What do you give to a mastering engineer?

[Cherax]

When I'm ready to release an album, I'll be taking my songs to a mastering engineer to make it all shiny and professional-sounding. That won't be for a while yet, but I'm curious: has anyone done this before? What's the experience like in general, but moreover, what will an ME be looking for (and conversely, hate to find) in a track that you give them? (For example, how much headroom should you leave?)

[the4thImpulse]

When I'm ready to release an album, I'll be taking my songs to a mastering engineer to make it all shiny and professional-sounding. That won't be for a while yet, but I'm curious: has anyone done this before? What's the experience like in general, but moreover, what will an ME be looking for (and conversely, hate to find) in a track that you give them? (For example, how much headroom should you leave?)

You should always leave at least 3dB of headroom on the master channel (I ususally sit around -6).

You need to have your song completely mixed down when you hand it to the mastering engineer, you will send him one file only (which is the whole song). They will only make very minor adjustments to an eq to clear up any problem areas (which there always is) and they will raise the volume with fancy compressors and limiters to a commercial level.

[Freewave]

I know when i had some mastering help you don't want to have a limiter on the master (that's already changed the quality of the final product) and i was asked to supply a 24 bit wav and not the 16bit. As stated no excessive volumes should be there and having the music properly mixed before you hand it over it imperative as mastering is not going to perform any miracles on poor mixing.