Mastering -- Why?

[jndietz]

What's the purpose? After a song is mixed, it sounds great. I guess I'm not familiar with it and it's process.

[LeeRosario]

Originally Posted by jndietz

What's the purpose? After a song is mixed, it sounds great. I guess I'm not familiar with it and it's process.

Quite simply and not so simply,

No two mixing rooms are ever alike. No two mixing senarios are ever identical. In fact, your listening is likely to change throughout the life of any given album production. So in a sense, it seems logical to have it all come together under one roof in a highly controled environment.

Speaking as a mix engineer, the mastering stage can do alot of things for you:

First off, mastering is just a word that says many things. It only give you general guidelines...each and every project is taken like an ER paitient. You don't treat flu symptoms like you would a gun shot victim.

Historically, it was a highly specialized process related with pressing vynil records, which more than likely most of us aren't involved with. I'm not going into that because it's probably not rellevant to your situation.

Mastering gives you a chance to listen to your mixes in a different space, with a different headspace and with a different set of specialized and objective ears. Ideally, this stage catches any problems you'd have before pressing and sending your mixes off into the listening world.

What sounds good and proper in your mixspace may not be universally true and up to par. Based on that, the fixes can be major or very minimal.

I guess it would be ideal to mix straight to press, but honestly, it just dosn't work that way most of the time. This is not including the documenting process that goes on with label releases, such as having proper serial and PQ information.

Mastering in this era seems to be more of an error correction/preperation process about as much as a final polishing effect. I've heard tons of premastered material that dosn't get it's smooth and polished glazed sound until after mastering.

However, that's me speaking from a mixing engineer's standpoint. There are mastering engineers hear who can tell you more than I'm willing right now Plus I'm sure you can do a search for this topic, which comes up quite often.

My two cents.

Originally Posted by jndietz

What's the purpose? After a song is mixed, it sounds great. I guess I'm not familiar with it and it's process.

Ok, so you have 10 or so songs/mixes that sound great on their own and now you have to make them all sound good together on a CD...

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Mastering is the process of preparing the recording for publishing on it's final distribution format.

For CD this would mean (more or less, depending upon the production)selecting final track order, setting and creating the final song fades, spacing or crossfades as desired, setting the overall apparent levels and timbres of the songs to fit together as desired, polising the final overall sound, setting cue lists, PQ data editing, CDInfo editing, making the studio master, mapping the errors, and sending the package off to the duplicator.

This has in the Internet age been corrupted to have a second and entirely incompatable meaning: "try and do everying in mastering that you should have done in tracking and mixing instead in order to make your mix sound good, and then ruin even that effort by making the song as loud as possible."

G.

[The REAL Jigsaw]

Thanks for bringing up the subject. I know it's been brought up several times, but hearing you engineers put it into perspective never gets old

[masteringhouse]

Other than the creation of the final CD and quality control the main purpose of mastering is to have someone with a high degree of experience listen objectively to your music to help ensure that it will translate well for the meduim on which it is going to be distributed, and be "competitve" with other releases in a similar genre. "Competitive" does not mean just LOUD, it also means well-balanced. It's these points in particular, experience and objectivity, that many seem to miss in regard to what mastering is all about.

[Lt. Bob]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

This has in the Internet age been corrupted to have a second and entirely incompatable meaning: "try and do everying in mastering that you should have done in tracking and mixing instead in order to make your mix sound good, and then ruin even that effort by making the song as loud as possible."

G.

OMG that's funny .......................... and true!

[Robert D]

Yeah, good one Glen.

jndietz - As you say, if the mix is great, what's the purpose? In that case, mastering is simply the process of assembling the song order, fades, gaps, markers, etc., setting the final levels, and creating a burn file.

[masteringhouse]

Originally Posted by Robert D

Yeah, good one Glen.

jndietz - As you say, if the mix is great, what's the purpose? In that case, mastering is simply the process of assembling the song order, fades, gaps, markers, etc., setting the final levels, and creating a burn file.

If a mix is great one question would be are all mixes compatico with each other on the album?

Just saying the mix is great, therefore I don't need to master is a gross oversimplification.

