Mastering Explained Please

I touched on this today in the stream, and @Mike answered it brilliantly. But what actually things would be considered the last things to ‘sparkle’ up your mix at the mastering stage?

Adobe Audition offers these options for mastering. Here’s how it can sparkle your audio @David:

Equalizer

A final wide notch up to enhance some of the best EQ in your production.

Reverb

You can use it or not on your final mix. The Adobe Audition mastering reverb does not have custom options so best to add reverb before mastering in most cases.

Exciter

My favourite mastering effect. Exciter will sparkle up and slightly distort the high end frequencies.

Widener

Make the stereo image wider. Great if you’re panning around in your audio production!

Loudness Maximizer
A “sausage factory” compressor! Use it with caution. You shouldn’t be fixing dynamics with this (get it right in your original mix) but it can help flatten your waveform further if that’s your desired effect.

Output Gain

Boost the final output volume and you’re done :sunglasses:

hey @Mike thank you, thank you, thank you…I will work with this on Sunday. My studio is being used right now for a pre-record show, but will use your tips on the edit.

Out of interest, are these elements all part of the MRC template?

d

Ian Sheppard is the master of mastering. His short answer is “Mastering is Photoshop for Audio.”

He says: “Decide first what media format you’re mastering for ie CD, DVD, Broadcast Wave, Wave, iTunes, Video, MP3.
Set your headroom, limits accordingly.”

We use Stephen Slate’s Mastering plugin on everything.
It’s heavy on cpu but it gives us consistency across a whole project and takes care of everything.

All is explained here http://themasteringshow.com/episode-1/

Jen

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hey Jen - thanks so much for this link…great and informative listening…x

I’ve recently been experimenting with mastering audio using Izotope Ozone 7. Funnily enough they have a one month flash sale going on right now, where you can get Ozone 7 elements for just 29 USD instead of the usual 129 USD price. Even if it is the less featured elements version, that’s a pretty good deal: Ozone 10—Audio Mastering Software | iZotope

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I’ll take a look - thanks OleHenrik

cheers D