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huzai · Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 4:03 pm Post subject:

First things first with mastering, ‘What is it?’

I think we all have a good idea what a Studio Engineer, Producer or Mix Engineer do, but after these people have worked with artists to get their sounds down on tape, what next? I found an article on Sony’s Chief Mastering Engineer in L.A., David Mitson.

When asked by a SoundOnSound journalist, ‘why when an album has been recorded in a professional studio, overdubbed in another and then mixed by a top producer in a mega mixing studio, does it still need to be mastered?’, Mitson replied,

‘It’s a different focus on listening. When they’re mixing, it’s about balancing the instruments and voices, not about what sequence the tracks will be on in the record, or whether it’ll work making one track crossfade into another. Mastering is all about putting together a whole piece of work, rather than a dozen individual efforts.’

Mood

The idea which permeates the mastering stage of an album seems to be ‘mood’, or ‘feel’. This can be manipulated with use of some of the tools listed below. It deals with the way the tracks on an album sit together. For example, if you had a ballad sitting in the middle of a rock album, you wouldn’t want it to be normalized to the same level as the more rocking tracks.

Dealing with Client

This will be the first stage of mastering, and will almost be linked to ‘Studio Psychology’ (Brian + Andy…). David Mitson says that he will sit down with his client, (most often an established record producer), who will outline where and when the tracks were recorded, the track playlist that he wants on the album and the ‘feel’ he is going for.

The Gap

The gap, (if there is any), between songs needs to be determined. Sometimes a crossfade from one tune to another can be used; these effects will change the overall feel of the album. Sometimes there is no gap and the next song will start on the downbeat of the previous song.

EQ

The mastering EQ stage can also be important for creating a ‘feel’ for a record. The levels of top, middle and end can be adjusted in order for the tracks to sit well together. Adjusting these levels can serve to ‘warm up’ or ‘cool down’ a track. For this purpose, SOS recommends applying gently sloping EQ settings offering wide ranging boosts/ cuts, when mastering on home systems. Apparently, complex parametric EQs are not gentle enough, perhaps too ‘obvious’, (any thoughts, ChrisH??).

Fairy Dust

Normally, SOS journalists are fairly matter-of-fact, but one of them used the above phrase to describe the top end/bottom end enhancement which can be added to the bottom end/top end of a track, but which does not alter the EQ. Such techniques are dependent upon dynamically altering the sound and can sometimes generate new second and third harmonics based on the ones which are already there. A lot of plug-ins are available for home computers to carry out such dynamic alterations to high/low bands. Steinberg’s spectralizer was one of the first to alter high frequencies. PSP’s Mixtreble also works on higher frequencies, enhancing their stereo spread.

There are also plug-ins which mimic the warm sound which mixing and mastering on tape used to give. These include Steinberg’s TrueTape and Magneto. It is interesting that David Mitson, who I mentioned above still mastered everything he does using tape, to ‘keep it warm’.

At low frequencies, tweaking is more difficult, partly because even in expensive studios with good acoustics, there is difficulty in hearing exactly what you are doing with the lowest bass sounds. Waves produce a plug-in called MaxBass, which generates harmonics based on the original bass sounds. Anyone ever got hold of it??

Normalization

As I mentioned earlier, it is important that an album is taken as a whole, so there needs to be some light and dark. This means that not all tracks may need to be normalized to 0dB, the example of the ballad on a rock album seems true, (think of ‘The Color and The Shape’, by Foo Fighters. ‘Walking After You’ is a slow quiet ballad, amongst lots of harder stuff and it is normalized differently.)

Master Compression

I have a feeling that compression will have been added by the time the mastering engineer has got hold of the tapes, but he may add further master compression, depending upon the type of music and ‘the feel’ he is going for. From what I read, master compression will not always be required, or used by the professionals. Any thoughts, anyone??

Anyway, from what I’ve learnt in the last couple of weeks, it seems that mastering is a very ‘touchy-feely’, artistic type of engineering. There is no right or wrong. Perhaps because of this, Bob Katz, (a leading Mastering Engineer), has been calling for a standardized system, which would have songs mastered to different levels and recognized standards for different uses. This would be an interesting way of pushing the art out of mastering and replacing it with science… ChrisH, remember talking about this at the start of Summer?? Are AES back issues still the place to look for this one. Or am I barking up the wrong tree, should I just stick to finding out what is being done and used at the moment??