What mastering is for...
Talk about a bad penny topic...
Someone was asking recently about a problem he was having with his mixes sounding good in his studio -- but falling apart in the car or on other playback systems. He asked if that was a problem or if that could be fixed in mastering -- and someone helpfully answered, Yes, that's what mastering is for.
In today's paradigm, I'd make that a highly qualified maybe.
Even the best ME can't turn a sow's ear into the proverbial silk purse. If a track is mixed badly or has fundamental flaws, you can try to put sonic band-aids on it, but it's always going to be fundamentally compromised -- and it will be likely to cost you more money as the ME struggles to overcome problems with tracking or mix.
In the old days of then-high tech, computer controlled cutting lathes, creating a master for pressing disks required very expensive gear and a lot of skill and knowledge to use -- making the process quite expensive -- fixes at the cutting lab were for last minute and emergency fixes.
Also, in those days, mastering labs were seldom outfitted as high quality mixing rooms. Not only was it wildly expensive to do a fix there, but it was entirely likely that if you tried to make decisions there, they would be compromised by far less than ideal monitoring.
That's why mastering jobs were, by accepted practice, submitted with an edit list of any EQ or other fixes one wanted imposed. The ME might change the sound (say rolling off bass) in order optimize the signal for the rigid requirements of vinyl (narrow dynamic range, limits on bass levels) but there were other things like phase content that he typically had little control over (unless it was simply a polarity error).
In those days, the ME was expected to not make aesthetic decisions but only apply the requested changes or those absolutely necessary for the format.
But mastering changed with digital -- but the cost of entry was even higher at first. But as CD-R masters became acceptable at rep houses, it became entirely possible for the average home recordist to prepare his own replication masters.
And at that point, mastering houses -- and those who had simply noticed that mastering houses had traditionally commanded hourly rates sometimes 5-10 times higher than studios -- realized there was a challenge but also an opportunity -- to expand on the traditional last-minute-fix aspect into something oriented to corrections few would have made -- or wanted made -- in the old days and to plant the idea that was 'normal practice' and that a mix was not 'finished' unless it had been 'fixed again' by an ME.
So is recording history rewritten to help shore up demand for what is often an unnecessary -- and sometimes aesthetically disastrous -- step.
Now there is another aspect to mastering for those putting together album packages. It's also one where the traditional role of the ME has been expanded. That is in last minute fixes to help try to give some consistency in timbre as well as level to album tracks that may have been recorded in different times and places by different production staff, as so often is the case these days.
When one is putting together a package for replication and commercial release, it may well make perfect sense to use an ME in order to assist in producing a package that fits together well.
And in an era when many of those recording do not have long experience, necessarily the greatest gear (and likely not the knowledge of how to get the most of it), that court of last resort at the ME's may well make some kind of sense. Do make sure that you have chosen an ME that is not just experienced but thinks like you do. There are a lot of different approaches. Validity of approach is contingent on the nature of the project/genre.
But when there is no budget, when you are releasing the music for free or as one-off sales through online stores, I recommend at least trying to do it oneself.
Really, the right place to get things right is in tracking and mixdown. Learn to get that right and, even if you always have everything externally mastered, you'll still be helping to make sure that things end up sounding as close as possible to what you want and that the ME has to make as few of his own aesthetic/corrective decisions as possible.
Someone was asking recently about a problem he was having with his mixes sounding good in his studio -- but falling apart in the car or on other playback systems. He asked if that was a problem or if that could be fixed in mastering -- and someone helpfully answered, Yes, that's what mastering is for.
In today's paradigm, I'd make that a highly qualified maybe.
Even the best ME can't turn a sow's ear into the proverbial silk purse. If a track is mixed badly or has fundamental flaws, you can try to put sonic band-aids on it, but it's always going to be fundamentally compromised -- and it will be likely to cost you more money as the ME struggles to overcome problems with tracking or mix.
In the old days of then-high tech, computer controlled cutting lathes, creating a master for pressing disks required very expensive gear and a lot of skill and knowledge to use -- making the process quite expensive -- fixes at the cutting lab were for last minute and emergency fixes.
Also, in those days, mastering labs were seldom outfitted as high quality mixing rooms. Not only was it wildly expensive to do a fix there, but it was entirely likely that if you tried to make decisions there, they would be compromised by far less than ideal monitoring.
That's why mastering jobs were, by accepted practice, submitted with an edit list of any EQ or other fixes one wanted imposed. The ME might change the sound (say rolling off bass) in order optimize the signal for the rigid requirements of vinyl (narrow dynamic range, limits on bass levels) but there were other things like phase content that he typically had little control over (unless it was simply a polarity error).
In those days, the ME was expected to not make aesthetic decisions but only apply the requested changes or those absolutely necessary for the format.
But mastering changed with digital -- but the cost of entry was even higher at first. But as CD-R masters became acceptable at rep houses, it became entirely possible for the average home recordist to prepare his own replication masters.
And at that point, mastering houses -- and those who had simply noticed that mastering houses had traditionally commanded hourly rates sometimes 5-10 times higher than studios -- realized there was a challenge but also an opportunity -- to expand on the traditional last-minute-fix aspect into something oriented to corrections few would have made -- or wanted made -- in the old days and to plant the idea that was 'normal practice' and that a mix was not 'finished' unless it had been 'fixed again' by an ME.
So is recording history rewritten to help shore up demand for what is often an unnecessary -- and sometimes aesthetically disastrous -- step.
Now there is another aspect to mastering for those putting together album packages. It's also one where the traditional role of the ME has been expanded. That is in last minute fixes to help try to give some consistency in timbre as well as level to album tracks that may have been recorded in different times and places by different production staff, as so often is the case these days.
When one is putting together a package for replication and commercial release, it may well make perfect sense to use an ME in order to assist in producing a package that fits together well.
And in an era when many of those recording do not have long experience, necessarily the greatest gear (and likely not the knowledge of how to get the most of it), that court of last resort at the ME's may well make some kind of sense. Do make sure that you have chosen an ME that is not just experienced but thinks like you do. There are a lot of different approaches. Validity of approach is contingent on the nature of the project/genre.
But when there is no budget, when you are releasing the music for free or as one-off sales through online stores, I recommend at least trying to do it oneself.
Really, the right place to get things right is in tracking and mixdown. Learn to get that right and, even if you always have everything externally mastered, you'll still be helping to make sure that things end up sounding as close as possible to what you want and that the ME has to make as few of his own aesthetic/corrective decisions as possible.
posted by TK Major at
8:45 AM
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