London’s Brit awarding mastering studio has been behind the growth of the worlds leading artists for over three decades, cementing itself amongst the leading mastering houses in the world.
We’ve been behind major global hit tunes in all genres, from electronic, pop to hip-hop, techno to bhangra, grime to mainstream rock.
Our clientele includes everyone from unsigned artists independent and major labels to international media companies like Netflix and Disney to artist such as Mark Ronson, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Take That, Ellie Goulding, WSTRN, YXNG BANE.
Operating from our London studios, Whitfield is equipped with everything needed to create audio masters that are optimised for all major platforms and to cut vinyl in-house.
Get the audio experts behind some of the world’s biggest hits working for you… master your music with Whitfield!
Whitfield Mastering’s chief mastering engineer, Naweed, is one of the world’s most sought-after vinyl-cutting and digital mastering professionals. He is a fully qualified BSc (Hons) acoustics, electronics and music technology expert.
Combining a thorough knowledge of the science of audio engineering with impeccable hearing and artistic appreciation, he is renowned for his regular recording industry clients for having “one of the best pairs of ears in the business”.
Naweed has acted as an audio consultant to Sony’s Japanese headphone design team and to audiophile engineering company Crookwood. His career included eight years working for Sony Music, encompassing mastering work on international hits in every genre of popular music, from West Coast rock and jazz to mainstream and cutting-edge hip-hop.
In the years since leaving Sony, he has added world-beating English pop, electronica, indie, dance, grime and Bollywood bhangra to his repertoire.
Artists for whom Naweed has mastered albums and singles during his 20-year career include, in no particular order: Ellie Goulding, Jimmy Edgar, Take That, John Legend, James Morrison, The Killers, Fatman Scoop, Chris Clark, Jamiroquai, Bastille, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé, Nas, Jennifer Lopez the list goes on. For many years, he was responsible for mastering the output of the DefJam and Mercury labels in the UK, including the work of Kanye West, Mariah Carey, Rihanna, Ne-Yo and Jay-Z. It’s a track record that speaks for itself.
Naweed began his mastering career over two decades ago at the renowned Whitfield Studios in Central London. The studios, originally owned by CBS and later by Sony Music, played host over the years to recording artists including Iggy and the Stooges, Bing Crosby, U2, Madonna, The Rolling Stones, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, and Amy Winehouse. Naweed was in illustrious company, and learned the craft of vinyl cutting from the UK’s first ever female cutting engineer, the trailblazing Beryl Ritchie, who cut the vinyl master for the first pressing of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, as well as the Clash’s debut LP.
After surviving the closure of Whitfield Street early in the new Millennium, Naweed founded his own company and bought back the mastering equipment and vinyl cutting lathe from his former Whitfield Street studios at auction.
He now keeps the name of the studio alive in his mastering business, Whitfield Mastering, and this went from strength to strength during the 2010s.
Lights, the debut double-platinum debut album by Ellie Goulding, was mastered at Whitfield, as was the single of the same name, which itself went five times platinum and spent over a year on the Billboard Hot 100. In 2014, Naweed mastered the vinyl edition and singles from Mark Ronson’s Uptown Special album, including the decade’s biggest hit, Uptown Funk, which stayed at number one for seven weeks in the UK alone.
Since its foundation, Whitfield’s regular label clients have included Sony, EMI, Warner Music, Atlantic, Virgin, DefJam, Island, Mercury, Polydor, Warp Records, Ninja Tune, and Jimmy Edgar’s Ultramajic. In recent years, we have also cultivated connections with Bollywood, working on releases by some of the Indian film industry’s biggest artists. But Whitfield operates an open-door everyone-is-welcome policy. We still work with new upcoming and unsigned artists, using our unique and celebrated hit-making skills to improve their material.
Some people in the industry think that they don’t need mastering engineers any more, as they can do it with software or automated services instead. But a software plug-in does not listen to what you’re trying to make your music sound like. It just makes automated algorithm elements of the sound as loud as they can be.
We always listen to what our clients are trying to achieve and help them deliver that. If there are problems with the mix, we don’t just master it and send it back. We collaborate with our clients to get their work sounding the way it should be, to give their fans true listening pleasure. Automated mastering will never be able to achieve this!
Choose Whitfield to master your music, and get the benefit of over two decades of hit record mastering experience, personally tailored to ensure your music sounds its absolute best.
