Masterers of the Universe
Revealed: The secret world of mastering (parental discretion advised)

by E.D. Menasche
 

For many, making a record has lost some of its mystery, at least technically.

But even if musicians know from tracking and mixdown and random access editing, mastering, the final stage of the production process, remains a mystery. Just the name seems to conjure images of wizard-like "masters" in star-covered robes, and white beards drinking strange herbal teas, working out of secretive quarters, presiding over a bubbling array of strange potions and tools, doing…something to make an already complete mix sound better.

"People find mastering so mysterious because it's deceptively simple," notes Scott Hull, chief engineer of NYC's Masterdisk Corporation. "It might be simple, but it can be remarkably effective." It's also extremely important, especially if you want your music played on the radio. A good album, no matter what the genre, offers the listener a sense of unity. There's something unsettling about flipping on a CD and having the volume and tone of the music jump around seemingly at random. And if that kind of inconsistency is annoying at home, it's death on the radio. One of mastering's primary functions is to take sometimes disparate material and turn it into a smooth, digestible product. "The mastering house has the reference monitors, the gear, and the mastering engineer to alter the product and bring it into line, fixing anomalies," explains Steve Hall of Hollywood-based Future Disc Systems. "Especially when the product has been recorded in lots of different studios, the mastering process helps add continuity, sometimes even change the dimension of the music."

A mastering engineer's perspective on your work comes not from sitting through endless hours of pre-production, tracking, and mixing, but from hearing your music fresh in the context of a steady stream of other finished mixes. If the production approach often involves micro-managing-breaking an album down into songs, songs into parts, parts into sections, etc.-the mastering process is macro in scope: Here is a collection of complete pieces of music. Unite them. Mastering involves several steps and several copies of a song might come out of the mastering studio with different levels of compression and EQ, optimized for radio or CD.

The first thing you'll notice when you walk into a mastering studio is the almost total focus on the listening experience. If a production facility is defined by the power and sonic character of the mixing console and outboard gear, the mastering studio's physical focus in on the monitor speakers. A mixing console is like a city connected by hundreds of roads leading in different directions. A mastering console is more like an intensely lit room, where decoration is kept to a minimum, and everything is in immediate reach. Since a mastering console is designed to handle only two channels of audio, flexability is not as important as sonic clarity.

A good mastering room will have a pretty short list of gear on hand, all of audiophile quality and often either custom-built or heavily modified workstation systems. There's very little use for traditions time-based effects like reverb; these guys are fanatical about the integrity of the signal path, which means they keep it as short as possible. Patchbays are a no-no. Compared to a fully equipped recording studio. Automation is minimal.

Then comes the monitoring system, which is, in essence, the mastering engineer's professional universe. Monitors can consume more than 25% of the construction budget of a room. The speakers, poweramps, acoustical treatment of the rooms, even the cables that connect the components, are built around the ears of one person, often for the person alone. In a facility like Masterdisk, walking from room to room will reveal staggering contrast, from Howie Weinberg's wall of speakers to Scott Hull's single set of Duntee towers. According to Hull, mastering engineers themselves often avoid working in the rooms of colleagues. "Changing rooms will make any good mastering engineer anxious. You lose your entire reference, and you have to know the context of what you're hearing so you an judge frequency response, level, transients, distortion, and so on."

A good set of ears must often be augmented by a diplomatic tongue. Mastering engineers sometimes find themselves in the middle of political battles that have been raging for the entire length of a project. Scott Hull tells the story of a band who came into a mastering session with each member saying they thought the master was okay but they couldn't hear their part clearly enough. Enhancing all of the parts which EQ would have turned the music into mush. "I made them each the master they wanted, then did what I thought was best and sent that off to the record company."

Even artist not pushing an ego-driven agenda might want to make suggestions to the mastering engineer based on playback in the mastering suite. But if they haven't heard much music in that particular room before, they may not fully understand what they're hearing. While a mastering engineer might allow some outsiders to go so far as to adjust EQ or compression, it makes them extremely uncomfortable. Better you should take a reference home, listen to it under familiar surroundings and report back later with comments.

For an album that's in good shape, with few major changes needed, the entire operation might take as little as three hours. One day is about average. If your on a tight budget, you can save money by doing the editing and sequencing yourself before going to the mastering studio, without compromising the sonic enhancements the mastering process will bring.

If your budget forces you to bypass the mastering house and go directly to a manufacturer, find out as much as you can about how they plan to prepare your music before transfer. Get test pressings and listen to them carefully against your own masters and against other recordings you may know particularly well. Be especially conscious of level and balance and how easy the music is to digest. And remember, mastering is the icing on the cake, not the meal itself. Even on million-dollar projects, subtle changes work best, as Denny Purcell notes: "If I have to add more than 3 dB of EQ, most of the time clients go back and remix."

Running your mixes through a good mastering house can fix some problems, but the real benefit comes from enhancing the good stuff. If your mixes sound weak, harsh or out of balance, don't expect miracles. Remix.

Scott Hull sums up: "Mastering is like photo retouching. You've set up and taken a great shot. The light and the composition are already there. The retoucher goes in and finds flaws and improves the photo technically, making the package smoother and more commercial."