Mastering: The Secret Sauce of Audio Production

Featured Image: Eric Sneo in his studio. Credits: Toolroom Records, Tronic Records, Elevate Records. Contact him here.

You wrote a banger. I mean, this song slaps. You spent the past evening or two (or more) balancing the mix just right. You export from your DAW, throw it on a playlist next to your favorite artists, press play…

And it sounds meh.

You forgot the final step, Johnny – the song needs to be mastered!

But what exactly does that mean? This week, we take a quick peek into the often misunderstood process that marks the completion of a song – the mastering process.

What is Mastering?

Let’s begin with what it is not:

• Mastering is not normalization.
• Mastering is not a final opportunity to fix mix problems.
• Mastering is not part of the mixing process.

Mastering is the process of preparing an audio mix or mixes for distribution.

In other words, you are getting your mix up-to-snuff in order to hold its own next to everything you hear on TV, on the radio, on CDs, or on your favorite streaming services. It is its own process that addresses things like loudness, balance, cohesion, and stereo imaging.

Mastering is a process applied to a final mix. That means that the mix is as good as it is going to get. The mastering engineer will apply familiar audio processing like equalization, compression, and limiting (as well as other more esoteric processes) to the final stereo mix. The goal here is to attain a clean-sounding product that translates across playback systems and is of comparable loudness to contemporary commercial releases.

Another aspect of mastering pertains to the dying art of creating albums. An album is a collection of songs meant to be heard in sequence. A mastering engineer’s job here is to ensure that all the songs in an album flow naturally from one to the next and sound like they belong together.

So What Are My Options?

When it comes to mastering your track, you have three options. You can:

• Send your mix to a mastering engineer.
• Run your mix through AI mastering software.
• Master your mix yourself.

Each option has its pros and cons.

A Mastering Engineer

This is your best bet, but it will also be your costliest. There are many mastering houses and engineers operating today, each with their own specialties and equipment. If you choose this option, it is best to do your research. Which engineers specialize in your genre? What does their past work sound like? Do they run analog equipment? (If they advertise themselves as such, it’s a good bet they do – and it’s likely they will highlight their equipment on their website) And, most importantly for many of us – what are their rates?

AI Mastering Software

There are a handful of companies that offer AI mastering services, the most popular being LANDR. These are generally pretty good – though they are better suited to single tracks. They work by teaching their AI generic conventions of all types by having it “listen” to hundreds of thousands of commercially published songs. The AI will analyze your song, decide what it sounds like, and digitally apply a set of processes to it yielding a commercially viable master.

Self-Mastering

This is your cheapest option, monetarily, but it will cost you tremendously in time and quality. Mastering is a very subtle process. Professional mastering engineers work in highly controlled acoustic environments that are expensive to create. They use equipment that is expensive to attain and maintain, and have spent years honing their skills. If you think you can achieve comparable results using a couple Waves plug-ins and Logic Pro X, have at it. I’m not knocking your budding skills – really I am not — I am only being realistic.

Experience aside, it is often a better idea to hire a mastering engineer even if you do know what you are doing. It helps to have another set of ears on that song that you have heard countless times throughout the writing, recording, and mixing processes. A fresh set of ears is almost guaranteed to do a better job than your own tired ears that probably just want the song to be finished.

Considerations Prior to Mastering

There are a number of things to be done prior to sending that mix out.

Finish the Mix

Yes, I’m serious. Mastering is the same as recording – garbage in, garbage out. If your mix falls flat, no amount of mastering will save it. You will just have a really loud, crappy mix. Make sure your mix is as good as it will get before you send it off. It may be helpful to run it through an AI mastering service to at least get an idea of what it will sound like. If you don’t like it, take some notes and go back to the mix.

Leave Headroom

If your mix level is up against 0dB, the mastering engineer will have no room to work. For a viable final mix, check that your mix RMS is hanging out at about -6dB and that it is peaking at around -3dB. This gives the mastering engineer space to engage all the equipment you wish you had.

Leave Reel In and Out Space

Sound systems take a fraction of a second to “fire up.” If you have your first kick hit at 0.0.000, it is going to get clipped. Leave at least a second or so of silence before the very first sound and after the very last reverb tail is completely gone. The mastering engineer will crop the song appropriately.

Keep Your Reference Track

If you were using a reference track in the mixing process – that is you tried to emulate the mix of a song you liked – it may help to send it to the mastering engineer as well. It will help illustrate your vision and will give him a definitive direction to take.

Conclusion

Mastering isn’t black magic voodoo. It is a very nuanced process that takes a highly skilled individual to do well, much like mixing. If you are serious about your productions, this is not a step to be compromised. Mastering will make or break your song – so choose your approach wisely.

Until next week,

-Chris Lazaga
AudioMunk