship program created by Blake La Grange (Kayne West, Nine Inch Nails, Cheap Trick) at Mercury Mastering.

 

Mastered at Silver Seas, before and after:

 

What’s involved in mastering?

I firmly believe that competitive-sounding music should be mastered in such a way that it will withstand the test of time, and not simply bow to the short-lived trends of the day. This informs every choice I make for the benefit of your music.

I also believe that most music is best served by taking a hybrid approach, using both digital and analog processing for what each does best. It’s easy to go overboard with colorful analog gear, cloud things up, and lose the 3D depth-of-field you’re trying to attain in the first place. However, there’s really no substitute for what mastering-grade analog gear can offer. This caliber of equipment is able to sculpt your sound subtly, gracefully and musically without the flatness and “gray” color that digital plugins often either introduce themselves, or simply can’t solve.

Now, to pull back the curtain on the mastering processes…

  • It involves balancing the frequency spectrum so that your music sounds its best wherever it’s played.

    Enhancing the good and correcting the bad.

    Fixing problems with harshness, muddiness, and digital lack of depth.

    Bringing out the best in every song so that it sounds truer to itself and your vision for it.

    “Taking the blanket off the speakers,” if you’ve heard the phrase.

  • Compression is like a weapon. In the wrong hands, it can be dangerous!

    A compressor used over your entire mix can either ruin it, or make it sound exciting and full.

    And it’s a fine line. It takes good ears and good taste to perfectly apply compression.

    Then it’s an incredible thing. It can make a song seem to bloom.

    In mastering, compression is used to add life and movement.

  • If your project is more than a single song, then each song will be level matched to one another primarily by ear.

    Then we decide how much to push the peaks up against digital zero, the “brick wall”.

    We can land anywhere from squashed and slammed to wide open-sounding with very little peak limiting (or none at all for some classical genres!)

    It depends on your goals and I can help you make that decision before we begin.

    Now, there’s a lot of noise out there on the internet and a lot of numbers floating around about streaming requirements, brickwall limiting and LUFS.

    There are certainly some important things we’ll consider but at the end of the day, if it sounds good, guess what?

    It is good. What a relief.

    Technology changes. Trends change.

    But good music withstands the test of time, doesn’t it?

  • Some we hope to avoid using, but we can certainly use them and use them well when the need arises:

    De-essing, multiband compression, dynamic EQ, stereo widening, clipping.

    Others are either essential or simply a joy to use when we can:

    Saturation, volume rides, high quality dithering, and even subtle, psychoacoustic sound-shaping to help the brain perceive the music as more enjoyable to listen to.

    None of these decisions are made in a vacuum. They are all tied to the discussions we’ll have upfront, and your favorite songs that you provide for reference.

There are a lot of automated services out there.

Can you trust an algorithm to master your music?

Your music is your baby- so only you can answer that question. But consider:

Mastering is the last chance to make any changes and improvements to the sound of your music before you share it with the world.

In a real way, mastering is quality control.

A mastering engineer has to know intuitively and from experience what changes to make and trust our ears to know when enough is enough. When it finally sounds “right.”

That’s where automated mastering software can never help you: Your music is far better served by authentic judgment calls. By real ears!