Mastering
will not
Save You.
Mastering is one of the most shadowed and
misunderstood topics in the Audio Industry right
now. Many believe it to be a creative process that will
completely change the sound of the mix and transform
it into a work of art, relying excessively on Mastering
and sometimes even spending an unnecessarily high
amount of resources on it.
There is little truth in this misplaced belief, but one
must understand the true purpose of mastering to
effectively reach this final part of the production and
get the most out of it.
Mastering, if needed to defined most simply, is the
process of getting a professional production ready for
the consumer market playback systems. It is not meant
to be a creative process that substantially improves the
sound output of an inadequate production.
A few decades ago in the analog age, when recording
was primarily on magnetic tapes, the final output the
consumer will listen to would be on vinyl. The change
in physical medium from which sound is played back
alters the frequency and dynamic response in the
sound. The sound produced from a magnetic head is
very different from that produced from a turntable
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Score Magazine
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needle. Mastering then was a process of neutralizing
this change and ensuring that the record translates to
the new physical medium with minimum noticeable
sonic differences. This was achieved through the use
of extremely high quality equalizers, compressors and
summing mixers.
Most of the big studios were still recording on magnetic
tapes even after the introduction of CDs. Now the
mastering process involved the conversion of an analog
recording to a digital output while ensuring good
translation. CDs being a digital medium allowed the
reproduction of better dynamics and a wider frequency
spectrum that was not possible on vinyl or cassettes,
which led to more creative equalization practices in the
Mastering process.
Today, almost all recordings are digital. Even the
studios that use magnetic tapes for their warmth
and saturation will print the signal to digital
instantaneously during the production process itself.
Once the production is ready, the release is also digital.
The production and release mediums today are both
digital, so why Master?