About Audio Mastering - Final Step Before Pressing a Music Record Album

"Mastering is an art and a science. Mastering is the final creative and technical step prior to pressing a record album. Compare mastering to the editor's job of taking a raw manuscript and turning it into a book. The book editor must understand syntax, grammar, organization and writing style, as well as know the arcane techniques of binding, color separation, printing presses and the like. Likewise, the mastering engineer marries the art of music with the science of sound."
- Bob Katz (World-Renown Mastering Engineer)

Many labels and/or artists get their music mastered professionally. One reason, is that after months of recording, and listening to their recordings over and over, it's kind of hard to hear it sounding any better after constant tweaking and mixing. Mastering can help bring out the best in that same song, whether it came from a home studio, or a multi-million dollar studio.

9 out of 10 times, my clients would request that I help make their sound fatter, and comparable to other commercial records. This usually means to squeeze their song near the point of distortion. I've worked in radio for a number of years and have constantly listened to squeezed records and can honestly say, that the average end listener usually thinks "louder" means "better." I feel that this has become the nescessary evil required to please not just the musician, but also the end-listener.

In the end, I feel it is all about bringing out the full potential of the artist, and sounding good in the end-listener's car or headphones. My goal is to help make the artist's song sound just as good, if not, better than comparable recordings of the same genre.

Now, through mastering, I can remove low rumble which may muddy up the sound, and de-ess the sound to take out the high ear piercing frequencies. What mastering can't do, is take a recording that sounds as if it was recorded on a chewed up tape and restore it into a brillant sounding song. In other words, I can't polish a turd.

For more on the difference, please visit the mastering samples page and listen for yourself.

A few things that I like to do when I master every project are as follows:

  1. Enhance the music to bring out every instrument and detail.
  2. Match the volume and spectrum of the project with other major label releases of the same genre. The mastering must help the song sound good on the radio and translate well on iPods, car systems, and even boomboxes.
  3. Help bring out the vision of the artist.