Audio Mixing & Mastering

Audio mixing and mastering for productions finishing in China runs through a tight network of calibrated rooms anchored across Beijing and Shanghai. Beijing Film Group Audio and Mango Sound Beijing on the capital's post chain, the in-house mix bays at iQIYI Audio and Tencent Audio Studio servicing the streaming platforms directly, Bird Audio Beijing for indie and festival features, Shanghai Film Studio Audio and Pacific Audio Visual on the Yangtze, plus the Wanda Studios audio facilities at Hengdian and Qingdao for domestic tentpole work.

Here is how this works in practice. Our supervising mixers walk into picture-lock sessions with premixed dialogue, music and effects stems ready to balance against the cut, monitoring on ITU-R BS.1770-calibrated systems at -85 dBC theatrical reference. Mandarin centre-channel dialogue is the load-bearing element across Chinese-language features and series, with Cantonese, Sichuanese, Shanghainese and Beijing-accent regional dialect tracks placed where the production demands, and English or co-production language stems prepared in parallel for international versioning.

Mastering targets the full distribution matrix Chinese post houses ship into — NRTA delivery specs for CCTV and provincial broadcasters, ATSC A/85 and EBU R128 loudness for international broadcast, platform-specific targets for iQIYI, Tencent Video, Youku and Mango TV streaming masters, Netflix at -27 LKFS, Prime Video, Apple TV+ and Disney+ when content licenses out, plus theatrical DCP masters for CFA-released features.

The picture on the ground is more specific. We deliver organised stem packages — dialogue, music, effects, foley split by category — alongside full M&E tracks engineered specifically for dubbing into English, Japanese, Korean and other Asian-market languages without re-cutting the music or effects beds. NRTA dialogue and lyric review is sequenced into the mastering schedule where the project ships to Chinese broadcasters so any needed script adjustments fold back into the final pass without disrupting the delivery date. International clients attend final mix reviews remotely via Source-Connect or platform-equivalent IP workflows on GMT+8 schedules, with frame-accurate picture, talkback and clip approval to the stage.