Everything You Ever Wanted To Konw About Mastering But Were Afraid To Ask... (1 Viewer)

[Cormy]

Dos anyone have a definitive...uh, definition...of Mastering?

I've heard & read a good bit about it by now, but it's still not really clear to me.

What differences will you hear between a mastered & unmastered record? Does the format the release will be on have any bearing on it, or on how important it is (e.g. would mastering be more important for a CD than for vinyl, or tape, or whatever)? Do you need to be there while it's mastered? If not, will being there make any difference? Does it make any difference who is mastering, as long as they're good/competant? By that I mean, well, you know the way certain producers and engineers are good at recording certain types of bands and getting a good sound out of them, they know what they're after, etc...does the same apply with mastering? And lastly, where & who is good in Ireland?

I'm gonna put the nail in the Mastering coffin!!

 

[Monkey]

It is the producing of an audio recording, from which copies can be made as far as I know which isn't too far

 

[Keeror]

Stefan Betke, aka Pole, used to master all the records for Chain Reaction in Berlin. (They had their own mastering plant above their own record company offices above their own record shop - now dat's DIY!) Stefan's job was to remove crackles and pops and so on that would sneak themselves onto recordings. Some say he secretly stashed away all the excess crakles and used them to build his own records..... Herr Betke refutes this allegation however.

Mastering is useful for removing noises that get on to tape during the production process. Also uselful for setting the volume level of the CD - particularly useful if you want to shock people with loudness, or if your material is cobbled together from several recording sessions (eg as with a V/A comp). Most importantly it gives you a good quality, durable, master (hence the name) - this is a good thing because if your master is on, say, DAT it will degrade relatively quickly, so that future generations will hear only a shadow of your rock'n'roll glory days when they go to repress your collected oeuvre for your 50th anniversary or whatever.

That's all I know, hope it's some help.

 

[egg_]

Mastering is tarting up of a 2-track recording. A mastering engineer will have a much better listening environment than a recording engineer, and so will be able to hear any weirdness that you missed while mixing (like very low bass, which isn't reproduced on lots of speakers) and get rid of it. He/she will also have cool stuff like top-of-the-line compressors, EQ, sonic maximizers and the like which magically make your stuff sound better ... or more like 'proper records', cos these things are used on proper records.

"What differences will you hear between a mastered & unmastered record?"

Stoat got a couple of tunes mastered once, and there was a big difference. The mastered tracks were louder, and sounded more controlled and more like, well, proper recordings (though still not really like proper records, it has to be said ... though in fairness you can't expect a mastering engineer to fix recording/playing mistakes).

'Does the format the release will be on have any bearing on it, or on how important it is (e.g. would mastering be more important for a CD than for vinyl, or tape, or whatever)? '

I wouldn't think so - but you should tell the mastering engineer what format it's intended for

'Do you need to be there while it's mastered?'

We weren't when we got our stuff mastered. Dunno if it would have made a difference - might be an education though

'Does it make any difference who is mastering, as long as they're good/competant? By that I mean, well, you know the way certain producers and engineers are good at recording certain types of bands and getting a good sound out of them, they know what they're after, etc...does the same apply with mastering?'

Some people have better ears/gear than others, but I think that's as far as it goes - certain guys (like Bernie Grundmann) are used for most of the 'big' recordings in LA/Nashville/NY (or so it seems from rec.audio.pro)

'And lastly, where & who is good in Ireland?'

I think the only proper mastering houses in Ireland are Mid Atlantic Digital in Enniskillen (60 quid an hour when we used them about 18 months ago - each track took 1 hour to do) and Digital Pigeon, which is part of the Windmill Lane complex (100 quid an hour). I think Trend claims to do mastering, but I think what they call mastering is just making a glass master (for CD pressing purposes) of whatever you give them - there's no tarting up involved.

One tip - if you call someone about mastering and they say 'Do you mean just making the master or putting effects on and stuff?' or 'You don't need mastering if it's submitted on CDR', go elsewhere.
For the record, we were very pleased with Mid Atlantic Digital. If you like I can send you a tape of mastered and unmastered mixes (though it might be a while cos I just moved house and lots of stuff is still in boxes)

 

[Stephen]

Cormy (07 Jul, 2001 01:39 p.m.):
Does the format the release will be on have any bearing on it, or on how important it is (e.g. would mastering be more important for a CD than for vinyl, or tape, or whatever)?

Ehh correct me if I'm wrong but the format matters a lot cos CDs and vinyl differ in the frequencies(ie sounds) they play. But you'd have to ask someone who's studied some form of sound engineering to get the full deal.

 

[Stephen]

sorry pressed the post button twice by mistake must be the old shakes getting me.

 

[swingkid]

Stephen, what was the story with mastering the estel records and cd's, how come the record sounds so low?

 

[old]

For Arse LP we wanted to have 1/2 inch tape mastered w/out the ways of digital and carved directly onto lacquer using the lathe in Masterlabs, thusly preserving the original analogue waveforms. They couldn't do it.

What they did in mastering: equalise sounds, equalise volume, slight compression to make record as loud as possible.

Apparently Apollo in TBMC do it much cheaper.

I think The Redneck Manifesto went there.

