Policies & FAQ

Policies

Booking and payment

After we commit to work on you project, we require a 50% deposit. The remaining sum is due on completion. We send you the final renders only upon receiving the payment. Sorry, no exceptions.

All payments are via PayPal.

Deadline policy

We respect the time of our clients, so we abide by deadlines. Your project will receive an estimated deadline, but only upon inspecting the material you send us. Estimation does not take into account revisions or additional services that may be requested during the mixing/mastering process.

Rare cases when we need to reschedule the deadline will be discussed with the client. You’ll receive a discount offer, amount depended on circumstances.

Revisions

We allow up to 3 revisions, sent within one day upon receiving a version from us. After that we consider our work done. To make the most of the revision process, make notes of all the required changes (with the timestamps, if applicable). Applying requested changes may take up to 3 business days.

Mixes and Masters sent for review will be high-quality mp3 files and will include regular silent gaps.

Pre-mastering the mixes

Mixes sent for revision will be ‘pre-mastered’ (with minimal or none tonal changes) to bring them up to competitive loudness level for client’s convenience. However, mastering is a separate service so don’t expect full-package here. Pre-mastering will be disabled on final mix renders.

Clean-up and editing

Unless booked for editing/producing, we treat the received tracks as final and don’t perform any clean-ups or editing, except necessary phase-alignment, fade-ins and fade-outs. Hint: breathes and string-squeaks will become louder.

Project retention policy

Your project will be archived and backed up for a guaranteed period of 6 month after the completion date. However, we’re not a backup service, retrieval is meant for disaster cases only. Make and keep your own backups at different stages of production.

We advice you to familiarize yourself with data storage technology and get to love backups. 3-2-1 strategy, Backup on wiki, borg backup, rclone, kopia. You’ll be thankful when the time comes.

Cancellation

If you need to cancel our services, please, notify us immediately. Initial deposit is forfeited.

General

Payments are final and non-refundable.

Use of Third Hemisphere logo on any promotional or advertisement material, CD’s, BluRays and other media is prohibited without official authorization from the studio.

These policies are subject to change without notice.

FAQ

Q: Do you mix surround sound?
A: No

Q: Why do you mix in-the-box?
A: This topic is a can of worms. There’s nothing wrong with any approach, however, these are the facts for the most studios, not specializing in analogue-only mixing: Integrating hardware processing takes dedication, time and regular service. It all builds up and reflects on costs. For a huge number of studios, shiny boxes with big knobs are a way to signal their ‘professional’ status and answer clients' expectations first, and actual tools second. Most of it is never used on your particular project. Us staying lean optimizes your expenses.

Q: Will my mix be mono-compatible?
A: Short answer: yes. Long answer: For a while it was believed that the problem on mono-compatibility of a stereo music was a won battle. It was not the case. Smartphones and Bluetooth speakers are ubiquitous and most of them are effectively mono. It’s important for the music to translate well regardless of the playback device, so we work on that. However, lots of our clients pride themselves to be non-commercial artists and expect their music to shine on a high-quality listening environments. In these cases, mono-compatibility takes a back seat which helps using the available stereo-field more freely. Let us know your thoughts beforehand.

Q: Any names you look up to?
A: Brendan O’Brien, Ken Scott, Ken Andrews, Martin Birch, Andy Wallace.

Q: Why purple?
A: Why not? Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix and Prince were cool with it, it’s enough of a reason for us. Also (unintentionally) Gearspace aka Gearslutz, but we’re purpler.