MrAnarchy Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 So everybody is using the term "mastering" often, even myself but without actually fully understanding what it is. I have some base idea that it is some sort of polishing of tracks. Could someone explain to me what it is in a very dumbed down version since I have no music education. Also add examples of well and badly mastered tracks if you can Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anu Katariina Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 I was lately also in a need of explaining terminology, since the topic "Simple terminology tutorial" in general psytrance that yielded nice answers..as for mastering I know what it is but leave explaining to professionals Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recursion loop Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 Mastering is the kind of processing which is applied to the whole track (as opposed to mixing). Usually when you mix your stems (individual synths, drums etc) the resulting audio file sounds quieter than commercial records and may have other issues - then you do "mastering" which is aimed at making it louder, fatter, better balanced, more compatible with different playback systems. However the words "good/bad mastering" are often (wrongly) used to define production quality in general. An example of what mastering is about: This is my own track mastered by myself this is exactly the same source file mastered by a professional at Goa Records They sound clearly different (and frankly I like my verision better but that's another story). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thanosp81 Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 And let the Loudness War begin. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agneton Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 On a sidenote I want to add here that a terrible lot of people tend to mess up "mixing" with "mastering", e.g. when reviewing/discussing music. Separate the two, people, they're not the same! Edit: I see Recursion Loop already referred to this, so, nuff said! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ormion Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 On a sidenote I want to add here that a terrible lot of people tend to mess up "mixing" with "mastering", e.g. when reviewing/discussing music. Separate the two, people, they're not the same! Indeed. Unfortunately sometimes is difficult to guess which ruined the audio more. The mixing or the mastering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrAnarchy Posted July 7, 2016 Author Share Posted July 7, 2016 An example of what mastering is about: This is my own track mastered by myself this is exactly the same source file mastered by a professional at Goa Records They sound clearly different (and frankly I like my verision better but that's another story). Okey so what I hear is: I think the first one sounds better, I have no idea why. The other one has louder bass going one and it kinda sounds flat. Im so pro I think i dont have the ears to actually hear the exact difference Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purple Sunray Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 Mastering is about to: - Have a second, professional, very experienced pair of ears (ideally) - listing to your track to find problems with it. Main reason why I would never give any track to a "I have finished my home studio and started mastering, gimme your track!!" (there is no point on doing a cross-check with someone that has less experience than I have) - Fix any problems that are fixable on the provided source data. Here it depends if the mastering engineer has your channel stems or only the final mixdown (he can 'fix' more on the stems, but is also way more work for him). - Polish the mix. That is about to apply saturation and EQ to make your "flat" mix sound "deep" - Bring loudness to same level as other tracks on that genre. Artists usually do not really care a lot about how loud a track is. They care about to keep enough headroom for the mastering guy (i.e. mix at -3db peak), but RMS / perceived loudness is the domain of the mastering engineer. This is about to apply compression and limiting. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HappyHorse Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 And let the Loudness War begin. That escalated quicly Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thanosp81 Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 That escalated quicly You know it's gonna happen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Padmapani Posted July 7, 2016 Share Posted July 7, 2016 i think a good chance to see what mastering would typically do is comparing goasia's track on golden vibes ii to a random track from their first album. the track on golden vibes is unmastered and although they are different tracks you can clearly hear some differences (goasia is pretty consistent in style and mixing). the mastered tracks are louder, have a different balance (more bass), sound more in-your-face and have more clarity. of course mastering done by the artists themselves can sometimes be at least as good. recursion loop's track above sounds way better with his own mastering, artifact303's track feelings sounded better slightly with his own mastering than final version which ended up on opus iridium (but there the mastering was still pretty good — i just like the original frequency balance better). on other occasions mastering by the artists turns out horrible (e.g. astral projection's recent remix album, which is totally overcompressed) and having mastering done by a professional is preferable in almost all cases. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
recursion loop Posted July 8, 2016 Share Posted July 8, 2016 recursion loop's track above sounds way better with his own mastering I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so:) They overcompressed it and overdone with the saturation or some kind of bass/trenble enchancers - but this seems to be their apporach, e.g. the whole album "Elepho - Goa Journeys 2010-2012" suffers from the same thing even worse. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veracohr Posted July 8, 2016 Share Posted July 8, 2016 Here's some history to put it into context: Originally the mastering engineer was the person who created the master disk from which the (vinyl) records would be produced, from the studio tape recording. It basically consisted of applying the compensation EQ curve (RIAA or its European counterpart), and operate the cutting machine. More responsibility was placed on these people eventually like matching levels from track to track if they were inconsistent coming from the recording studio. Then labels wanted their songs to stand out more on radio compared to the other songs, so they started asking mastering engineers to compress the music so the average level was louder, and EQ it. This also helped signal to noise ratio on the noisy vinyl format. When CD's were introduced it was up to the mastering engineer to create the master disk, including the PQ codes that dictate track sequence, start and end times, etc. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SixZeroFou4 Posted July 12, 2016 Share Posted July 12, 2016 Mastering is when you take karate for a long time 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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