What is mastering?

I guess mastering is making the tune to be heard equally on every system, or special EQusation and compression.. I don't know what it is but I cann\ see that is worthy 150 euros!, so I'd like to know about it

as far as i know, mastering is final processing of your rendered mix.
mixage on the other hand is proper setting of volumes and equalisation of the tune

depends, if u want to press it on vinyl or cd it has to go through a mastering process, is that what u talking about, or more like the soundmastering itsself?

¤150? That is very cheap for a mastering you know.
Well, it's what people do with their track when it's finished. They give it to people who do nothing but mastering whole fucking days. Those guys do several things
- Bring sounds in balance
- ReEQ if needed
- Stereo enhancement
- Compression
- A whole lot of other stuff I don't know about
Essencially they make your track sound fucking good in a way you can't do it.
Pro's let their tracks be masterd by guys who charge ¤1000 a day. And it's worth every penny!

hmmm, 1000 bucks a day, that's like a quite nice income, where do I learn this stuff?

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Originally posted by djfreemc hmmm, 1000 bucks a day, that's like a quite nice income, where do I learn this stuff?

Erm, I think thechronic went to London for that?

And you need fucking good ears! And fucking good equipment!

these days you don't even need good ears for it......they have plenty of equipment that tell them it sounds right

Yeah, but I'd still rather trust my ears instead of equipment. If the equipment says it sounds good, but my ears say it doesn't, then it doesnt.

What about a machine called a finalizer? Anybody know anything bout that?
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Let the bass kick!!

quote:

Originally posted by spudleyq these days you don't even need good ears for it......they have plenty of equipment that tell them it sounds right

aboslute nonsense sorry bro, no analyser on the world will tell you if something sounds right but your ears. There are many styles and they all are mastered differently and sound different. Even if you have the best gear on the world it will not make your mastering any good.. maybe avarage but i am not sure about that.

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Originally posted by zebediah What about a machine called a finalizer? Anybody know anything bout that?

Well, a finalizer is something that combines the usual mastering tools: EQ, compression, limiter, expander... It's often used to process the final mixdown just a bit more, but the best way offcourse is to do each channel on its own.

Would you recommend me buying something like this?
______________
Let thebass kick!!

Nah, you will need to pay someone to master your tracks anyway if you want them pressed...

quote:

Originally posted by djfreemc depends, if u want to press it on vinyl or cd it has to go through a mastering process, is that what u talking about, or more like the soundmastering itsself?

That gets done at the pressing plant, but I do use some of the high quality equipment they have at vinyl pressing plants (such as Pultec EQs).

Vinyl mastering is a very specialised job, it involves controlling the vinyl track width, applying RIAA EQ etc.

A part of the CD mastering process such as PQ encoding, applying pauses between tracks etc is usually done by a regular mastering engineer. This is much easier nowadays than it used to be, instead of writing out a PQ sheet manually it is now done semi-automatically using software such as Jam (on the Mac), but you can even do it with low cost software such as Nero or Feurio, but this is not typical in a studio environment. I heard some stories about Nero making errors in the PQ encoding...

quote:

Originally posted by djfreemc hmmm, 1000 bucks a day, that's like a quite nice income, where do I learn this stuff?

As you can imagine that's not a pure income If you want to build your own mastering studio you have to make an investment of at least 125000 euro (you need an acoustically transparent room and a lot of expensive equipment), and if you do it in another studio you have very high studio costs to pay. Roughly 10% of the cost price is net profit. That's for 10 hours of hard work!

If you have your own mastering studio you have high loans to pay off, have high maintenance costs + rental costs for the building, transportation, accountant, a secretary that needs to be paid etc etc
It takes about 10 years to pay off your loan but in that time span most of the equipment is obsolete so you have to make new investments all the time to keep up with new developments in audio.

quote:

Originally posted by zebediah What about a machine called a finalizer? Anybody know anything bout that?

It's a digital multi band compressor and EQ for 'project studio' (aka bedroom studio) use. It's quite good quality for the price but not really suitable to do mastering because it's too limited.

You can get top quality EQ's and compressors for the price of a finalizer (around 2800 euro), so it's a waste of money actually. If you want to buy some outboard gear and you are willing to spend 2800 euro on it you're much better off with eg an Avalon VT747SP, an Amek System 9098, A Focusrite ISA430MkII or the combination of a TLA C1 valve comp + a TLA EQ2 valve EQ. And get a good A/D/A converter (eg RME, Presonus or the high quality Apogee ones). This will give you more creative potential, user friendliness and a much more pleasing sound quality than those silly digital toys

BTW it's essential to have a lot of different gear to be able to do mastering properly, eg a Focusrite VCA compressor might sound good on one song, but a Summit Audio valve compressor might be better on another. Having one box to do it all will never work.
High end analog gear is much better suited for mastering than digital gear BTW, and for A/D/A conversion you need the best quality you can get to avoid quantizing noise, have a detailed high end and a good signal-to-noise ratio.

Oh this thread once again proves that mastering is an elusive art. Honestly internet star Producers, STFU instead of giving mis-information; you're helping no one.
thechronic, you need an education.

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Originally posted by chili banks Oh this thread once again proves that mastering is an elusive art. Honestly internet star Producers, STFU instead of giving mis-information; you're helping no one. thechronic, you need an education.

thechronic deserves a statue of recognition in natural size

chili banks, you need to be slapped

quote:

Originally posted by chili banks Oh this thread once again proves that mastering is an elusive art. Honestly internet star Producers, STFU instead of giving mis-information; you're helping no one. thechronic, you need an education.

Mate

everyones entitled to their opinion

But believe me, coming on this forum and dissing thechronic is not going to win you many friends.....infact its more likely to make people immediately asssume that you're a dick

so leave it out yeah

quote:

Originally posted by chili banks Oh this thread once again proves that mastering is an elusive art. Honestly internet star Producers, STFU instead of giving mis-information; you're helping no one. thechronic, you need an education.

Now, why would anyone post a crap reply on a 4 year old thread?

My thoughts too...


I think we know who's in need of an education..

quote:

Originally posted by Sundancer quote: Originally posted by chili banks Oh this thread once again proves that mastering is an elusive art. Honestly internet star Producers, STFU instead of giving mis-information; you're helping no one. thechronic, you need an education. Now, why would anyone post a crap reply on a 4 year old thread?

Yeah, I've become a mastering engineer myself since then