What *is* mastering, anyway? And is there a preset?

Well, we've gone two issues without a column, and for that I apologize. I've pretty much given up on having a theme for my noodling. I suppose you should just be prepared for me to ramble on every month about something hopefully related to recording audio.

A few months ago, I wrote a short outline of all the steps involved in producing a recording.

Mastering, the final step, seems to be the most misunderstood aspect. Many musicians, perfectly comfortable with the ideas of tracking, overdubs, mixing, and the rest have only a hazy understanding of what happens, and needs to happen, in the mastering stage.

After everything is written, recorded, and blended together to some final format, mastering is the last link in the chain before a project is sent off to be duplicated. Mastering is no more, and no less, than an experienced, unbiased pair of ears listening to your music in a revealing, neutral environment.

Some processing will probably happen here, as well. Each song will be listened to in the context of the entire album. Most of the time, some adjustments must be made, as sometimes the songs are not the same volume, or are overall too dark, too tinny, too bright, too boomy, whatever. Overall volume will probably be adjusted as well; the mixing stage is never the place to worry about how loud a song is compared to your favorite album. Mastering can take care of that.

The point is that mastering is the final quality control step. For many releases, good mastering can make the difference between sounding polished and clear, and sounding, well, you know, "local." Many, many albums are made entirely in home studios, which gives artists the advantage of time to tweak, try different things, and shape their sound without worrying about hourly studio charges. These albums, however, are the ones most in need of professional mastering.

Very few home studios have the money and time invested in acoustics and the monitoring chain to be truly revealing environments. Almost the entire point of mastering is to catch anything sub par that was not evident in tracking and mixing. It's kind of silly to think that if the mix engineer didn't hear a problem in mixing, that problem is going to magically become apparent in the same room, with the same speakers, to the same person. A tiny, tiny fraction of national releases are mastered by the same person, or are mastered in a mix room, and there's a reason for that. Great mix engineers know when to hand off their work to someone they trust, who is equally great at the related, but different, job of mastering.

I have an ulterior motive. I'd like to be able to listen to local releases without having my head torn off by the high end, or suffering through huge volume changes, or blowing the speakers in my car with wildly uncontrolled bass.

So go get your record mastered at a mastering house.

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Jon Best is the owner of Muddy Creek Audio in Virginia Beach. He'd love to hear from you about whatever, as long as it's not boring. jonbest@cox.net 757-721-3264