Mastering
Mastering is the final part of the post-production process and is part of our Premium Mixes at Studio 117. It helps to finalize the song and prepare it for release on streaming services. When mixing, we treat individual tracks in the song on their own to create a cohesive whole. However, mastering is the treatment of a single, mixed audio file. With this in mind, if there is a problem in the mix, the master won’t save it.
A good analogy for the process is the lifecycle of creating a painting. Creating is like choosing your canvas, colors, medium, tools, etc. Recording is applying the paints to the canvas. Mixing is adding the touch-up paint, and mastering is putting a frame on it.
Listen to Mitchell.’s mixed file for “Nameless“ before listening to the final master on Spotify.
The most obvious difference between a mix and a master is the volume. When preparing the mix for mastering, we must leave headroom. Headroom is essentially allowing the space in volume for the mastering engineer to make their changes, and then turn up the volume as the final step.
Additionally, you will hear differences in the dynamics and spectral balance. The dynamics of a song is the difference between the quietest and loudest parts. The spectral balance is the EQ-Curve or balance of low, mid, and high frequencies.
Overall, a level of cohesion is created in the master that the mix doesn’t have. It can be hard to explain, but music is really all about feeling anyway.
Briefly, we’d like to touch on artificial intelligence mastering services. We recognize and accept the direction that things are moving with technology and A.I. We actively adopt and make use of the new tools and technologies that are available. However, the mastering services available now will still never beat a human making decisions towards the betterment of the song. If you do decide to run your mix through one of these mastering services, and you hear elements in it that you prefer to what we’ve done, please let us know. If you can’t describe it to us, send us the file. We will push back on the mix/master and revise it to have the elements you want to hear without sacrificing other quality elements of the final product. We will work until you are completely satisfied with the output we provide you.
Think about it this way -- investing in high quality paints, canvases, and spending hours of time painting and touching up the piece, only to conclude by trimming the edges off the canvas so it can fit in a $5 frame.
