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About Mastering

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All about demos

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Mastering is the last creative process that brings a musical project to its final sonic dimension. Mastering takes care of the final assembly of an album, ensuring that a collection of songs will flow from start to finish, in the desired order and with the right amount of space in between songs. Making an album is an investment and mastering brings forward the best in the mixes; expect mastering to enhance the sound, add more depth and make the songs shine. The better the songs sound, the more records will be sold.

Probably the most important thing you should consider is the sound of the mastering room! Many projects are done on small home-recording studios, where the monitoring system and the room are less than accurate. I definitely recommend having the mastering of these projects done somewhere else, with an experienced engineer familiar with different styles of music, working in an acoustically treated room, with mastering grade A/D/A converters, with a flat monitoring system with high bandwidth. It is important to be able to hear the low frequencies, down to 20Hz, to detect everything, from rumbles, pops to microphone vibrations. Most of the mixes are done on nearfield monitors (there are so many in the market), and only a few of them are really up to the task

The list of the most important issues the mastering takes care includes:

• noise, glitches and hiss removal, dehumming (cause by the 50/60 Hz of the power supplies), declicking and decrackling for remastering from vinyl
• clean up the beginning and the end of each song and smooth out or create fades through editing, dynamic or harmonic enhancement of the song or just make up for inconsistencies through EQ and compression
• optimize average and peak volume levels for proper loudness
• achieve the right sonic balance for the type of song (country is different than jazz or R&B)
• add warmth and depth to your mixes
• correct stereo imagine if needed
• place songs in proper order and adjust the gaps between them
• create a sonic signature for all tracks
• sample and bit rate conversion
• adjust the song levels and make them match so the listener won’t have to turn the volume up and down between songs
• place everything into the format required by the CD manufacturer- the master CD.

A good final mix speaks for itself, but is definitely not enough anymore. The competition in the music business is tough and you shouldn’t make any compromise when it comes to the quality of your song. Even a demo for promotion that has three songs needs mastering. There is always a tendency to save money, but in this case it can be too costly and compromise your chances. A/R people, agents and producers who are doing the screening of hundreds of tapes are getting tired too and you don’t want them to concentrate to hear your music instead of listening to it; they simply won’t do it. So, unless your demo is for promotion in clubs, we advise you to go for mastering and have that in mind when you plan your budget.

The mp3 files are very popular; their problem is the inherent sonic compromise and loss in audio quality. More and more acts are paying attention now to the quality of mp3 and understand that these files can be improved sonically through mastering the same way the regular songs are mastered. Mp3’s are a fantastic marketing tool: you don’t want to compromise the sales because others have better sounding mp3’s.

There are some things you should know about mastering. Mastering will clean a mix, but there are flaws that can not be removed. There are things you didn't notice in the mix, but you'll notice them at mastering: most of them can be corrected. The mixes can be made brighter or heavier, the stereo width can be changed and the mix can be made to sound tighter and together. If a mix needs to be redone, it should be redone; no mastering can take care of that. It is recommended to send a preliminary mix to the mastering studio and ask the mastering engineer opinion; he can point to some problems that can be fixed in the mix.

The following is a guideline you can use to estimate how much mastering time a CD project will take:

1. 1. Roll-on time - assuming your mixes are in a different format than a .wav or .aiff files – digital or analog tape – the loading of the workstation is done in real time, so it will be 60 minutes. Consider another 15 min. for the preparation of the operation provided all the songs are into a single tape;  this can be longer if the mixes are on different tapes. Having your mixes burnt on CD as .wav or .aiff files saves you a lot of time, the loading is much faster.  
3. 2. Mastering – this step is quite hard to predict; it depends a lot on the quality of the mixdown and the processing we have to do it. On average, a one hour CD project with 10-12 songs takes 1-2 days of mastering; but if the mixdown requires heavy EQ and correction, it may need some additional time. Fandango offers different packages - see rates, and the main difference between them is the time we take to do the mastering.
5. 3. Roll-off time – the final edited and mastered project gets burnt onto a CD-R master. The burning is done "Disk at once" - at 1x speed, to eliminate all possible errors, so you won’t have a problem at the CD manufacturing facility. This operation takes 1 hour 15 min for 1 full hour of songs.

The average time for mastering a CD for a standard project will be 8-12 hours: please use this as a reference, your project may take more or less time; it is fair to assume one hour/song.

Fandango has three rates for mastering a CD; the explanation is simple. The first- the Bronze type is a basic mastering, for those on a very limited budget. This type of mastering enhances the qualities needed for demos, promotion, radio friendliness and local (gig) sales. The Silver mastering package delivers excellent quality at a price bellow the Gold, for professional quality, A fine mastering, with state-of-the-art compression, limiting, equalizing, and processing. The Gold is the top mastering package, for national releases; where we take the time to discuss with the producer and explore every avenue. At the end of the process, a mandatory second quality control with headphones will be made, to catch problems that can not be heard on speakers and make sure no abnormal sounds exist.

Questions, info, contact:  florinb@fandangorecording.com or call 416 579 5569.

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