About Μastering
Mastering is the final process of correction, refinement and improvement of the master before it takes its way to glass mastering and CD plant.
Let's see why a studio master would need further refinement
- It is very common and natural after the mixing process, which can last several weeks, to have differences in stereo image, dynamic range and tonal balance.
- Also, by comparing the mixes to some reference recordings we could see that they are lacking in transparency, liveliness and spatial information. With a new mix we could improve some of these elements, but this is not always possible, especially if we have already achieved a good balance.
- In other cases, we may also have undesirable noises, hiss and distortion that need to be removed.
- Moreover, many studios may lack the ideal listening conditions that most top mastering studios provide, nor do they have quality, state-of-the-art equipment.
- The most important, we have an experienced sound engineer who listens with a fresh ear,far from the recording studio, and can decide what should be the final touch to the master.
A mastering engineer, apart from being an expert in the sound processing tools, must be musically qualified,capable to understand the character and style of musical pieces. Only under these circumstances a technical and aesthetic improvement can be achieved, without any alteration of the original work of the composer, orchestrator and producer.
Many people still believe that mastering is a routine process, sometimes unnecessary or even dangerous to the material's final condition. Wishing to lower the cost, they entrust their mix to cheap workstations for coding and essential alterations, which ends up in a CD that sounds worse than the master.
On the contrary during a serious mastering process, under excellent listening conditions and with very expensive audio tools and workstations, an experienced engineer can make considerable improvements in quality, frequency balance, dynamic range and micro dynamics, and practically rendering almost a "new" mix.
That is not meant to overstate the importance of the mastering process, which is a comparative effort. But, just as we need good material, good musicians, good orchestration and sound engineers, we also need good mastering.
People of music industry know that even a simple transfer is not so simple as a process. It is very common for production CDs to sound worse than the original mixes.
We must see Mastering as an essential final step of the recording proccess and not as the first step in the production process.