Mastering is the final step of music production and takes place after the mixing process. It is extremely delicate since it can upgrade to its full potential or ruin it completely. The goal of the online mastering service is to enhance and prepare your song for the music market. Think of mastering as that fine wax layer which makes your car glow as if it was new after washing it.
Because of the mastering service not only enhance your track but and prepare it for commercial distribution. Music streaming platforms, radios, tv channels, CD manufacturers, all of them have format and quality requirements that mastering helps you to achieve them. A fine mastering job also unifies all the tracks that belong to the same album, making a more solid concept. Without mastering each track could sound out of place in relation to each other.
Depending on the genre you are into, you will need to achieve a competitive loudness. Whatever we like it or not, nowadays mainstream music sounds loud. And is not an easy task to push the volume of a track to that level without ruining its dynamics.
Just as in the mixing process, there is no secret formula for mastering. Each song will require different processes in a different order and it’s the mastering engineer’s job to determine which ones. However, here there are some common steps and approaches we could find in a mastering process.
The most important part of the mastering process is to determine the weakness of the mixing and what it needs. This is a skill mastering engineers learn over the time after years of practice. Remember that mastering is about the details and we don’t want to change the essence of the song, but enhance it.
Many more factors come in to play when we need to decide our mastering approach. The genre of the song, distribution platforms or formats, client’s request, expectations etc. After all, this step consists of establishing the best possible foundation in order to take the best from your mix.
There is no enough with a pair of experienced ears when it comes no analyze the mixing we also need several factors. One of them is the speakers, a pair of high quality professional audio speakers are vital in order to listen to the full range of frequencies. Mastering engineers need to hear the low and high end in a proper acoustic environment for taking the right decisions.
Our online mastering service puts your album in order. There is no secret on saying that working in an album during months can be chaotic and end up in a complete mess of files from different studios. The mastering engineer puts all the tracks in order and makes the appropriate editing to establish your album’s concept. We sequence your tracklist and set the timing of the transitions. We also realize fade-ins and outs to ensure everything runs smoothly.
The tonal balance of your song is how the different frequency ranges in the music relate to each other. Here, we are not trying to modify the frequency content of each individual instrument (that is supposed to be done during the mixing process) but to achieve overall harmony in the entire song.
A good mastering engineer will realize subtle adjustment using compression or equalization that will have a major impact on the entire song. These little increments or reductions in the sonic balance, raise the most important frequencies of different parts of your mix as well as can amend problems occurred during the recording or mixing process. Achieving the perfect balance between the low end and the high frequencies will provide your son with all the punch and energy it requires. A proper mastering process can make a good song excellent.
As you may have already guessed, mastering is about equilibrium. During the mastering step, you probably want your track to be louder. This is probably the most requested petition inside a mastering studio. It is true that music nowadays sounds loud, especially mainstream genres, and you need to get closer to that level of loudness if you want to be placed within the music market. However, you must understand that it comes at the expense of the dynamic range.
The dynamic range is the difference between the quietest and loudest part of the songs. In modern music, the necessity of a high volume seems to have diminished the dynamic range of the actual records. Achieving a proper level of loudness can make our song more competitive and appealing to normal ears, but we have to be careful not to erase the contrast and the nuances of the song.
A good mastering engineer must achieve a competitive loudness without exterminating the dynamic range. This is not an easy task and comes and it’s in part determined by the mixing process. That’s why in order to achieve excellence we need to take care of each one of the steps of the music production process.
During the mastering step, the engineer needs to be able to hear the finest details of your mix. Mastering without a full range of speakers would be like a surgeon proceeding without his prescription glasses. It’s simple, you shouldn’t modify what you can’t hear just as you shouldn’t touch what you can’t see. In Go Mixing we count with a full range set of speakers from the top manufacturer in the audio market such as Focal and Genelec.
As in the mixing process, acoustic treatment plays even a more fundamental role when we master a song. Taking the final decision in a room with acoustic problems can ruin the whole process.