Q. What is mastering?

Mastering is the process of taking the final stereo mixes produced by a recording studio, and creating an album (or EP or demo) master ready for duplication. It is the final creative stage in the music recording process.

During this process, extra sound processing is usually applied in order to get the sound just right, and to fix any problems from the recording stage.

Q. Why should I have my material professionally mastered?

Put simply, so that it sounds as good as possible.

Professional mastering engineers have years or decades of experience. They have mastered hundreds, perhaps thousands, of projects. They work in good sounding rooms with good sounding equipment. They know exactly what to do to make your music sound better.

It's not just a case of making your tracks loud before pressing copies. It's a process that gets the best possible sound out of your music.

Q. Can I hear demos of Hafod's work?

Yes. Click on the Samples link at the top of this page.

Q. What exactly should I bring to the mastering session?

Please bring WAV or AIF sound files at 24 bit resolution. Leave them at the sampling frequency that the projet was recorded at, be that 44.1, 48 or 96kHz.

You should export your finished mixes to stereo interleaved sound files, straight off the mix bus.

Remove any limiters or mastering processors from the mix bus.
Please don't normalize, finalise or maximise.
Please don't apply any other overall processing to the entire mix as this is best left to the mastering stage.

If you're not preparing the files yourself, please pass this information to the engineer that is.

Q. Why shouldn't I use a Finaliser before sending the tracks to be mastered?

A Finaliser will apply multi-band compression and limiting to your track. It automatically applies algorithms that can change the sound of your music significantly.

We much prefer to use our ears to decide what needs doing to your music, and to use the best equipment in the best listening environment to do it.

Q. How much will it cost?

The cost will vary, depending on a number of factors. Please call us on 01446 775512 and we will always endeavour to give you a quote that fits your budget.

Q. How long will it take for my music to be mastered?

An album will take a day, and EP half a day, and one track takes between an hour and an hour and a half. We will aim to get your project turned around within a week of taking your enquiry.

Q. What do I do if I'm not happy with how it sounds?

We encourage you to attend the session so that we can make sure you're happy with the sound on the day. In the unlikely event that you're not happy having taken the project home, please get in touch and we'll re-work the songs until they're right.

Q. Can I attend the mastering session?

Please do attend the session if you can. It's more fun that way, and you'll have the opportunity to give your input during the mastering session.

All About Mastering

Mastering is the final creative stage of the music production process.
It is the art of crafting a collection of tracks into an album, a CD production master, a vinyl lacquer, or a finished demo. CD Mastering begins with the final mixes from the recording stage, and ends with a CD Production Master tape, disc or file that is sent to the pressing plant.

As mastering engineers we bring specialist skills and equipment to this final stage.

Fresh ears can give a good perspective of an entire project, when everybody else is so focused in on the detail that they have lost sight of the overall context.

The Listening Environment

The first thing a mastering engineer needs is a great sounding room.

In that room he will put some very good speakers.

Acoustic treatment and high-quality monitoring are crucial to a good mastering suite. With a balanced, accurate listening environment, it is possible to hear exactly how a recording sounds, and make judgments based on those observations. Mastering engineers probably spend more time, energy, money, sweat and tears on acoustics and monitoring than on any other aspect of a mastering facility.

D to A & A to D converters

Most high-end mastering engineers like to use good analogue equipment for a lot of the sound processing that they do. High caliber Analogue to Digital and Digital to Analogue converters are therefore essential to ensure that the conversion between the analogue and digital domains is as accurate and real as possible. Listening tests prove time and again that there can be a huge difference in quality between different converters, and so as mastering engineers we choose our converters very carefully and select only the best.

Compression

Applying compression reduces the dynamic range of the signal being processed.
This involves making louder sounds quieter, and conversely, once you have applied a make-up gain, making quieter sounds louder.

Applying compression to an entire mix is very different to compressing individual instruments, as you might during the recording process. When mixing, for example, you might compress a lead vocal heavily to make sure that it is at a constant level and always cuts through the mix. During the mastering process, however, we are applying a compressor to the whole mix: some sounds will be triggering the compressor, but all sounds will be affected by it.

