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Tutorial—Mastering
28 — Tutorial
Mastering
When you think mastering, think “subtle”. But just because it’s subtle doesn’t
mean that it can’t have a huge impact on the overall sound of a song. Mastering is
the process of making final adjustments to the overall sound, usually involving
the application of EQ and/or compression. In some instances an engineer might
even decide to add a touch of overall reverb. In the context of an album contain-
ing several individual songs or compositions, mastering also covers the process of
matching levels and sound between songs, and deciding on the amount of space
to leave between tracks. For our discussion here we’ll concentrate on mastering
and “burning” the song to a CD-R disk which can then be played in just about
any standard CD player.
Step 1: Set Up the “Master” EQ and Dynamics
It won’t always be necessary to use EQ and dynamics during mastering; in fact,
we’ll use only compression for this example. The dynamics are set using the STE-
REO channel processor. Press the STEREO channel [SEL] key, then use the MIXER
[DYN] key to access the dynamics parameters. The nice thing about this system is
that you can hear how your master EQ and/or dynamics settings affect the overall
mix immediately. In some cases you might even decide to go back and make
changes to the mix because of the way everything sounds “mastered” as opposed
to straight, before committing to a specific set of mastering parameters. Generally,
though, the better the mix, the less master processing is required.
To enable the pre-programmed “mastered” automix:
1. Press the AUTOMATION [AUTOMIX] key and, if necessary, press the [F4]
key to select the “Event List” page.
2. Move the cursor to the SCENE/LIB button on the display and press [ENTER]
to highlight it.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURATE MONITORING
One of the most critical factors in successful mastering (and mixing, for that matter) is to
have a good monitoring setup. This is also one of the most difficult to achieve simply
because it involves not only your amp and speakers, but the room you monitor in and
everything in it as well. Quite simply, your mix will sound different on different systems
and in different rooms. If the environment you work in tends to be bass deficient, you will
probably crank the bass up too high and end up with excessively boomy sound on other
systems. If your “studio” is reverberant (we don’t recommend mixing or mastering in the
bathroom), you won’t be able to accurately judge the effect of ambience processing on
your mix. What you really need is a mixing and mastering environment that is relatively
dry (in the sonic sense, that is) and has a broad, flat frequency response without unnatural
dips or peaks. If your studio isn’t perfect (and this is the norm for home studios) then expe-
rience is the answer. The more you mix, master, and listen to the results on different sys-
tems and in different rooms, the more you’ll get a feel for how the sound of your studio
relates to the real-world “average”. Listening to your own work in a variety of environ-
ments is a very good idea in any case. Listen on big, expensive hi-fi systems as well as
cheap portables. Don’t forget car stereos, either. The more you listen, the better your mixes
will become.