WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND FOR SPACING BETWEEN TRACKS?
In a professionally mastered album, the timing between songs are done on a custom basis, usually guided by the way one song ends and the next one starts as well as taking into account the style of music.
ONCE AGAIN, there are NO standard, default spacing on professionally mastered CDs! We reiterate because even though the premise is clearly stated in the first paragraph, many people still think we set our program to default at one or two seconds between tracks!
When we go through the spacing process with clients attending the mastering session, it is interesting to observe the differing opinions that people have. In other words, this is an artistic endeavor and except for technically placing the start I.D., there are no rules here. Some clients are not at all concerned about this process whereas others are very interested in being part of the process.
So if you are interested and have not attended the mastering session, We can create the spaces and send you excerpts of the space between tracks. This will be in the form of an mp3 of the whole album spacing according to the taste of the mastering engineer. You can then let us know if it's perfect or if you would like an adjustment. Then the ones that need changing are redone and the album-at-once mp3 is sent again for final approval. Why mp3? Because by this time you have already approved the sound of the masters and are just checking spacing. So having a lower quality sound doesn't impact the spacing and it saves time and space.
On the other hand, our mastering engineer is perfectly happy and comfortable doing it himself without approval, if you like. However, once you get the master and then have an idea for spacing one or more tracks or don't like something that was done, it is relatively expensive to redo because of the necessity to adjust the space(es), redo the master and pay for a second courier, if you are not attending.