What is Mastering & Why You Should Do It (Here)

Mastering is the final step in the music production process, and it can be the difference between music that sounds polished and professional, and music that sounds not-quite-there-yet.

Understanding Mastering

Mastering used to refer strictly to the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source to a means of duplicating it in mass quantities: for example, transferring an album from a reel-to-reel tape to a laquer master copy (the first stage in pressing a record). Ensuring that the final record would play back properly (without needle skipping or distortion or other undesirable audio artifacts) was the job of the mastering engineer, who used a combination of specific tools, techniques and experience to fine-tune the music to suit the medium. Nowadays, many people simply associate mastering with loudness--a trend that reached its peak (or low point!!) in the late 2000s with a certain notorious Metallica album--and while a well-mastered recording will often sound louder, there's much more to mastering than simply increasing the volume of a track. Here are some key aspects of mastering:

• Dynamic Range: This refers to the difference between the quietest and loudest parts of your track. A well-mastered track should have a balanced dynamic range that enhances the listening experience. It should neither require you to crank up your playback device to hear the quiet parts, nor should it tire your ears with a lack of dynamics. An engineer might use a tool like compression, or multi-band compression (which allows you to control dynamics for lows, mids and highs independently of each other), or he/she might use clip gain to manually boost or cut the volume in different sections of a song.

• Equalization (EQ): EQ is crucial in mastering. It helps to balance frequencies, ensuring that no particular range overwhelms the others. For example, if your track sounds muddy, you might need to cut some low or low-mid frequencies. Mastering EQ is like spice in cooking: often, a little goes a long way, and mastering engineers often boost or cut specific frequencies in fractions of a dB (decibel).

  
  

• Loudness: Achieving the right loudness level is essential. You want your track to be loud enough to compete with commercial releases without causing distortion. (Side note: some mastering engineers do use a technique called "clipping," which technically is a form of distortion, but don't try this at home unless you really know what you're doing, as it's remarkably easy to ruin a track this way!) Many home recordists simply slam their mixes with a limiter, which certainly can make your track louder, but can also smear sound, so that you lose the clarity you or your mix engineer worked so hard to achieve. A good mastering engineer understands when to boost the amplitude of the track (or reduce it) and when to use other techniques, such as increasing perceived loudness via methods such as clipping, compression, multi-band compression, or expansion.

  
  

• Stereo Imaging: This involves adjusting the width of the soundstage. A well-mastered track should have a sense of space and depth, making it more engaging for listeners. Like all mastering techniques, this is easy to overdo, leaving you with a wide, but light-sounding track, because you've weakened the center of the mix.

  
  

The Mastering Process

Step 1: Preparation

Before beginning the mastering process, an engineer will typically ensure that your mix is as good as it can be. What you put in is largely what you get out, so if the mix has problems before mastering, those problems will most likely remain or be amplified (though an engineer will do his/her best to minimize problems). Mastering is not magic! Here are some tips for preparing your mix:

• Leave Headroom: Aim for a mix that peaks around -6 dB. This gives the engineer enough headroom to work with during mastering. If, for some reason, your engineer or you have not left enough headroom, don't worry. Unless you clipped significant portions of the track, a mastering engineer can increase the song's headroom (the distance between the loudest peak and digital zero), but it's always better to get the levels right during the mix. If you don't have one, get a VU meter plug-in and check your mix. There are lots of cheap or free ones out there that are great.

  
  

• Check Your Mix on Different Systems: Listen to your mix on various playback systems (headphones, car speakers, etc.) to identify any issues. Does it sound muddy? Is it shredding your eardrums when you crank it up? Can you hear the main instruments and vocals clearly? Using mastering to "solve" mix problems is never a good plan. Try to get the mix as close to what you want as you can.

  
  

• Use Reference Tracks: Compare your mix to professionally mastered tracks in a similar genre. This will help you understand the tonal balance you should aim for. Remember when comparing your mix that you're comparing a mix to a master, so you won't necessarily be able to achieve the same level of polish, but you can compare the quality of your mix to the reference. Are the drums in a similar space? Does the bass have the same thump and attack? Is your mix glued (i.e. do all the parts cohere into single whole, or does it sound like a bunch of separate elements, fighting with each other)?

  
  

Step 2: Goals and Sequencing

Once the engineer determines your mix is ready for mastering, it's time to have a conversation with him/her and set goals you have for the process.

• References: If you want your music to sound like an album by one of your favorite artists, by all means, share that thought with the engineer. Engineers need targets and reference tracks, too, and sharing one or more references will help you get what you want.

  
  

• End usage: Where do you envision your track being played? Streaming? Radio? In a club? As part of a film or tv soundtrack? While a well-mastered track should sound great in a variety of contexts, knowing where you want it to be played is important information for a mastering engineer. Streaming services increasingly ask for tracks at lower peak volumes than you might expect, because they do their own processing to ensure whatever you stream, the volume of the songs doesn't dramatically bounce up and down. AND, when it comes to delivery formats, where the song(s) will play makes a difference, too. While you can record in a DAW at lots of different sample rates and bit-rates, CDs and film soundtracks have specific (and different!) delivery formats, so it's crucial that a mastering engineer know the end usage of your music.

  
  

• Sequencing: If you're mastering a single song, this probably won't matter (unless you're adding the song to a collection now or in the future), but if you're mastering multiple songs for an album or EP, think about the following things and then share those thoughts with your engineer. What order do you want your songs to play back in (also known as sequencing)? Do you hope that your listeners will play the album in the same order you chose? Or do you imagine they'll skip around? You might wonder why this matters. Making sure that the songs fit together well (an album) is also part of a mastering engineer's job. Your engineer can do things like set the amount of space between each track, crossfade (if you want!) and ensure that listening to the album feels like a coherent experience, as opposed to a bunch of random songs playing back to back. The mastering engineer will also communicate things like sequence and spacing to a record or CD pressing company, guaranteeing that your finished record sounds the way you wanted.

  
  

Step 3: Listening

While the mastering engineer will do his or her level best to give your tracks a professional polish that will make your music sound great anywhere it's played, your ears have to be happy with the end results! If you're unhappy with something, talk to your engineer and ask about it. He or she wants you to be happy, so start from that premise and work together to get there. And if you're not sure if the finished product is good, rope in some friends you trust to listen, even if (or especially if!) they're not musicians. Music is something people have immediate gut responses to and those responses (while hard if somebody doesn't like what they're hearing) are invaluable for you.

Let's Begin!

Many of the potential issues you might encounter in mastering (like wanting to fix mis issues in the master) can be avoided if you have the ability to mix and master at the same location: here, at Future Tense Music! If, for example, you discover that you want a different balance of instruments once you hear the mix glued by the mastering engineer, it's very easy for us to jump back into the mix session and adjust those levels. Additionally, since as mastering engineers, we know exactly what kind of levels we're looking for in a mix, we can set up your mixes to be perfectly suited for our mastering chains, leading to a seamless mastering process.

Achieving perfect mastering for your music tracks is a blend of art and science. If you understand the key elements of mastering and what to expect from the process, you'll end up with music you can be proud of and happy with. Remember to prepare your mix thoroughly, and come to your mastering engineer with a solid idea about what you're hoping he/she can do for you. Knowing what you want is a huge step towards getting it.

Wherever you end up mastering your music, keep these ideas in mind and you'll find the experience to be both enjoyable and gratifying.