About the mastering

Hi everyone!

Today, as I'm finishing the mastering for the soundtrack from the third and fourth seasons of The Visitor from the Future, I tell you the the mastering.

What is it ?

Mastering comes after the mix. I think that mastering only one song is useless. But the mastering is important on a full album. The goal is to give the whole album a unity, in terms of volume, frequency response and sound space.
There are a few steps to do that, and we usually use the same gears (real or virtual) than when we mix.

Mastering is a subtle process. I often heard that the bass guitar in a song is an instrument you only hear when it's muted...It's the same idea for the mastering.

Here's what I use:

- The Waves NLS plugin. It emulates a channel from an analog console, pushed in its limit in terms of volume. If you didn't know it, be known that there's a "spot" on every audio gear when the sound quality is optimized, it's often the point where the sound starts to distort. Your guitarist is right when he cranks his amp's volume up, because the "sweet spot" is usually located at about the 3/4 of the volume.

- The Izotope Ozone plugin. It changes everything, I use it a lot. EQ, multiband compression, stereo enhancer, multiband saturation...everything is great and subtle.

- The Kramer Master Tape by Waves. It emulates a tape recorder.

So what is the result when I use all that !

Here are some samples. It's subtle, so if you don't hear anything on your computer's speakers, it's normal.

On the first two samples, there is the mixed version first, and the mastered version.

The first sample, on the song called "Judith", shows the stereo enchancer, as well as a change in the overall volume.



On the second sample, you can hear multiband compression and EQ, so that on the master version, you can hear more strings and horns than on the mix version.



On the last sample, I activated the plugins one be one:
0:05 - NLS on
0:09 - Ozone: EQ on
0:14 - Ozone: Reverb on
0:18 - Ozone: Harmonic generator on
0:22 - Ozone: multiband compression on
0:27 - Ozone: stereo enhancer on
0:31 - Ozone: maximizer on
0:36 - Kramer Master Tape on
You may think that nothing has changed from the beginning, so...
0:43 - every plugins off



I hope you liked it !
There are some engineers specialized in mastering, and they would surely talk about it really better than I do, but as I do some mastering from time to time, here was what I'm able to say about it !

Bye !