Mastering? WTF?
It dawned on me that many of my musician peers don’t have the first idea about what mastering actually is.
Illusive and complicated, it is. Almost a dark art. Some bedroom musicians skip the process all together. I completely understand why. Mastering engineers are not helping. The reason being that it is almost impossible to describe what happens in the process and why it is a must.
Ok so, why master? Why not just mix to zero DB? Well yeah, that sometimes works but mostly it does not. Here’s why! Many digital platforms use automated level management which basically means that your mix will be butchered by some algorithm with no ears or heart if the mix is too loud. It won’t be pretty! Furthermore, you might not be able to detect clipping correctly in your DAW and if there is clipping, it will most certainly be detected on almost every platform. The flip side, not mixing loud enough in an effort to avoid clipping, will only bring up the noise floor in a mix when subjected to automated level management. It’s complicated and a pain!
This would be a good time to talk about DR or Dynamic Range and how important it is to stick to. Let’s say you are uploading a video with your latest track to Youtube and you decided you wanted it to be loud! Well, Youtube will automatically squash your audio down to adhere to their standard 10 DB DR. Your track will sound crushed to death and, quite honestly, terrible! You or your fans won’t be happy!
Another unfortunate scenario is this! A local online radio station with no automated level management decides to play one of your tracks and the DJ is blissfully unaware of the level of the track. It could ruin someone’s day and kill their speakers or worse, someone’s ear! It almost happened to me and I wrote about the experience here!
So the moral of the story is if you don’t have time to find out what mastering is and how it is done, have someone else do it for you. You should instead focus on mixing with mastering in mind. So happens, I wrote about that too and you can read all about the right steps to take right here!
Back to the question, what the heck is mastering? Well, it is a multitude of processes that are aimed at bringing the best out in your track, balance the overall EQ and place it at a level and dynamic range so that it is affected as little as possible by automated level management systems on the platform you are aiming for. In short, mastering is to make your track, or tracks, competitive. It is also highly subjective and that brings me to automated mastering services……. (Oh dear! Here we go!)
When someone asks me how I feel about sites like LANDR, my answer is usually a loud “PFFFFFF” while, simultaneously, rolling my eyes as far back in my head as possible to emphasize my disdain! (It is harder to do than you think! Try it right now!)
Mastering requires critical listening and skilled ears that are able to determine whether a 1 DB bump at 47 Hz on a bass drum sounds musical or not. No one can convince me that an algorithm can determine that, let alone be better at it than a human ear! That is why mastering is, and should be, a subjective endeavor! A computer cannot make conscious decisions about what makes a certain track hum better. Not to mention balancing and matching EQ on 12 separate tracks, sometimes recorded in different locations and studios with different instruments and musicians! Automated mastering, can only be swing and a miss. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but for some musicians that is enough. One thing it can do is level a track correctly. Great but far from the whole story. However, I don’t blame musicians using the service. At the end of the day, it always comes down to budget. Having said that, I’d be happy to master a track, for free, for anyone having used one of the automated services so that they may compare! Bring it!
Anyway, in telling you what mastering isn’t, I actually answered the question. Mastering is a gradual process taking the finished mix of one track or multiple tracks to the correct and EQ balanced level while ensuring a decent dynamic range. In the process, a number of conscious decisions will be made as to how individual tracks interact with each other in a certain sequence but also with each of the tracks. (Some streaming services use shuffle play as default??? Don’t get me started!)
Sometimes, in very rare occasions, the mastering engineer will do “nothing” or very little to a track. That is also a conscious choice. Most times, however, mastering is extensive and time consuming.
When I master an album or a single, I sometimes talk to the mixing engineer and I ask about certain details. Every now and then, that conversation results in a minor change in the mix. It happens that certain tracks are inadvertently mixed to loud or too quiet and mastering will under certain circumstances exacerbate the issue. It is usually a matter of a few db up or down and is normally an easy fix.
So you see, the mastering process is very much specific to exactly your project and therefore almost impossible to give you a 20 second elevator speech about, that will make you any wiser. I do hope that, with this, I have been able to clarify this murky subject just a little bit.
If not and you have questions about mixing for mastering or mastering in general, shoot me an email! ( wavemasteringus@gmail.com) or comment below!
Have fun!
