Engineering Sound – The Process of Mastering

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Mastering is the final part of the recording process and involves transferring your music, or whatever else you might have recorded, to CD or mp3 player. Back in the day when vinyl records were king, it was a real art form to transfer the analog recording on to the vinyl record. Because of the skill it took, this was done by a Mastering Engineer. Now that it is much easier to transfer your recordings to whatever media you want, mastering can be done by producers, audio engineers, and inside the home studio.Mastering is a lot more then just transferring your song onto a disc. This is where you start to apply EQ and compression to achieve the desired sound. There are a wide variety of sounds you can shoot for from clean, warm, punchy, sharp, gutsy, soft, and more. There are also a couple of other things you need to pay attentions to as you master your work. I’ll quickly go over each briefly, but I’ll try and make more detailed posts on all of these points in the future.

The Right Sound

This is where you adjust EQ and compression to get the sound you are looking for.

The Right Order

This is where you choose what order songs will be played in. In the professional world, sounds are never just put into a random order. The are placed in a way that tell a story or create a mood.

Playback at Optimal Levels

Most of the time playback levels are set as high as possible. This will help the song or album stand out from other. Ever wonder why the CD’s you get from Best Buy sound so much louder than the ones your band records in the basement or garage? This is because your tracks are not optimized to play as the highest level possible.

Matching Levels

The playback levels from one song to the next need to be the same. You don’t want any tracks to stand out from the others in terms of playback level. You want all your playback levels to match through out the album, otherwise your CD will quickly be known as amateur.