Mastering

So, all the songs are recorded, everything's mixed and sounds great in the studio. You pop the CD in your car stereo on the way home and... it's really quiet. Don't panic, it's like that for a reason. Here's what Mastering does for you:

• The ultimate aim of Mastering is to produce a final Master CD from which all other copies of the CD will be made.
• The most important part of this is to achieve a "Red-Book Standard" master copy, which (amongst other things) adheres to certain standards:
  • A CD's maximum playing time of 79.8 minutes
  • Minimum track duration is 4 seconds
  • Maximum number of tracks is 99
  • Is 16bit depth, 44.1khz rate
  • Correctly applied track markers, CD Text and ISRC codes
  • Appropriately low level of CD read/write errors
  If these standards are adhered to, you will have a master CD that is suitable for duplication and which will play in any CD player, DVD player, CD-ROM or games console. However, that's not the whole story.
• Over time, the Mastering Engineer's role has expanded from simply cutting the Master Copy, to having the final creative input on how the end product will sound. This is partly for practical reasons - in the days of vinyl, if a song was mixed too bass heavy then it could cause problems cutting the vinyl master copy, by causing the cutting stylus to bounce out of the groove. This led to the ME needing the ability to EQ the final mix, and slowly the art of mastering was developed.
• What the Mastering Engineer (ME) now does involves several levels of audio processing. The ME works on the final stereo mixes provided to you by the studio (those really quiet ones!), and he can't change the balance of the instruments in the mix. However he can use various tools to adjust the overall EQ, dynamics and (here's the bit you were waiting for) the final volume of the tracks. The aim here is to make all the different tracks on your CD sit together as a whole, add an extra polish and sheen, and to bring them up to an acceptable listening level, comparable to a commercial CD. He can sometimes correct general EQ probems, and may be able to use tricks to help pull out certain instruments if they're a bit buried. However he is not a magician and if something is fundamentally wrong with a mix he may refuse to master it, or recommend it be remixed to a higher standard.
• Finally, the ME will sequence the tracks to your specification, adding any cross-fades, fade-outs or other necessary edits to make the CD flow and be in the correct running order, and add in the individual track markers.
• In most cases, a properly mastered track will automatically be suitable for conversion from 44.1khz, 16bit .wav file into any other format - MP3, WMA, AIFF etc. However there are sometimes additonal considerations when having audio mastered for compressed formats, so speak to the ME beforehand if you intend to keep the files digital. It may affect his working methods, such as where track markers and cross-fades are placed. He will also be able to provide you with better quality conversion from non-compressed CD formats into MP3 etc file format.
• Once all this is complete, he will burn you several copies of your Master CD, give you all the necessary documentation, and you're finished.

So there we are, you're at the end of the recording process and your CD sounds amazing, and loud!

One more thing to note: We at Left Ear Sound don't do mastering. Mastering is a very specific subset of sound engineering skills and requires very specialised, high-end equipment designed specifically for mastering. We're set up for tracking & mixing, and the two are very different. When we're mixing your recordings, we will provide you with a "listening copy", which is your mix "made louder". This is not a substitute for proper mastering but will help give you some idea of how it will sound when it has been properly mastered. We can also provide you with details of several very good mastering houses who will be happy to quote you for a proper mastering service.

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