What is Mastering?

When a band finishes tracking and mixing their record, they will usually have the material mastered before it gets replicated to CD. The mastering engineer looks at the entire body of work, and makes sure that the sound quality and volume levels are consistent from track to track. They also look at the audio spectrum and the dynamic range and make adjustments. The value added by mastering can be quite dramatic.

Many agencies and film producers now own their own editing systems and are mixing final audio on their in-house computers. While having an editing system in-house may be a convenience, most of these systems lack two very important features for
mixing audio.

1. Most of these systems don’t have many of the audio processing devices (plug-ins) that the professional audio recording studios have. Digital workstations (especially video editing systems) come with surprisingly few audio plug-ins, which are the computer equivalent of the analog signal processors found in recording consoles and outboard devices. Most of the better plug-ins must be purchased separately from a third party and can cost as much as or more than the basic workstation system alone. So many people mixing audio on their home or business computers don’t always have the best tools for the job.

2. Theses systems unfortunately don’t come with an in-house professional audio mix engineer. Just because a computer system has the application doesn’t mean that you should use it to mix audio. People who don’t mix audio every day are extremely lucky if they produce a final mix that is remotely comparable to one done by a professional audio mixer. If agencies and film producers want to assemble their productions using their own equipment, they at least should consider sending the audio files to a professional audio studio to be mixed and mastered. The studio’s considerable arsenal of audio plug-ins and the expertise of the professional mixers would add high value to the quality of the audio track for a surprisingly low cost.