Introduction: 5 Signs of a Poor Master
Posted on May 29, 2007 - Filed Under Mastering
For years the mastering process has been veiled in mystery. Even today it is hard to find specific information about what mastering actually entails. The mastering studio is often times perceived as a black box where you drop of your CD and it returns mastered with few explanations or options. Mastering became so far removed from the act of creating the music that big labels started taking advantage of this to create louder and louder CDs at the expense of the dynamic range and clarity of the music.
However it seems like awareness is growing. More and more musicians are attempting (with mixed results of course) to master their own music thus taking creative control over this final stage or music production. I myself fall into this category and this in fact is how I learned about mastering. And while many mastering engineers vehemently insist that the musician should not master his or her own music (surprise surprise) I would suggest otherwise. Why shouldn’t the musician also be the mastering engineer? You might as well suggest that he or she should not record or mix the music either. The issue of course is the quality of the final result and the time it takes to get there. It took me 3 years to learn how to master my own music. And that is 3 years of burning hundreds upon hundreds of CDRs of the same three tracks to listen to them on my car stereo. But I would have never been able to do what I can now if I followed the advice of the mastering engineers!
Even though I do offer mastering services, I would like to dedicate the main portion of this blog to information and discussion about the process. There are too many CDs being release that are not sounding as good as they should and I strongly believe that with a little education and awareness, the number of poor-quality mastering jobs can be significantly decreased.
I don’t want to go to deep into this with the first post but here are a few signs of a bad mastering job:
- the CD sounds bad or very different in a car or on a boom box - the mastering engineer doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing
- the drums are drowned out by the other instruments and all the punch is gone - too much limiting for the sake of loudness (some engineers may also overcompensate for the lack of other techniques with over-limiting)
- the CD sounds extremely different when played quietly and loudly - bad compressor settings
- the bass is gone - some mastering engineers like to cut the bass, sometimes also a result of over-limiting
- the highs are too quiet or so loud they hurt - this may be a combination of incorrect compressor settings, or too much equalization
Ok, this is it for now. More in-depth information to follow.
-Slava