Is mastering truly necessary these days?

[Jack1492]

No
Mastering is the final EQ - Compression. Tape or other media of course you can skip mastering I'm not there yet.

 

[Maya Clars]

Is mastering an arcane/obsolete process for vinyl now used as a grift?

Mastering in analog times was "taking the tapes and preparing them to be cut into a vinyl or cassette, etc." So I think it was more about translation to the sources from which people could listen to the music. And when digital world has come, mastering transformed into different philosophy. Right now, I often hear that mastering is for making a song louder. I really don't like the concept of just making it louder. I think If you're working alone and handling all the parts of the music creation yourself, you can decide whatever - if you don't see the purpose of something, just don't do it, listen to your ears. I don't see a problem in solving some issues directly at the mixing stage if you have the whole project under your hands. But if you're working with many people, everyone would have an opinion, so at every stage they'd add something what they thing is correct.

 

[TalismanRich]

That's been my opinion for a long time. Mastering for vinyl records meant making sure that square peg fit the round hole. Moving a digital wave file at 16/44.1 to a CD doesn't need any translation. If you're making commercial CDs, there's information and registration that needs to be done, but in terms of sound, it's a straightforward copy.

In the past, there were few people who had the means and ability to produce high quality source material and if you were in a commercial studio, you most likely had an engineer and maybe a producer to help guide things. Having second opinions isn't a bad idea, I've done mixes for others, sent them to the artist, and he gave me comments.. add this, bring this up, adjust the vocals, etc. After 5 or 6 mixes, you get to a point that they say "Yeah, that's it". Loudness is right, balance is right, mix is right.

Why would you need someone to go in and compress, re-eq and make it conform to someone else's idea of what it should sound like and meet some maximum loudness spec? Not everything needs to be -5 LUFS with a dynamic range of 15dB!

 

[bouldersoundguy]

Even a CD needs songs sequenced, and levels and tone matched. An album can be recorded in one studio with one engineer but still have variations between songs. Heck, even a single headed for streaming may need its level adjusted to a spec and its file format changed for specific sites.

 

[TalismanRich]

Mastering in the 1970s wasn’t a creative stage. It was a transfer process. The goal wasn’t to make the record louder than everyone else. It was to make sure it cut cleanly onto vinyl.

A good engineer and producer should be doing exactly those things, in consult with the artist. The mastering engineer shouldn't be sequencing the songs to his liking! Any artist who is putting together a release should be listening to test burns before sending it out to be pressed. We're talking about 15 minutes to load it up into CD burning software, and rip off copies for every member of a group. If it doesn't meet their approval, adjust and burn another. CDRs cost less than cassettes cost me 40 years ago! The third track sounds too loud and harsh... adjust it and listen to another cut while you're driving home. Or put the MP3s on your IPad, listen to them.

Can you imagine if you decided that you didn't like the sequencing of the Moody Blue Days of Future Passed and changed them during the mastering phase? "I needed to swap those two tracks to fit the side length" You would have been canned on the first pass.

50 years ago, you had to be aware of the limitations of a record.. side length, bass level and centering, dynamic range, etc. I remember when Telarc put out the 1812 Overture with the cannon shot. Some system would actually jump (but that was the point.. you needed a good turntable to reproduce it). I've bought remastered CDs (commercial) that the remastering engineer put 2 seconds of silence between tracks that were supposed to run continuously to the next without a break. COMPLETELY ruined who know how many CDs that were produced. I sent CDs to companies that had hum from bad grounds, ticks and pops from transfers from records, speed changes and wow/flutter. It makes me wonder if some of these people even listen to the work they are doing.

I've heard several comparisons where someone sent a final mix to a half dozen "mastering services", and some of there were complete butcher jobs. UNLISTENABLE! In most cases, I would have preferred the original mix to any of the "fixed" versions. Squashed, bright and brash, boomy.

Doug Sax, Bob Ludwig, Bernie Grundman and the like earned their reputations by knowing how to get records to hold as much of the original information as possible, not to make it sound like they wanted.

I'm sure there are good mastering engineers today, but where you might have had a dozen or so really good ones back then (many were tied to record labels), today you can find hundreds with some purchased mastering software and minimal expertise. It can become paint by numbers! LUFS -14. EQ - POP/Rock Max level -0.5dBFS. Run the files through the computer and you've got a consistent master!

Thank you.. no!

 

[Slouching Raymond]

Of course, for vinyl records, the quality of the recording gets worse towards the centre, because the vinyl inches per second decreases.