Yamaha AW4416 Tutorial - Page 28

Tutorial-Mastering Mastering When you think mastering, think "subtle". But just because it's subtle doesn't mean that it can't have a huge impact on the overall sound of a song. Mastering is the process of making final adjustments to the overall sound, usually involving the application of EQ and/or compression. In some instances an engineer might even decide to add a touch of overall reverb. In the context of an album containing several individual songs or compositions, mastering also covers the process of matching levels and sound between songs, and deciding on the amount of space to leave between tracks. For our discussion here we'll concentrate on mastering and "burning" the song to a CD-R disk which can then be played in just about any standard CD player. THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURATE MONITORING One of the most critical factors in successful mastering (and mixing, for that matter) is to have a good monitoring setup. This is also one of the most difficult to achieve simply because it involves not only your amp and speakers, but the room you monitor in and everything in it as well. Quite simply, your mix will sound different on different systems and in different rooms. If the environment you work in tends to be bass deficient, you will probably crank the bass up too high and end up with excessively boomy sound on other systems. If your "studio" is reverberant (we don't recommend mixing or mastering in the bathroom), you won't be able to accurately judge the effect of ambience processing on your mix. What you really need is a mixing and mastering environment that is relatively dry (in the sonic sense, that is) and has a broad, flat frequency response without unnatural dips or peaks. If your studio isn't perfect (and this is the norm for home studios) then experience is the answer. The more you mix, master, and listen to the results on different systems and in different rooms, the more you'll get a feel for how the sound of your studio relates to the real-world "average". Listening to your own work in a variety of environments is a very good idea in any case. Listen on big, expensive hi-fi systems as well as cheap portables. Don't forget car stereos, either. The more you listen, the better your mixes will become. Step 1: Set Up the "Master" EQ and Dynamics It won't always be necessary to use EQ and dynamics during mastering; in fact, we'll use only compression for this example. The dynamics are set using the STEREO channel processor. Press the STEREO channel [SEL] key, then use the MIXER [DYN] key to access the dynamics parameters. The nice thing about this system is that you can hear how your master EQ and/or dynamics settings affect the overall mix immediately. In some cases you might even decide to go back and make changes to the mix because of the way everything sounds "mastered" as opposed to straight, before committing to a specific set of mastering parameters. Generally, though, the better the mix, the less master processing is required. To enable the pre-programmed "mastered" automix: 1. Press the AUTOMATION [AUTOMIX] key and, if necessary, press the [F4] key to select the "Event List" page. 2. Move the cursor to the SCENE/LIB button on the display and press [ENTER] to highlight it. 28 - Tutorial