Top 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions about Mastering

[Chater-La]

http://en.audiofanzine.com/mastering...mastering.html

Feel free to add your own...I think this is a good place to start.

[legionserial]

It misses out the plethora of questions asked about mastering that actually have nothing at all do with mastering.

[Dr. Varney]

This is brilliant! I wonder if it's imspired by my dumb questions about mixturing and maxtering?

Dr. V

[mixmkr]

http://en.audiofanzine.com/mastering...mastering.html

Feel free to add your own...I think this is a good place to start.

we did in the original thread

[Robbmetal]

great article

[masteringhouse]

Thank you for making this a "sticky" and taking time to read the article.

Best,
Tom

[Chater-La]

Oh I forgot to tell you Tom, we also translated it into German:

http://de.audiofanzine.com/studio-he...mastering.html

[DrewPeterson7]

One question I've been wondering that doesn't really come up (or didn't at a quick glance); how "hot' should a mix be when it's sent in for mastering? Obviously you don't want it clipping, and I've been told it's a good idea to leave at least 6db or so of unused headroom for the ME to work with, but given the preference where would you mastering guys want a mix to peak? -6db? -12? Does it even really matter, as long as it's below 0?

[Massive Master]

I'm in the "naturally doesn't clip" category. Although I don't feel there's an advantage to going just short of clipping (I'm not going to mess with a mix that peaks at -6dBFS just to get it to peak at -3dBFS), as long as it doesn't clip without the use of limiting or excessive 2-buss compression, it's fine.

[masteringhouse]

Oh I forgot to tell you Tom, we also translated it into German:

http://de.audiofanzine.com/studio-he...mastering.html

Thank you so much, das ist awesome!