Mastering

[brian trousers]

Listening to the radio the other night and they had the guy from the Stranglers who had an unmastered demo from his latest album . They sounded great to me but he told the dj that it still had to be mastered which included some "EQ and stuff " he said.
Anyone know exactly what he meant or is it just the actual mix he referred to ? What do they do when they "master" that makes them sound so much better than my Fostex ?
There's always credits on cd's for "masterered by " .

??????

 

[Son of Mixerman]

Mastering is a process that includes several subprocesses.

Mastering Engineers are engineers that provide duplication facilites with the data required for making CD's, Vinyl records tapes, etc

They have rooms that are designed to neutralize the music to give a clear sonic picture of what is on the source disc/tape. Mixing enviroments vary quite abit so the audio will sort of have a room signature attached to the music whether its to much or too little of certian fequencies. A ME will try to average the eq to be more balanced, may add some compression and limiting to control various things. He tries to make sure that the music will translate to as many systems as possible, like boomboxes, home stereo and walkmans. During this signal processing he/she will make sure the fades and volume levels between songs are un-obvious so the listener isn't distracted by big gaps or huge volume jumps from one song to the next. The ME will also prepare the data for duplication, making sure all the PQ data is correct as well as quality control to make sure the customer is happy and the duplication process doesn't have any surprises.
There is alot of info I left out, but Bob Katz wrote a nice book that goes into alot of depth but helps you understand what happend to your audio once a ME gets your music.

Buy a copy from Bob... http://www.digido.com/ Mr Katz is a great guy.

SoMm

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

Mastering is the sometimes very involved process of polishing/preparing material for release.

The best explanation you'll get is from one of the premiere mastering engineers - Bob Katz - at his website - http://www.digido.com

Also, Brad Blackwood's Euphonics site has more info.... www.euphonicmasters.com/

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

heh-heh... parallel typing again!

 

[Son of Mixerman]

heh-heh... parallel typing again!

But at least this time..... I got on the board first.... instead of me being the echo. Its must be my typing latency


SoMm

 

[kylen]

Also the song you heard was run thru some or all of this kind of stuff:

http://www.euphonicmasters.com/orban_article.html

So what you heard was the mixed song re-balanced by the broadcast processors, mastered - if you will - for distribution over the airwaves.

A lot of material can sound pretty professional just by being broadcast over the radio waves. Of course on the other hand some really good stuff can sound worse as soon as it hits a broadcast limiter. I think there's a whole 'art' to specifically mastering for the radio and TV.

kylen