Well, recorded music/audio goes through multiple stages and transformations before it's finally ready for commercial release. The audio mastering process varies and is entirely dependent on the music. Where some tracks might benefit from a little broad band equalisation, a touch of gentle compression and maybe a little analogue saturation, others may call for a more aggressive approach.
Mastering is both the last stage of production and the first stage of manufacturing, it's the final step in the creative process, where aspects of the track are enhanced or reduced and where the songs that make up an album are brought together into a cohesive whole.
To enhance your initial mix, a mastering engineer can raise the track loudness, create stereo images, equalise the mix to cut through more aggressively and use tools that reduce noise or hiss. Ultimately, the aim is to create a balanced, equalised, sonically enhanced, and usually radio friendly sound which translates well across the modern day line up of audio formats and playback options.
Compression & Normalisation
Compression is usually applied to bring lower sound levels up to meet the higher levels, a process that enhances the general sense of loudness. In recent years, digital techniques have been applied which produce levels so high that maximum loudness has been fulfilled across the entire length of the track. This sounds good initially, but later on we begin to see that the dynamic of the mix has been sacrificed to do this, which is also more fatiguing to listen to over an extended time. Record labels and audio mastering houses have always competed to produce louder records, but with modern digital tools we're now at the end stages of this competition.
Normalisation is a means of raising the level of a digital recording to ensure the peaks reach maximum level. This is a trap many semi-pros (among others) fall into. When done for an album project, it results in "quiet" tunes that sound louder than the "loud" tunes generally. In addition, when a 16 bit recording is normalised, the low order bits (which carry much important musical information), can be truncated leading to harshness and a weakening of the stereo image by losing important spatial cues.
In Conclusion
By not mastering your mixes, you're effectively bypassing a critical phase of musical creation that will help to translate your original idea to the listener's stereo system. Mastering really can make all the difference, between sounding mediocre and sounding great.
Mixpro offers online mixing and audio mastering facilities for musicians, songwriters, record and film companies at competitive rates and extremely high standards.
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