I often feel that mastering seems to be a mysterious topic in the audio world, with some of us not being 100% sure on what is it exactly. Today I want to set things straight and talk about this often misunderstood process.
Some think that mastering is just about volume and making the mix louder, and others think that it's a "magical" process that turns an amateur mix into a professional song.
The truth is somewhere in between.
Mastering can come in many different shapes and forms. But whether it's you mastering your own music for the first time, or a seasoned mastering engineer working on a world famous song, the principles are the same.
Is Mastering All About Volume?
No. Definitely not. Mastering is a fine art. You probably already know that part of the mastering process is taking a final mix from a conservative volume level to a commercial, loud volume level. As much as this part is necessary, if not done well and with caution, it can be very hurtful to the quality and sound of the song.
You Want Your Song To Be Loud, But Not Too Loud
"Pushing" a track too far, trying to make it louder, will cause negative effects that can ruin the song completely. This kind of processing makes a song ear-fatiguing, which means it sounds harsh and unpleasant to the listener's ears, making it difficult and tiring to listen to.
Most of the time, this is caused by over-compressing and over-limiting the track, cutting down all of the dynamics, simply making it "too loud all the time". Not to mention that all modern music streaming services, like iTunes and Spotify, automatically turn down songs that are too loud.
"Squashed" and "crushed" are words that are often used to describe a track that has been pushed too far and suffers from these negative effects.
What To Expect From Mastering?
Other than making your mix louder, what else can a mastering engineer do?
What Mastering CAN'T Do:
Fix a bad mix. It can enhance a nice mix with some fine, subtle EQ and compression. But if your mix sounds bad, or not as good as you'd like it to sound, mastering can't change that fact more than one bit.
Make your song sound professional. Despite what many think, mastering is not a "secret ingredient" that takes your mix from amateur to pro. What it really is, is a final "polish" for your mix, not the cure for its sonic issues.
Make your mix translate well to other sound systems. If your final mix doesn't already sound good outside of your studio, mastering won't fix this problem. But what it will do is make the volume loud and consistent, so it can heard easily on any device, without having to crank the volume up.
Fix a single track in your mix. If, for example, your lead vocals don't have enough compression and they sound weak or buried in the mix, there's not much a mastering engineer can do about it without hurting the rest of the instruments, because they can only work on the entire mix, not on individual tracks. Every move a mastering engineer does, affects the whole mix.
Just like the final mix depends heavily on the sound of the recordings, the final master depends heavily on the sound of the final mix.
Bad recordings make for a bad mix, and a bad mix makes for a bad master. That's the simple truth, and there's no way around that.
What Mastering CAN Do?
Enhance the sound of your mix with fine EQ.
Help your song deliver more energy with subtle compression.
Reduce the dynamic range of the mix, to create more consistent volume level throughout the song.
Enhance the stereo field to create a wider mix.
Balance the volume levels and EQ curves of the different songs in your album/EP. For example, making sure that all of the songs have roughly the same level of brightness and a similar amount of bass in them. This process makes the album sound more consistent from song to song.
Get your song to a commercial volume level, without clipping, distortion, or any other side-effect that can hurt the sound quality. This is probably the most common and known one on this list.
Remember, all of these improvements are SUBTLE! They don't "make or break" your mix. And not all of them are necessary for every mix.
Each mix will require different handling and processing.
Mastering is a subtle process, it's not going to transform your mix into something that it's not. If you're not satisfied with your mix, go work on it until you are. If your mix isn't translating well to other sound systems, try using a reference track to solve that. Don't expect mastering to solve your mixing problems, because it won't.
You have to solve those problems.
Should I Master My Tracks by Myself? Or Should I Hire a Mastering Engineer?
That's a good question, my answer is try both. If mastering looks appealing to you and you think that you might be interested in doing it, then go for it, start mastering your own tracks. And just like mixing, you have to learn and gain experience in order to get better.
Whether you're happy with your end results or not, you can always hire a mastering engineer to master your tracks as well.
If you haven't done it before, I encourage you to go and try mastering your own tracks with this approach in mind.
Did you learn anything new about mastering?
Do you master your own mixes?
Share with us in the comments!
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