Used clumsily, compression can flatten, distort, muddy and strangle your music.
Used judiciously, compression can add punch, clarity, drive and feeling to your music.

Equalisation

Usually called EQ, equalisation applies gain to a certain frequency while leaving others unchanged.
We use EQs to change the spectral balance of the music, in other words, to boost or cut various low, mid and high frequency ranges.

This can be used for a number of effects:
To compensate for anomalies in the listening environment it was mixed in.
To bring clarity to vocals, guitars, snare, horns and other mid-range instruments.
To clear up a muddy bass, to add punch to a kick drum, to sparkle the cymbals.
To make all the tracks in a project sound balanced next to each other.

Once again, EQ used badly can destroy, EQ used judiciously can transform.

Level control

Leveling is one of the most powerful and often overlooked tools in a mastering engineer’s arsenal.

Setting the relative levels or volumes of each track is arguably the mastering engineer’s most important job. An album must have a level, or volume, balance – with quieter songs sitting naturally alongside louder songs. An album should have dynamics too. An album should play through sounding even, without the need to adjust the volume.

The mastering engineer’s ears must be the final judge of the loudness of a track.
We will use different meters for reference, all with different meter ballistics and meter rules.
All these will help, but the final judgment must be that of our ears.
Never believe a digital tool that claims to ‘normalise’ tracks to the same level. Trust only your ears.

Limiting

A limiter is used to reduce the level of the highest peaks in an audio signal.

We use limiters to raise the perceived level of sound without creating over levels.
Once we have balanced the relative levels of your tracks, we will use a limiter to raise the loudness of the music to the optimum overall level.
Once again, delicacy is required to achieve the required level without causing distortion.
See the note ‘On the Loudness Wars’ for further discussion of levels and limiting.

PQing

This process is where the track start and end times are set for a CD Master.
A CD player uses this information to skip to the start of any track.
These start and end ‘indexes’ are called PQ points.
Often, these marks are obvious: when there is silence between tracks, there is a distinct start and end time for each track. In this example, PQ points can often be placed automatically.
Sometimes there are no gaps in the audio on an album, for example, a live album will have applause and audience noise; a concept album may have additional ambient material between tracks.
In these cases, PQ points must be set at the most natural place for a track to start.
In these cases also, the end point of one track will be the same as the start point for the next track.

Making the master

Once the album is mastered, compiled and PQd, we will create a CD Master (called a PMCD - a Pre Master Compact Disc) for you to give to whoever will be replicating your CD. Please leave the CD Master untouched in its box to make sure it doesn't get scratched or marked, which can affect the quality of your finished CDs.

We will also give you a listening copy on CD for you to play on various sound systems to get a feel for the finished product, to run copies from, and to rip to mp3.

On the Loudness Wars

To keep up with demand for CDs to be louder, louder, and louder again, mastering engineers have been relying more and more on compressors and limiters to coax the loudest levels out of a given format. In the days of vinyl cutting, the pressure was to get the loudest ‘cut’ onto the vinyl master. These days, the same competition for loudness is happening to the CD format.

Any digital format has a finite limit to the loudness of a signal recorded onto it, defined by the number of bits - in the case of a CD, 16 bits per word. In order to make a CD sound louder, the music must be pushed closer and closer to that maximum level, using compressors and limiters. Before compression or limiting, a piece of music may have dynamics – quiet parts, medium parts, loud parts and very loud parts. The louder you want a CD to be, the more you must take away from those dynamics. What is often left at the end of this process is all the elements of the music forced to be as loud as is possible. Whilst this can make a track sound punchy, hard and powerful, it can also make the music fatiguing to the human ear, which misses the variety of dynamics.

Of course, if loudness is the most important factor to you, a good mastering engineer will use all the tricks he knows to put the maximum boost into your music. Please consider, however, the advantages of leaving some dynamic range in your finished CDs. Your music will sound more natural, more expressive and more real.