What is Mastering
and why do I need
it?
Written by: Tanner Landry
This is a big question I get from bands and artists that have never been
through the recording process (and some that have). People tend to have
a hard time wrapping their heads around the concept and I don’t blame
them. Most bands or musicians have heard of mastering and that it’s
‘supposed’ to happen but really have no clue why, they just want their
music to be “louder”. To answer that question, you need to understand a
few things:
When we’re recording the different parts of a song, I’m keeping a close
eye on the levels that are being recorded as well as the level of all the
instruments and parts combined. In digital recording we are converting
the analog audio into digital content (1’s and 0’s) to enter in the computer and vice versa. So if we record a weaker signal, we are actually
capturing less data, resulting in a lower quality recording. This is why
we always want to record each instrument as ‘hot’ as possible without
clipping (the dreaded red light at the top of the VU meter) because this
will give us the highest possible quality recording. At most professional
recording studios, this A/D and D/A conversion is done by extremely
high quality equipment to ensure top notch recordings. Analog recording is a little different story and will be saved for another talk.
All of these individual channels are fed into what we call the Master
Buss. This takes each channel and funnels them down into a stereo output. As we add more and more channels, the Master Buss can become
overloaded so we lower the individual channel level outputs to prevent
this. The goal is to not clip on the Master Buss during the mixing phase.
Because of this, if I was to make you a rough mix for you to listen to in
your car, it would be considerably more quiet than finished music. You
would have to turn the volume up more to reach the same level as other
material.
6 | Acoustic Drive