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Towards mastering (Friday, 27 May 2022)
Until a drop becomes a flood (Leela and Ellie Grace)
The latest assignment from Sound Education Nederland was to master a mix. Mastering is the last part of the (creative and artistic) music production process before it will be send out to the audience via streaming media such as Spotify, on CD, cassette, and/or on vinyl. Therefore, mastering is the very last opportunity to make the song as good as possible and to translate optimally to different playback systems such as your HiFi installation, car speakers, ear buds, etc. Mastering does is not only about audio processing but also serves as a last quality check during which errors (e.g., clicks) are removed, metadata (including ISRC codes) is added, spacing between songs on an album is taken care of, and a variety of audio formats are produced (e.g., wav files, mp3). Also note that we master the stereo track (stereo audio file) of the final mix and, therefore, do not have access to the individual tracks (e.g., vocals, drums, guitars) that we used during mixing. Consequently, any change made during mastering generally affects all instruments/vocals.
Translation of the song(s) to different playback systems is important. This does not imply that the song sounds good on every playback system (e.g., your laptop speakers) but implies that the song sounds at least as good as another high-quality (commercial) song on that particular playback system.
I have chosen the song Until a drop becomes a flood from Leela and Ellie Grace. This song was recorded and mixed by Pete Szkolka (Columbia, MO) and originally mastered by Bob Katz (digital domain)! Now, I am not claiming to be anywhere near his skills. I did the mastering in WaveLab 11 Pro from Steinberg.
Since the acoustics of my studio are far from optimal and because I don’t have full range speakers with a flat response, I did the complete mastering on my Sennheiser HD650 headphones and Sonarworks.
Good learning experience to fully concentrate on mastering and on a song that I did not mix myself. Still difficult to determine what to change since the mix already sounded good. The complete mastering process is described in the document below. Also took some extra time to learn the Unisum (Tone Projects) compressor a bit better. Complex piece of gear.
Here are the pre- and post-master of the song. Can you hear the differences? Note that the mastered version is louder (-13 LUFS) compared to the original mix (-17.5 LUFS). Since, generally, we perceive louder versions as better you may conclude that the mastered version is better. However, concentrate on the sonic differences between the two versions (which is difficult). Note that Spotify normalizes all songs to -14 LUFS and, therefore, my song would be played back with reduced volume (-1 LU) on this platform.
Pre-master
Post-master
Description of mastering process
