The Dark Art

What is mastering and why is it commonly regarded as the "dark art" of the audio world? Illuminate yourself...

What's the secret?

Mastering is not such a big mystical feat as many like to make out. It involves a logical process just like anything else. Designed to give your stereo mixes the ‘finishing touch' by improving the depth, definition and clarity of your mix, a typical mastering session may include use of the following:

• Data integrity verification
• Up-sampling to 88.2/96khz
• Compression/Limiting
• Equalisation
• Stereo imaging
  
• Harmonic enhancement
  
• Noise reduction

plus...

• Loudness and dynamic range trimming, taking the record as a whole
• Final down sampling, quantisation and dithering to 16 bit/44100k for CD-Audio
• Fades, cross fades and edits, running order, pauses between tracks and CD indexing
• Master disc creation (higher sampling and bit rates plus TOC for Vinyl masters)

Why the mystique?

The process is logical in that we use only a combination of standard audio treatments, all of which are common to every phase of audio production. However, it is the art to select the right combination and to have them work together in such a way that is favourable to the source material. This may take some commitment.

Perhaps it's not the process that's the mystery as much as the nerds that get into it...!

What makes good mastering?

Good mastering is of course a matter of mastering expertise - but it is equally important that you work with an engineer that has a healthy interest in the best sound for your record. It is also completely necessary that you have optimum signal path integrity, a great sounding mastering chain, accurate monitoring and trustworthy room acoustics.

We are pleased to offer this entire service to each of our cleints!

What's in your mastering chain?

We use excellent quality valve and j-fet driven equalisation, compression and stereo imaging that is performed in the analogue domain.  Harmonics, dithering and all editing and fades are performed in the digital domain.

Our complete mastering chain operates at 96khz sampling with solid 24 bit resolution utilising world-class DA/AD conversion and dithering.

Our "tools of the trade" makers are as follows:

Analogue:  Manley; Millenia; Mercury; Dangerous; Focusrite; HSE; TLAudio; DBX;

Digital: Cranesong; Lynx; RME; Lucid; Magix; Steinberg; Waves; Digidesign; AAVIMT

Monitoring:  Barefoot; Alesis; JBL