An overview of online mastering:

It was once the case that professional mastering was a costly yet important exercise at the end of the audio production process. It remains true that it is a wise procedure to adopt. However, these days you can still afford a high caliber of mastering by opting for online mastering which tends to get you a very experienced engineer with truly professional equipment at a much more budget friendly rate. With the online mastering model you can remain in complete control by receiving mastering preview files for each of your music tracks. This allows you to assess the mastering before committing to the final masters. It is suggested that you research your online mastering studio with some care, looking at factors such as engineer experience, monitoring arrangements (i.e. presence of reference quality professional loudspeakers), acoustic treatments and of course compare audio samples.

As the sole mastering engineer for SafeandSound Mastering Barry’s take on mastering as a process is that the most important goal is good musical translation across the largest number of reproduction systems possible. In essence the music should sound as good as it can given the mix down on small and large scale sound systems. An essential mastering tool for identifying how music will sound on a big system is large and accurate monitors. Such reference speakers allow the mastering engineer to get a sense of scale. Another important factor is the element of taste input from the client. A good master has an aperture for taste and this is important for any mastering engineer to take into account. The mastering engineer should be in possession of the best possible tools both analog and digital and have the knowledge when to apply each as is appropriate. Commonly these tools will be equalization (tone), compression, (dynamic control), limiting and stereo field adjustment tools. Increasing the perceived level of music is another common goal in mastering though as a mastering engineer he suggests considering the merits and trade offs that occur with extreme level increases. “It has a tendency to reduce punch, detail and depth in a recording, not usually desirable affects. I seek to minimize these effects whatever the desired perceived levels, however I recommend a balanced approach with moderate level increases which retains the vast majority of the clarity, detail, punch and quality of a great mix”. Historical evidence suggests people remember quality, not perceived level.

Finally quality control is also very important, often recording and mix sessions are time pressured and even the best mix engineer or musician can miss a stray click, vocal pop or bad edit when under pressure. Mastering identifies these little mistakes and makes sure they never get heard by the listening public. The very last stage of mastering is ensuring that the music is committed to a final medium such as CD-R pre master, DDP (disk description protocol) or encoded digital audio files. Some of these formats can have important sub code data inserted by the mastering engineer, such as ISRC code (unique track identifiers for radio play royalty collection), UPC/EAN barcodes and CD-Text for artist and track names.

Barry Gardner is the sole mastering engineer at SafeandSound mastering and the website address to visit is : SafeandSound online mastering