Mastering – what is it?

Mastering is final, last improvement of sound before duplicating of the recording in many copies onto CD records or audio cassettes. The ultimate goal here is achieving the highest possible technical quality of the material contained on the media, to make it capable of competing and winning over another recordings already present on the market. Actually, the mastered recording must sound not only impeccable from the technical point of view, but also has to emphasize the artist’s style and the whole idea of his\her music. Only achieving the optimal marriage of those two elements- the technical and artistic- makes the mastered recording a real, true work of art, time-frozen on CD record or some another media, capable of carrying each and every nuance of artist’s emotion even into the farthest future. 


Mastering- it's goal

Different from mixing, mastering is performed on already prerecorded, mixed-down material called the mix. Unlike in the mixing stage, where processing of one track does not touch another one, the mastering process influences all the elements of the mix. The goal here is achieving the optimal, superior sound. That sound should be uniform, perfectly balanced, natural and rich at the same time. Often the aim here is also achieving the highest possible level of loudness without hearable loss of quality and the highest possible class of spectral balance of the recording before passing it on to the process of serial production of thousands CD’s and audio cassettes, commercially released. A superior mastering has to  improve the quality of music material very significantly, especially when the mix and final mix-down were not done in professional manner. Moreover, the professionally performed mastering of a CD contains certain technical elements, like PQ lists, ISRC codes, CD text and the like (so called Red Book Standard). Record labels and distributors are interested in highest possible quality of their artists’ recordings because of one reason: they want to sell as many excellently sounding records as possible, and better sounding record draw more sales. 


Mastering- between the art and the science

It is often said, that the mastering is as much a science as an art. There is much truth in this saying, because really a lot depends on the skill and experience of the person making decisions in all this process. Technology takes a very important, hard to over esteem place here, but even more important is experience, artistic feel, taste and the ear of person performing mastering. Decisions based on artistic taste and feel during mastering are much more important then decisions based on the equipment knowledge. The equipment knowledge or it's high price or quality can not substitute for human's high level of listening and decision making skill, which is much more important!. It is like putting an inexperienced pilot behind the controls of a modern, supersonic jet aircraft, the bare fact of having it at disposal will not make him an air ace, and actually it can become really dangerous.


Mastering has one main goal: to make music sound as good as possible without regard for the kind of equipment it is played on, no matter if it is played on the car stereo, radio, mp3 player, in the club or hi-fi home tower, headphones or speakers. It has great importance for the music material auditioned in a record company, a radio station or before duplicating in large series of thousands of copies. The hits, occupying first places of charts sound usually excellent, they are loud, they have pleasant balance of the bass, middle and treble, they sound coherently and powerfully. Simply putting it: they impress! This is because they were skillfully mastered by skillful people. Your music does not have to fall behind them, neither in terms of overall loudness level nor transparency and details.

After special treatment in our studio your music will gain sonic qualities comparable to or exceeding the best recordings heard on the radio or commercial CD records and cassettes sold in musical stores. 

For all your questions and inquires about music, mixing, mastering and another areas of sonic quality and music production please contact us at:

bestmastering@gmail.com 

tel: +48 666 11 333 0

HOW TO PREPARE YOUR MUSIC FOR MASTERING>>>

 

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