What is Mastering?
As mastering legend Bob Ludwig asserts: “Mastering is the technical and creative act of balancing, equalizing and enhancing analog or digital tapes so that the finished product will have attained the maximum musicality and competitiveness in the open market. A mastering studio must be both extremely creative and technically perfect, since the master that is made there will be the template for thousands of compact discs, DVDs, cassettes and records produced for commercial release.” • “Recording is the process of capturing musical performances onto a physical medium like analog tape, digital tape, compact disc or a computer hard disk.” • “Mixing is the process of taking multiple recorded tracks (3 tracks through hundreds of tracks) and blending them together using a mixing console. The final result is usually a two channel (stereo left and right) performance.
Mastering is a multifaceted term that is often misunderstood. Back in the days of vinyl records, mastering involved the actual cutting of the master that would be used for pressing. This often involved a variety of sonic adjustments so that the mixed tape would ultimately be properly rendered on vinyl. The age of the CD has changed the meaning of the term quite a bit. There are now two elements often called mastering. The first is the eminently straightforward process of preparing a master for pressing. As most mixdowns now occur on DAT, this often involves the relatively simple tasks of generating the PQ subcode necessary for CD replication. PQ subcode is the data stream that contains information such as the number of tracks on a disc, the location of the start points of each track, the clock display information, and the like. This information is created during mastering and prepared as a PQ data burst which the pressing plant uses to make the glass pressing master.
Mastering is the final stage in the recording process. Mastering deals with the overall equilization, compression and phase coherency of a mix. Peak limiting is used to make your song loud and punchy in order to compete with todays high audio standards.The Mastering engineer also arranges the songs in their proper order (with proper spacing between them) to get your CD ready for duplication.
Mastering is just preparing the collection of tracks for a single CD, making them the same percieved volume, spacing between songs, EQing them and such so they sound like they all belong together and they sound as good as possible in any listen situation…basically the final polish to give the entire production a more professional, finished sound before replication.
The experienced Mastering Engineer can take all of the songs and work with them so they feel like a collective musical experience, rather than a collection of songs thrown together on CD. Every song you have heard on the radio, on CD, on tape, on the net, etc. have all been mastered by professionals who have spent their lives at their craft. A Mastering Engineer also provides an experienced 2nd or 3rd set of ears to your project. There are very affordable Mastering houses out there for you to contact, and at XXII-22 Productions we can direct you and possibly save you some hard-earned money. Top drums!
