Mastering
How to make your music sound professional? Mastering is an answer!
It is a form of audio post production. The process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source which contains the final mix to a data storage device (the master). The source serves to produce all the copies via methods such as pressing, duplication or replication.
What it requires?
Critical listening. However, software tools exist to facilitate the process. Results depend upon the intent of the engineer, the skills of the engineer, the accuracy of the speaker monitors, and the listening environment.
Music engineers often apply equalization and dynamic range compression in order to optimize sound translation on all playback systems. The standard practice is to make a copy of a master recording, known as a safety copy, in case you lost or damaged the master.
The source material, ideally at the original resolution, is processed using equalization, compression, limiting and other processes.
There are additional operations which you can apply as part of the mastering stage. For example:
- editing;
- specifying the gaps between tracks;
- adjusting level;
- fading in and out;
- noise reduction and other signal restoration and enhancement.
Mastering is extremely important, and you can learn it on our Music production course!