An Introduction To Mastering In The Box
Mastering is a dark and mysterious art. It’s performed by sage-like engineers with super-human ears and years of experience. They take great mixes and somehow make them even better. They’re able to make the lows deeper, the midrange more punchy, and the highs more brilliant.
How? What are their secrets? Patience, Padawan. All will be revealed in time. But first, we must answer an age-old question...
What Is Mastering?
Mastering is the last step of music production. It's the process of balancing the stereo mix of a song and optimizing it for various media formats.
Mastering is equal parts creative and technical. It’s about divorcing yourself from the individual parts of a song, and assessing it as a whole.
Typically, the mastering process includes equalization, compression, harmonic saturation effects, stereo enhancement effects, and limiting.
Some plug-ins actually offer all of these features in a single suite like iZotope Ozone. Other manufacturers create mastering bundles with individual plugins for each job, but no two mastering chains will ever be exactly alike. Each song requires something unique.
This is an excerpt from a blog entitled "Vintage King's Introduction To Mastering In The Box". Read the full article here!
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