Chief Mastering Engineer Todd Gerard with Jeremy Gerard of Gurari Studios mastering a recent opera project.

GERARD SOUND LAB offers high quality professional mastering, editing, audio restoration, and CD-R duplication at affordable prices. Owner and chief engineer, Todd Gerard has worked with some of the most respected modern jazz musicians and producers in the world today such as Mike Mainieri and Steps Ahead, Todd Barkan, Lew Soloff, and Chico O'Farrill among many others. The Mastering Discography speaks for itself.

GERARD SOUND LAB is a unique, warm and friendly facility conveniently located in the heart of Long Island City, New York - just 10 minutes from Midtown Manhattan. We provide the same high quality mastering services to our major label clients as we do to the small independent band mastering their first album. From every genre of music including opera, classical, jazz, pop and rock, each project is treated with care and great attention is paid to detail. There are a vast array of tools at our disposal to make your project sound it's best, so a "one size fits all" approach is never taken at GERARD SOUND LAB.

By this point you might be asking the question, "What exactly is mastering and why do I need to have my music mastered?" Well, without going into the usual lengthy, boring and technical diatribe, simply put; MASTERING IS THE FINAL TECHNICAL AND ARTISTIC PROCESS WHICH YOUR MIXES GO THROUGH TO MAKE THEM SOUND THEIR ABSOLUTE BEST. Keep in mind the old tried and true adage though: "garbage in equals garbage out". That is to say it's very difficult to make a bad mix sound good, but it's been our pleasure and thrill to make a really good mix sound truly moving. We use the tools at our disposal as brushes and paint the audio in colors and shapes to suite the particular style of music.

Just as important as shaping the sound, so are the more technical aspects of mastering. These include the collection of audio (often times from different sources), editing, cleaning the "top" and "tail" of each track, digital noise removal, digital error correction, sequencing (ordering) of audio, crossfades, pause times, and the proper placement of P and Q codes (track indexes) in the final master.

Todd Gerard is a voting member of The National Academy of Recording Arts And Sciences (NARAS).

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