F.A.Q. / Contact

After 20 years of doing this full-time, and 30 years of being audio-obsessed, we can handle literally any type of music and audio. Experience is golden.

As our name implies, we make music sound fat, but we are also very experienced in doing delicate work – the name reflects my heritage in bass music (and I was a lot younger when I chose it!), but I am fluent in gentle work too.

Genre specialisms = electronica, house, cinematic, trailer, rootsy rock, d&b/jungle, singer-songwriter, hip hop, delicate piano, grime, reggae, disco, orchestral, techno, experimental, avant-garde, blues, jazz, punk, grunge, ambient…

Basically anything that makes you shake your booty, OR that you would relax to after shaking your booty.

We got you.

Upload direct to Fat As Funk here
Or email your own links to: loz@fatasfunk.com
Or a free upload site we recommend is WeTransfer

We aim to get the finished product back to you within 0-5 days for mastering jobs, & 2-10 days for mixing jobs (dependent on current workload & the size of your job of course). We are always looking to clear our books, so won’t keep you hanging about any longer than necessary.

If you have a specific, urgent deadline let us know & we will do our best and juggle things to make it happen. We can usually help you out to meet your needs.

Stereo Wav or Aiff files are ideal (MP3 files are not so good for mastering, and should only be used as a last resort.)

Please export your wav/aiff files at 24 bit or higher. And 44.1kHz or higher.

Please allow a little headroom in your mix so it’s not clipping in the red (around -1dB is ideal).

Also please remove any extreme limiters (“Maximizers”) or similar built in mastering presets.

Click here for more tips on how to optimize your audio pre-mastering or mixing.

Yes we can. That is exactly what we do.

We ensure your carefully crafted collection of songs will stand up as a complete work. Your album will sound cohesive, level matched & with appropriate pauses between tracks (or we can do it seamlessly). It will sound professional.

Even if you have a mixture of soft & heavy songs on the album, we can make them sound great together, & smooth out the discrepancies between mixes.

If tracks were recorded in different studios, by different engineers we will deal with all of them together as one whole thing. All done keeping your preferences & ideas in mind.

We can sensitively blend highly dynamic, subtle material into an understated work of art, or we can make your bass-heavy album hit the listener hard and loud all the way through.

Whatever the music needs, we can make it happen.

Yes of course, see our page here.

If you want to add stems to the free demo (tricky vocal stem perhaps?) then you can simply purchase any extra stems separately, thus testing out the stem mastering service for a massively reduced cost. Assuming you like the results then it will be just the mastering cost left to pay at usual rates.

No free demos for mixing work, sorry. Too much time.

The core hardware we use that I’ve found to be the absolute best over the years (and we’ve bought & sold loads) is our SPL Passeq EQ Mastering Edition mk2 (probably the best passive EQ in the world), IGS Tubecore 3U Mastering valve compressor (incredible vari-mu valve compressor with some unique tricks), Bettermaker Mastering EQ (possibly the cleanest and most flexible analogue EQ ever) and 2 x Pultec Style valve EQ EQP-WA (absolute classic broad-strokes EQ. Sometimes used with the EQ switched off for just an added layer of lovely real tube warmth). Minimal cable lengths of the highest quality, all measured carefully to match.

This combination colours the sound just right – not too hot, not too cold, just lovely and warm, sounding very rich, detailed and expensive. All going through a fully balanced signal path by SPL, recorded at 24/96.

This has been our go-to setup for a while now, and gives consistently incredible results that just sounds awesome and delights our clients.

Every so often I will buy some other bit of hardware if I get the itch, but if I don’t feel it adds a tangible benefit for the long term and does something noticeably better or different than what I’ve got, I’ll get rid of it. I’m not a gear collector for the sake of it (been there, done that, collected the dust).

Although the main sound is achieved using hardware, I also use a high quality, carefully selected mix of licensed plugins by Waves, PSP etc. 64 bit internal processing at every stage.

Monitoring is the classic Blue Sky System One (Ex-M&K & B&W engineer designed & built full range reference monitors + matched sub. THXpm3 Certified). An absolute treasure of a monitoring system, that I’ve had since 2008, and know intimately.

Working in a calibrated room with mathematically excellent dimensions and neutral acoustics. Great room response with carefully designed acoustic treatment – a hive of absorption, reflection, diffusion and non-modal surfaces. This is probably the most important factor in getting a quality, consistent result that translates across all systems.

A brain and ears with 30 years of studio experience, working on every genre of music imaginable. Professionally mastering under the name of Fat As Funk since 2006, & quality audio-obsessed since 1997.

No problem, yes we can, but we do have to charge a small fee for our time. We use analog mastering hardware, which must be set up and recorded in real time, so it’s not just a case of re-bouncing.

A replacement mix from your end is £7. You can purchase the “Add stems for stem mastering” option and add a note in your order that it is for a replacement mix of your track.

All jobs must be paid in full upfront please (not free tasters of course!).

If you are a large established company we may at our discretion offer payment terms in line with your standard accounting practices (e.g. maximum 30 days after invoicing) but this is not our standard operating practice, and is reserved for large established companies only. Much less hassle for everyone to just pay upfront when you supply the audio and be done with it.

We’ve been doing this under the name Fat As Funk full time since 2006. We have worked on countless tracks (anywhere around 16 – 20 thousand as a best guess). We have hardly ever needed to advertise because our customers keep on returning and sending us their friends on recommendation (how did you find us?).

This is for good reason. We deliver quality results.

Rest assured, if you are not delighted we are not satisfied. 99% of jobs we hit the sweet-spot first time, but we are always happy to make any revisions without fuss or argument to ensure you absolutely love your masters.