Mastering

[sgarensamick]

"I'm sure theres more to it but if you really want a good answer...ask Michael or post this same question on his message board. He will give you the best answer." ~ Jimmy Adthingy

I've been looking at online sites about the "Mastering" process of recording. As it states on the sites I looked at, it is something I heard about but don't know anything about really.

I understand it involves compression and EQ, cutting off dead space, elimination of hiss and hum, matching of instrumental volume, etc. But I have no idea how to approach this necessary phase that I have read is something everyone who records music should have some grasp on.

What is it?, How does it work?, and most importantly...How does one go about it ?

Thanks,

Steve

[michael]

Mastering. The marriage of science and art. I observed it first hand with the production of my CD "Surface Tension" and all I can say is...huh? I watched it, but I still don't understand how Nick did it. And quite frankly, I've decided that composing, performing, recording and mixing my material is hard enough. I will always outsource the mastering process with my recorded material. It's worth every penny.

Having said that, if you want some specifics about the process of professional mastering, here is a great link:

www.digido.com/portal/pmodule_id=11/pmdmode=fullscreen/pageadder_page_id=31/

Copy and paste in your browser. Hope this is of some help to you.

Michael

[sgarensamick]

Unfortunately we are limited on just how much mastering we can do. As, for now, our recordings are done on Cakewalk Home Studio. I researched the subject on Cakewalk's website and found that very little can be done in the mastering field. The compression is available, but the equalization differs from what is needed to do any real mastering duties.

However we placed compression over all the tracks we are working on, and it did bring out the bass frequencies a bit more, and tightened the music up a bit. The only downside, for my drummer, was a bit of loss in the sound of the cymbals. Fortunately he had placed both the original mixed version and the compressed version one after the other, and I found no real noticable difference in the cymbal sound, maybe just a touch of loss. So I was happy with the mixes and the compression used over the entire song/songs.

Thanks for your input Michael.