Its really hard to believe this thread now that Ive read the whole thing. I have read alot of material about mastering, and even some of the "professional" Mastering engineers will tell you that the mystic aura that surrounds "Mastering is BS". I can quote the article if you would like. Mastering is a sidecar issue in this forum, the original was using Sound Forge for Mastering. I think that ones needs to ask the questions concerning the functions and processes of "Mastering". If most of you/us are home recordists then when the term "Mastering" is used, it is used as "home mastering". Mastering has only
been around since the 60's roughly, does that mean that Elvis sucked because he wasn't mastered with todays understanding and tools of the process? The tools are becoming more available to the public becasue of the profitability of mass marketing. If I had lots of money I could buy a SADiE Mastering suite, but would that mean Im a Mastering engineer? If I had tons of audio engineering experience, would that make me a Mastering Engineer? Did you know that some projects are mixed so well that they NEVER got mastered (using the term as to tweaking the mix)? I always thought that mastering was the processing and preparation to feed the music/data to cutters, for making records, glass masters or whatever. I think it was a certain kind of tape (1630 Umatic tape?) for driving the machines, just like what a 5 axis mill uses in a machine shop. Numerical tape! The" tweaking" was to make sure there was conformity on the overall project, somewhat equal metering from song to song. By todays standards you can take a CD-R to a duplication facility and they refer to it as the pre-master because the Master is the 10 inch glass disk in which starts the development of the stampers.
Now back to Pre-Mastering...The tweaking portion I think everyone is wondering about.
No matter how much equipment you own, no matter how much experience you have and no matter what mistique floats about, Pre-Mastering the final that goes to tape(1630 or CR-R and sometimes dat) takes talent. Not everyone has talent do they, I have heard and Im sure youve heard, CD's that do not sound as good as someone elses CD. Why is that, both were done by professionals, both were done with big old honking Sony like budgets... The big names in Mastering Engineering have a gift to take an average tune and make it nice, they make it sparkle and they make it hot. Its a gift that does require a good amount of experience so they can know what frequencies need to be where, but the BIGGEST gift is the knowing how to make what the average listeners likes to hear. No freakazoid like audiophile will ever be abler to make the masses buy records if what he does isn't what the average listener wants. Mastering Engineers are the magicians that take music from the data standpoint and transform it into ( via the advocate system) the hearts and minds of the purchasing masses. If someone has the magic/talent or whatever you call it, they can Pre-Master at Home with SF ("gasp"' Booooo"). Just as someone who owns every piece of equipment imaginable and a respectable amount of experience could never make a Pre-Master that sells good. Its the battle between Objective and Subjective.
Sonusman somewhere tried to make the point about the importance of talent in the recording industry from a musicians, as well as from the recording,mixing and mastering point of view.
Since the prices of equipment has dropped so much recently and our prosperity has made it possible to buy better equipment, we have been fooled into thinking we can buy talent like a plug-in, and that those people without the plug-in, don't have talent! I buy, therefore, I am good!
My recommendation: realize everyone is trying to learn and do the best they can with what they have. Try not to be insulting and take critical remarks as personal attacks. Maybe some reading in "The Musicians Guide to Home Recording" should be in order. Ive been in Big studios with Idiots and seen absolute genius' happen on 4 tracks and am convinced, nothing is cut and dry. You wanna rip into some music, go the MP3 forum and listen to music I posted, then let me have it!
Peace,
Dennis