 

[silo]

as to the audio difference between cd and vinyl... warning, this is boring...

vinyl is analogue. all sound on the master goes onto the vinyl, including sound beyond the human range of hearing, stuff that dogs and badgers can hear, that sort of thing.

cd is digital. the sound is converted into billions of ones and zeros and everything beyond a certain level at the top and bottom end is simply dropped. as far as i know, cds actually carry only one twelfth of the sound of vinyl, but then you aren't able to hear the other 11 twelfths normally anyway. this 'missing' sound is the basis of most arguments about why vinyl is 'better' than cd. the conclusive argument, though, is that you can use cds as shaving mirrors so they're better.

and mp3 dumps yet more sound...

 

[Stephen]

swingkid (10 Jul, 2001 12:38 p.m.):
Stephen, what was the story with mastering the estel records and cd's, how come the record sounds so low?

ask bushey he got it mastered.

 

[egg_]

john (10 Jul, 2001 12:43 p.m.):
Mastering to CD and mastering to vinyl are utterly different kettles of fish.

Making a glass master from which to press CDs is a different process to making a (metal?) master from which to press vinyl records.

However the sonic tarting up that a mastering engineer will do (commonly known as 'mastering') is essentially the same for either format, because the range of frequencies they reproduce is very similar. Tapes and MP3s will be mastered slightly differently because they can reproduce a more limited range of frequencies.

I see we're getting into the whole analogue vs. digital debate here all of a sudden. Some things you all should know:
1. This here: "cds actually carry only one twelfth of the sound of vinyl" - is bollocks.
Where did you get the figure of one twelfth? You can't actually compare the 'size' of an analogue signal and its digital representation - it's like saying that a painting (analogue) has 12 times more 'visual' than a photo (digital)
2. This whole "analogue has sounds that you can't even hear that affect your perception of the music and digital doesn't" thing is a red herring. Very few mics can pick up beyond 20kHz. Very very few speakers can deal with, much less reproduce, sound much above 20 kHz. CD goes to 22kHz
3. The human range of hearing is commonly accepted as being from around 20Hz to around 20kHz. You lose your high-frequency perception as you age.

That will be all

 

[silo]

yikes grandad. calm down. the figure of one twelfth was gotten from a lecturer in sound and audio at dcu, though i could be misquoting... the figure means, eh, that if the initial digital signal is 12 billion ones & zeros, then only 1 billion get onto the cd. oh i don't know. ask steve albini.

 

[Florian Fricked]

Just one thing Egg - To say that a photo is 'digital' is not very true. They didn't really now a lot about digital technology in the mid 1800's when the technique was developed.
Photo's you see on your computer screen are of course digital images, but there's no need for me to be patronising.
I'm just saying this 'cos I reckon your analogy that compares a painting to a photo is way off the mark.
Anyhoo, if you've ever sat in a room listening to records at a high volume all night, and then you stick on a CD, you will notice a considerable difference in sound quality. Records sound better, and it does have a lot to do with the range of frequencies that a CD works within.

 

[Keeror]

I wish Zentrum were here...

 

[joe.]

hmmmm ... really..... when I first saw this topic I thought it said 'masturbating' not 'mastering'.... if ya wanted to know about the former I could help ya out no worries! 'fraid I know nothing about mastering....
maybe I should start another thread ..... umm ... maybe I should get a life ....

 

[Daveor]

Florian Fricked (11 Jul, 2001 10:45 a.m.):
Records sound better, and it does have a lot to do with the range of frequencies that a CD works within.

you mean sampling rate ?
There's a new format thats coming out called HDCD ? or something like that, that has much higher sampling rate.
But I think it's a lot to do with your equipment also, Records seem to do a much better job on cheaper systems than cd's do, but with a really good cd player I think you'd be hard pushed to say a record sounds better. It all becomes very subjective and people start talking about warmth and colour.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/analog-digital.htm
Watch the Sound Collecting Horn in action...

 

[mugwump]

joe. (11 Jul, 2001 12:31 p.m.):
hmmmm ... really..... when I first saw this topic I thought it said 'masturbating' not 'mastering'.... if ya wanted to know about the former I could help ya out no worries! 'fraid I know nothing about mastering....
maybe I should start another thread ..... umm ... maybe I should get a life ....

yeah man...get a grip on yourself.

 

[egg_]

Florian Fricked (11 Jul, 2001 10:45 a.m.):
Just one thing Egg - To say that a photo is 'digital' is not very true.

What I was getting at was:
A painted image consists of daubs of different-coloured paint (continuous colour, kind of like an analogue recording of a sound). A photo consists of tiny separate grains of pigment (discrete pieces of colour, kind of like a digital recording of a sound). More or less

They call it an analogy, dude

P.S. Just cos your CD player is better than your turntable (or maybe the phono preamp in your amplifier flatters the sound of the vinyl, or maybe the analogue-to-digital converters used to create the digital master were poor quality (presuming the original recording format was analogue), or maybe more care was taken when pressing the vinyl as opposed to the CDs) does not mean that records sound better than CDs.

 

[Keeror]

egg_ (11 Jul, 2001 05:46 p.m.):
They call it an analogy, dude

analogue: analogy
digital: digitogy?

Note: Analogue begins with anal.

 

[Lolo]

Keeror (11 Jul, 2001 05:51 p.m.):

analogue: analogy
digital: digitogy?

Nope, "digitaly".

Note: Analogue begins with anal.

You said it.