Mastering?
Mastering is the final stage of music and audio production. It is the process of optimizing and preparing a stereo final mix for various physical media and digital formats.
There are many processes that may need to be addressed during mastering. These can include: equalization and tonal balancing, dynamic compression/expansion, stereo width adjustment/enhancement, harmonic enhancement, peak level limiting, noise reduction, de-essing vocals and de-clicking recordings, editing, phase correction, fading in/out.
During mastering it is important to carefully balance the music so that it will translate accurately on any playback system it may encounter. Audio should be optimized for the most expensive boutique hifi system, the cheapest single speaker radio, the largest Funktion One club system or smallest smartphone. For electronic music it is important to control and correctly balance the bass and low end content so that the music sounds great when played at high sound levels in clubs.
Every mastering job is different and may require any of the processes mentioned above to correct or enhance certain aspects of a production or recording. Some of the music I receive will benefit from a touch of analog equalization and dynamic compression. My all-analog tube signal path (parallel EQ and opto compressor) can do this very musically. Shaping and controlling tone for a pleasing musical balance, and enhancing a mix with depth, clarity and smooth analog saturation.
If a clean and precise master is required (analog gear adds a small amount of noise) I will bypass the analog equipment and use my collection of high end digital processing ‘in the box’ - Although I confess this doesn’t happen a lot, who doesn’t like analog? A small amount of noise is a price to pay for sweet analog heaven.
Certain genre specific enhancements can be attained. House and techno? The bass drum should be clear and prominent, with controlled low end and detailed mid and high frequencies. Drum and bass should have a solid low end and punchy snare drum. Ambient and drone music should be open and expansive and sound great on headphones. I can achieve these careful adjustments with very high precision in my acoustically treated and calibrated studio. Full range monitoring reveals the low end, and high quality digital to analogue conversion allows me to hear minor details that may need to be delicately balanced to enhance the listening experience. It is important that I only adjust or enhance what I feel is needed and no more. Serve the music. An awesome sounding mix should need no adjustments or enhancements at all!
For album mastering, it is important to get the right feeling of the transitions between songs. Editing of the start and end points of each song, and volume fades in and out may be necessary for smooth and clean transitions. Finally, I will use a limiter to hit current loudness guidelines for any music distribution, physical media and music streaming platforms required for the release.
Integrated loudness and peak levels
The loudness wars are over! Rejoice! In the not so distant past, commercial music was being pushed to the extremes of loudness using certain mastering techniques. Once the maximum amplitude for a digital audio signal is reached (0 dBfs), then perceived loudness can be increased further by using audio compression and limiting, to reduce the dynamic range of the music. Extreme dynamic range compression and limiting will make your music loud, but it will also add distortion artifacts to the audio signal, and the music will suffer as a result, sounding fatiguing and uncomfortable when listened to for extended periods.
Over the past few years the major music streaming platforms such as Spotify, YouTube and Tidal have started to apply loudness normalization to all the music on their sites, which means a master that is louder than the current threshold set by the streaming platform will actually be reduced in volume. A loud master is not needed to 'compete', and may actually sound worse than a less loud and more dynamic version of the same music.
Anyway, I have always been sensible with loudness and limiting. Too much dynamic range reduction will always have a detrimental effect on the sound quality of the music. I master a lot of bass heavy techno and electronic music which gets played by DJ's in clubs and live venues, so I have always pushed these tracks less loud to achieve a better quality low end. Compression and limiting are powerful tools when mastering, and applying them sensibly will allow a correctly balanced (dynamic) master to sound much better on a club system at high volumes, than an already pushed to the extreme loud master.
When I set final loudness, I will be attentive of the latest integrated loudness and peak level recommendations for a variety of media formats. I can also supply a separate 'streaming optimized' version which will take into consideration the current peak levels for any of the commercial streaming platforms (Soundcloud, Spotify, YouTube, iTunes etc) Overall, I can achieve a final master that provides a healthy amount of volume whilst retaining mix transients, musical dynamics and bass content.