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Published
in 'Connections' & 'Inpress'
CD Mastering For
Beginners
So what is Mastering?
Mastering is the art of enhancing
recorded music, in order to attain the most pleasing listening experience
possible. It is the last stage of fine tuning a recording, that helps translate
what the artist hears in the studio, to real world environments.
Mastering is a specialised process that
requires the highest grade audio equipment, often purpose built or modified, as
well as mastering engineers with the expertise to use this equipment. Mastering
can make an average recording sound very polished and when applied to a great
recording, the results can be quite amazing. A mastering session may involve
one, or all of the following processes; equalisation, compression, limiting,
balancing levels, stereo enhancement, editing, noise removal, PQ encoding,
dithering and of course, creating a high quality production master.
The mastering process was once reserved
only for major artists and record labels, but has now become a much more common
part of the music making process due to the growing awareness of its importance.
Even the biggest selling music acts in the world, who use the greatest recording
studios and engineers, would not dream of releasing anything unless it was
worked on by a professional mastering engineer. How much mastering your
recording needs, is an entirely separate issue. Some recordings only require
very slight adjustments or edits, others require greater levels of enhancement.
If nothing else, the mastering stage can
be considered as a safety net, giving the opportunity to an experienced music
listener to have a fresh and unbiased opinion on the final recording, in an
environment designed for critical listening.
What is the most important
process in mastering?
Besides creating a Production Master,
Equalisation is arguably the most important process.
If a mix engineer has the job
of balancing the individual instrument levels in a mix, then consider the
mastering engineer to have the job of balancing the individual frequency ranges of a
mix. (By frequency ranges, I mean, bass, mid range, treble and all those other tricky areas
in between).
The mastering engineer then replaces or
removes the frequencies that he feels are needed to produce an overall tone that
will sound great on all playback systems.
Tips For Your Mastering
Session.
Tip No.1.
What format do we need to bring
to the mastering studio?
24bit audio files are considered to be
the standard format to present at mastering. The most common file formats are
WAV or AIFF.
Tip No.2.
Listen carefully to Your
Mixdowns
Always listen to
the exported file from the beginning to the end
before sending. Make sure
everything is playing correctly, that
the beginning and end are intact,
and that there are no clicks or pops in the
audio.
Tip No.3.
Normalizing
Do not use any kind of normalizing on
your mixdown.
Tip No.4 .
Do I need to compress the stereo
mix before mastering ?
Compression on individual instruments in
a mix, is almost essential in modern recording.
Compression on the stereo buss
can really 'suck' big time!! (pardon the pun).
In this digital age, it's
all to simple to open up another plug in and process the stereo buss,
but resist this. If you feel the mix can be improved, listen
to the mix, and figure out why you don't like what you're hearing. Fine
tune your mix until you're happy, then simply leave it alone. Don't worry if your mixes
are not as loud as the latest release,
your
mastering engineer will
address this along with other sonic issues.
If you
feel strongly about using bus compression,
also make a version without. Consider this to
be kind of like a safety copy.
N.B. If you supply your mixes
already compressed prior to mastering, you are essentailly removing the option
for your mastering engineer to apply compression 'after'
equalisation. Be aware that this is the last stage
to
get it right, so limiting technical &
creative options at mastering can be detrimental to your final
product.
A lot of the time, a mastering
engineer tries to undo the consequences of an over compressed mix. Volume is
only one aspect of the mastering process. Mastering engineers use only
the best gear & techniques in regards to increasing the level of recordings,
without them sounding squashed and un-musical. Sound quality, should
always take first preference over volume. So remember youngsters, you can't
expect a recording to have great depth and sound quality, if it's had the life
squeezed out of it before it gets to the mastering room.
Tip No.5.
Multiple versions of a
mix.
This is a new tip, not orginally
printed with this article.This tip is aimed mainly at new engineers, or,
for engineers mixing in un-familiar surroundings. In these cases, it's a good idea to present at least 2
versions of a mix at the mastering stage. One mix should be a
'normal'
mix,
just the way you like to hear it. The other mix could have a slightly
louder kick & snare.(By slightly louder, we mean .5 or 1dB, not too much.) Or, perhaps a
mix with a louder vocal.
Providing a 'Stem' mix is also an
option. This entails supplying seperate stereo tracks, such as drums, guitars
and vocals.
n.b. this style of mastering can be very labour and time intensive
and may take
twice the normal studio time. It's a technique really for emergencies as
altering a mix at the mastering stage cannot be taken lightly. I should also add
that it requires discipline from the client not to turn the mastering session into a mxing session.
Song titles on iTunes - 'Gracenote'
Database
If you want iTunes and similar software to show track
names
automatically, you need to submit your CD to
Gracenote.
You can read more about how to submit your CD
to the
Gracenote Database here:
Good luck with your
recording and mixes,
From the staff at Crystal Mastering
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