Mastering Overview

You have just spent the last 12 hours in a studio with your band mixing your recordings and it sounds amazing through those expensive monitors. The engineer burns you a CD to take home so you get into your car and put it in the CD player and it does not sound the same. You get home and put it on your home stereo and it might sound better or worse, but it will sound different. What is the problem? The songs are not mastered.

Mastering is the final step in the recording process and like everything else in the music environment; it is an artistic skill on its own. Mastering uses specialized, high quality audio equipment and the talents of a mastering engineer.

Types of Mastering

There are three main types of mastering:

Basic

This is perfect for artists with budget limitations. The purpose of basic mastering is to make mastering more widely available to more artists so they can enhance the commercial quality of their recordings.

Custom

If you had already invested significantly into your project you would use a custom mastering service. Custom mastering uses a combination of techniques and enhancements to perfect the recording.

Extended

This type of mastering would be used if the initial recording was already at the basic mastering level. Extended mastering takes an already well mastered product and fine tunes it to perfection.

When deciding on what type of mastering service you require, you need to consider two things, your budget and what you need if for. For example, if you are mastering a song for radio you would not invest as much as you would for an album that is geared towards the major label market.

How to Master

The process of mastering is the altering of the final mix of the stereo or surround sound tracks to achieve the best overall sound quality of the recording. This can include:

Optimizing track volume
EQ levels
Tonal Balance to keep the CD consistent
Final arrangement editing to ensure proper spacing between songs
Creating and editing PQ sub-code
Creation of the CD Master to use to duplicate for the masses



To simplify this process there are three basic steps:

Editing: cleaning up and editing the sound waves to achieve proper timing
Equalization: Adding EQ to the mix, adjusting all of the levels
Compression / Limiting: Compression will balance all of the high and low peaks, and limiting will limit the levels from going to high above a specified threshold.

Tip: Having a professional Master your recordings is the best idea if you have the budget. Mastering engineers, besides having well trained ears also have sophisticated outboard gear and speaker systems that can help find and fix problems or inconsistencies within a mix.

What is fixable and what is not fixable by mastering.

Fixable:

Relative level adjustments between songs
The creation of smooth fade-ins/fade-outs at the beginning or ending of a track
The addition of reverb or other effects to the whole track(song)
The use of compression to raise the average sound level of a track
The use of equalization to adjust the overall tonal balance
The adjustment of the silent time between tracks to create the best overall flow for the CD

Not fixable:

You cannot make a bad recording sound great
You cannot undo distortion caused by over-driven levels during the initial mix
You cannot remove excessive reverb or effects if they were initially added
You cannot change the balance between sound sources in a mix. For example: The guitar and the vocal track are conflicting with each other in the panning and equalization

Interesting Fact: The term “Sweetening” is used by Mastering engineers to describe the changes applied during mastering which usually involves adjusting equalization and adding reverb or other effects.

Sweetening is subjective, but it basically describes the process of adjusting the EQ and adding effects like reverb. When you are mixing, you always add EQ to the mix but with the mastering process you add substantially more of both.

If you don’t have the budget to have your songs mastered certain computer recording software will have mastering tools built in. If this is not a feature on included with your software, you can also buy mastering software on its own. These tools will give you the ability to master your work, but remember this is an alternative and should not replace utilizing a professional. The basic tools that you will need to master are:

Equalization
Compression
Reverb or other effects

Tip: Listen to mastered CD’s that you personally think sound great in your stereo. Use this overall sound tone as a guide when mastering your own work.

The first step when self mastering is to import your final mixes into your recording software. A good mix is usually mastered so that it is flat across the frequency spectrum with some roll-off at the very top (High/Treble) and at the very bottom (Low/Bass).

Another important step is normalizing your tracks. Applying Normalization increases the overall volume level of a track while maintaining the inherent dynamics of the initial recording. Keep in mind if your recording was initially mixed at high levels, you rarely need to do this.

Compression and limiting your tracks

These tools are used to reduce a song’s dynamic range and control sporadic volume peaks within a track. As a result, these tools prevent clipping of the audio by allowing the overall volume to be raised. Be aware that you should be careful when applying compression to a final mix because too much compression can ruin a mix. If compression is applied incorrectly the softer parts will be louder but the louder parts will be over compressed which will result in the song losing its energy. Over compression will make a song sound thin and lifeless.

The last step to be added to a master mix is Dither. Dither is a noise shaping tool that helps to reduce inaccuracies in low level audio in a song. Without dither there can be digital distortion, an unpleasant sound. Dither produces low level random noise minimizing distortion to prevent this.

Final Edits

It can be a good idea to have a few different edits of your songs for various purposes. For example, edit a shorter version of a song for the purpose of radio or an extended dance mix. You can cut, paste and re-arrange your final mixes but be careful to ensure these are smooth and include cross-fades.

Final Song Order

Okay, all the songs for the CD are mixed, now come deciding of the order of the songs. Two things to keep in mind are placement and flow. Does the song order sound like one collective piece of work or is it all over the place? Are the fades between songs smooth and professional sounding?

The CD

The final stage is burning that CD. CD-R’s can be purchased for next to nothing these days but because this is the Master copy that you have slaved over for months or even years from initial conception to final product, show it some respect and use quality CD-R master discs. Some engineers prefer the silver or light gold colored disc compared to the dark blue or dark green ones, saying there are fewer data errors.

Be careful to handle the disc carefully when transferring the music to it. Hold it by the edges, don’t get dust or fingerprints on it or there is that chance you will get some sort of data error. Label your CD with a Sharpie marker pen or a similar type designed for writing onto discs. Using CD Labels can cause all types of problems if not now, down the road including skips and data-read errors.

Burning your CD at the slowest speed possible will reduce any possible errors. “1X” speed is the recommended speed so be patient. Turn off any other programs running on your computer, log off the internet, disable the screen saver, sleep and stand by modes. These will ensure the safest and problem free burning of your CD.

The Main Point

Utilizing this information and follow the steps will not make you a mastering genius. If you can’t afford to pay someone else to do it for you, it will drastically improve your initial mix. And remember, like anything in this industry, you will get better at mastering over time, and if you don’t hopefully as your success grows you have more money by then to pay someone to do it for you.