[Robert D]

Originally Posted by masteringhouse

Just saying the mix is great, therefore I don't need to master is a gross oversimplification.

Ooh, that's not at all what I meant, but sure enough, that's kinda how it reads. My bad. It's a context issue. I meant it in the context of unskilled self mastering, where the masses are mangling their material just because they think they're supposed to "master it", and trying to fix things that should be fixed at the mix level. Yes, even the best mixed project will almost certainly benefit from proper mastering, and yes, the self master-er (tounge in cheek) should be striving for a sound signature that belongs to that project, that maintains a flow through the album from track to track.

[masteringhouse]

Originally Posted by Robert D

Ooh, that's not at all what I meant, but sure enough, that's kinda how it reads. My bad. It's a context issue. I meant it in the context of unskilled self mastering, where the masses are mangling their material just because they think they're supposed to "master it", and trying to fix things that should be fixed at the mix level. Yes, even the best mixed project will almost certainly benefit from proper mastering, and yes, the self master-er (tounge in cheek) should be striving for a sound signature that belongs to that project, that maintains a flow through the album from track to track.

Thanks Robert, the above explains it much better and I'm in total agreement!

[Sloan]

The ladies don't get wet if it isn't well mastered.

[Recon101]

OK so a Mastering Engineer looks at the over all project not track by track making sure everything is smooth and all the sounds are balanced and in a sense similiar? Or am I a little off on this?

[cusebassman]

Originally Posted by Recon101

OK so a Mastering Engineer looks at the over all project not track by track making sure everything is smooth and all the sounds are balanced and in a sense similiar? Or am I a little off on this?

They make changes to each track so that the tracks all fit together as a cohesive unit... you don't want one song with an average decibel level of -30 dB and another at -0.1dB, one extremely bass-heavy, and the other lacking any frequencies below 200Hz

[Robert D]

Right, and at the same time you don't necessarily want everything slammed equally either. Just as there should be dynamics within a song, there often wants to be song to song dynamics in a project. The percieved level of the angst filled in your face rocker should probably be different than the tender intimate love ballad that follows it.

[therage!]

Originally Posted by jndietz

What's the purpose? After a song is mixed, it sounds great. I guess I'm not familiar with it and it's process.

You already have gotten some good advice...

But you may very well want to get your stuff at least a little louder. This is what I use but I don't go crazy with it and lose all my dynamics.

http://www.izotope.com/products/audi...maximizer.html

[MCI2424]

Originally Posted by jndietz

What's the purpose? After a song is mixed, it sounds great. I guess I'm not familiar with it and it's process.

Pre-mastering is done at mixdown. Post-mastering is done at mastering if the pre-mastering has flaws. Final mastering is done with the bass and treble controls on your stereo for optimal sound quality. Post- mastering is wildly popular right now and pre-mastering was some years ago.

[jeffmaher]

Originally Posted by SouthSIDE Glen

This has in the Internet age been corrupted to have a second and entirely incompatable meaning: "try and do everying in mastering that you should have done in tracking and mixing instead in order to make your mix sound good, and then ruin even that effort by making the song as loud as possible."

G.

Hey Glen...here's my reality:
Shopping work for publication, the publishers DEMAND that all masters are at 0.0 to -1 DB...or don't bother submitting.
One of my favorite records is Larry Carlton's "Collection". I loaded some of it up on the platform, and it barely approaches -6db..if that. No question about it...saturation kills the spacial effect for some reason. This record is shear ear-candy. But when relying on others to hawk your music...y'gotta conform.

I guess the trick is to maintain ambiance and space while making peakage tweak the meter to their satisfaction. How would YOU approach that riddle??

I know from listening to some more recent pop hits...and analyzing on the platform....that the hit-makers have a plan...and it's working. From what I can tell, it has to do...at least some... with recording VERY sparsely. Pink's hit, "Who Knew", is downright austere. I can identify fewer than half a dozen tracks, roughly. [counting the drum kit as one] It's popping the meter at 0.0...but maintains space. Some good thinning...texturizing...where there is near zero reverb...and real hot in the trebs. [seeming to lay along the -3db line, bottom to top.] And I'm listening now...my ears tell mr that they're using para eq the slice stuff narrowly. I could be wrong.