Mastering....?

[Andrew Sigler]

Hey folks,

I put this up in the "General" catagory as well....

Does anyone have any insights in to the mastering process? I'd like to get my feet wet, but I'm not sure where to start in terms of books and software...

Any clues for the clueless?

[Counterpoint]

Hi siguitar1,

Here's a good link to check out with lots of info

http://www.digido.com

It's worth taking a look at the "Articles" section there. :)

Cheers,

- Matt

[Crossingsound]

That would be a great resoure to read. Just a starting point, Mastering often involves multiband compression, limiting, getting each track to sound similair, song order, and optimizing level.

[gstitt]

If you find any good resources, I would love to know. I always wanted to learn more about mastering, but with so many other areas to learn I just haven't had a chance. Luckily, you can actually get decent mastering done for pretty cheap online.

[Andrew Sigler]

Hey folks,

Thanks for all the advice. I'll be digging in shortly...

[Trace]

Lengendary Mastering engineer Bob Katz has published "Mastering Audio: the art and science". Great book on all things audio!


Also, Har-Bal for harmonic balancer, is fantastic software for mastering. I think there may only be a PC version as of yet, but I believe i read there is a Mac version in the works.

Good luck.

[nulldevice]

Definitely the Bob Katz book.

Usually you can get by with three stages:
Compression
EQ
Limiting/Maximizing

Although the order may vary.

The tricks are to 1) use good, high quality tools. Often you pay a premium for something that's linear phase (or for a piece of mastering-quality hardware). 2) Have a good monitoring environment - an acoustically tuned room, good speakers, good output, etc 3) good ears 3.5) good metering.

There are more complex things you can do - harmonic saturations for "warming" effects, multiband compression, stereo phase altering/widening, etc...but these are all things that should be done judiciously and carefully. I've been doing semi-pro mastering for two years now and I'm juuuust starting to feel confident enough to use multiband compression. Misuse of any tool can ruin a track, but these particular tools can really toast a track to the point of unlistenability.

There are a few all-in-one packages that are reasonable and can get you started (although not necessarily the highest-quality for doing professional stuff). T-Racks and Izotope come to mind. They'll have all the bits you'd need to at least start doing stuff on the order of "mastering somebody's demo." And they'll help you get the feel of the process before you start spending the huge bucks.

Also, very important - listen to the final product on a bunch of different systems - what sounds good on your speakers may sound terrible in your car or on your home stereo. Note any problems, then go back and fix 'em. Dedicated mastering studios keep crappy speakers switchable for just such kinds of testing.

And...take a break every once in a while. Tweaking compressors for an hour will tire your ears out a lot.

Hope that helps! Enjoy, it can be a really fascianting process!