Joe Caithness: Mastering for Video Game Soundtracks

Joe Caithness is a mastering, transfer, and restoration engineer based in Nottingham, UK, with over 18 years of experience and more than 1,500 completed projects to his name. He's become the go-to engineer for video game soundtrack vinyl and digital releases, having mastered over 260 titles for Laced Records alone, including Resident Evil, Bloodborne, Borderlands, and Dead Cells. In 2025, he mastered the vinyl edition of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for Nintendo and Laced Records the first official Nintendo physical music release in the West in generations and worked on the physical rollout of the Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 soundtrack, which went on to hit #1 on the physical albums charts in both the UK and France.

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

• Why passion for music matters when becoming an audio engineer
• Why mastering attracts introverts
• What mastering for video game soundtracks involves
• The specific technical challenges of turning a game score into a listenable album release
• The tools Joe uses to rescue overprocessed, hard-limited mixes/masters
• Why Joe starts with his limiter before touching any EQ or compression
• The gain-normalization step he does before any processing and why it makes everything easier
• Why mastering is really about context and consistency, not stereo processing
• How he creates cohesion across 9+ hours of wildly varied audio
• His approach to vinyl QC
• Why he tells clients not to listen to their masters in their studio

To learn more about Joe Caithness, visit: https://www.joecaithnessmastering.com/

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