Mastering
Mastering is a technical as well as a creative process, the last step in the realisation of your musical vision. The program material is checked and corrections are applied if needed. The sound is balanced and enhanced in order to convey the best possible experience to the maximum number of listeners across a wide range of playback systems. Individual songs are sequenced and seamlessly bonded together into an album like musical chapters in a book. The combination of a set of experienced ears, and a selection of high quality creative and corrective tools in a revealing monitoring environment with the fine attention to details ensure your creative efforts are both competitive with other releases and ready for duplication. Communication between the engineer and the artist or the A&R is extremely important in order to achieve a highly satisfactory result. It is also very important to understand what happens during a mastering session and avoid some of the misconceptions and myths regarding this important step in the production process. A mastering session can be generally speaking divided into two phases: checking for and correcting problems if needed and the production of so called “parts”. Listening through a very accurate monitoring chain will reveal problems or shortcomings that may have occurred during the mixing stage due to less than perfect room acoustics, not so accurate speakers or excessive tiredness. If those problems exist they will then be corrected with specific tools such as equalisers (used to create an even frequency balance), narrow band compressors (de-essing of sibilant vocals or taming of overly fizzy cymbals) and wide band compressors and limiters (used to glue the elements of a mix together). Once the correct balance and the desired perceived level is achieved the songs are assembled into a sequence within the mastering workstation, PQ codes are generated, ISRC and barcode embedded if needed and a physical master (either CD-A disk ora DDP is created and checked before being sent off for duplication or replication.