mastering in software

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he evolution of music technology in recent years has seen mastering,

once seemingly the most mysterious of processes for the uninitiated,

become something that almost any producer can do for themselves.

Thanks to powerful computers, advanced applications and plug-ins,

the tools needed are now far more accessible than they used to be.

Plus theres a greater

understanding of what

mastering is and how to go

about it. It does, of course,

remain as much of an art

form as it ever was, and

simply having the tools is

meaningless if you dont

know how to use them or you lack the musical judgement to make the right

creative decisions.In truth, with a little guidance most people can create great-sounding masters,

and the good news is that your DAW provides almost all the tools you need to do

so. There are some specialised suites and plug-ins that will make your life easier

if you have the option of using them, and a decent set of monitors and a

sympathetic listening environment are also crucial to any mastering session,

it ju ittleg i n t o lecancre

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MTFeature Master your music

Mastering is the vital last step in the production process, and with so many softwaresolutions around, its easier than ever to get involved.Hollin Jonesexplains all

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Mastering in softwareFeatureMT


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regardless of whats going on inside the computer.

But the great part for producers of any level is that

mastering in software is now accessible to all.

What were going to do is take you through the

process, from mixdown to selling your music online,and show you the key stages youll need to go

through. As with any creative process theres the

caveat that every piece of music is different and

needs to be mastered according to its own unique

characteristics, but underlying this is a common set

of techniques that will help you get a great, radio-

ready sound.

Whatis as ring?Before talking about how to master audio its

important to understand what the term actually

means. When you work on a track you are

concentrating on recording, editing, programming

and arranging it, and when you come to mix itwhats important is the relative balance of all the

different elements. So youre EQing the guitars a

little here, automating the vocal a little there and

adding reverb so that everything blends together,

and so on. What youre not doing at any of these

stages is worrying very much about the gain and

power of the track as a whole. Of course you want it

to be loud enough, but during mixing your only real

concern as far as the master fader goes is that

nothing is clipping or peaking and nor is the master

level too quiet.

The goal of mixing is to get the perfect blend of

sounds, and the final step of the production process

is mastering. Here you take your mixed-down stereofile (or possibly some stems, though this is a little

more complex) and process it as a whole using

specific kinds of effects to try and achieve a solid,

MTTechnology Who needs record labels?

Blue Cat Audio makes someexcellent analysis and meteringplug-ins that provide anamazingly detailed view ofwhats really going on inside youraudio signal.

Its never been easier to sell your own music online, with more

services than ever enabling you to have a presence on major digital

music stores such as iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and others. As well as

getting your music into these

stores they also usually provide a

centralised hub for managing

earnings from your music anddownloading sales reports, so,

for example, you can see which

stores are performing the best

and in which regions of the world

youre selling the most.

Although services like these

will rarely screen music based on

genre (unless its a very genre-

specific service, of course), there

are audio quality barriers to

entry. These arent hugely strict

(any halfway decent production

ought to be sufficient), but

producing a good master will

help a lot with the saleability of

your music. Digital distribution

services are likely to reject

anything thats ridiculously quiet, or that has digital clipping

anywhere in it.

There are a fair few of these services around and most charge a

one-time fee for uploading your

music. Some charge an ongoing

admin fee, so look for one that

doesnt unless youre sure you will beearning a decent amount from sales.

Mondotunes.com is pretty good

and only charges once, and you

should also look at CD Baby, Ditto

Music, and ReverbNation. Of course

you can sell music yourself using the

excellent Bandcamp.com, which has

become the go-to self-publishing

platform for musicians, and also

showcase your stuff on SoundCloud.

Theres never been a better time to

sell your own music online, so its

vital to get the best-sounding results

in order to maximise sales potential.

Blue Cat Audio makes some

MondoTunes is one of the better digitaldistribution services as it only has a one-offinitial charge.

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MTFeature Mastering in software

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powerful gain level and an EQ curve that perfectly

sweetens the signal. The aim of mastering is to make

the track sound as good as it possibly can on all the

playback devices on which it will be listened to.

As you can imagine this is something of a tall

order since there are many possible ways to listen to

music: from a car radio and phone earbuds, to

high-end hi-fi systems and everything in-between.

Nevertheless, if you get your master right you will

achieve this seemingly impossible task. Mastering is

the very last step before your music is released to the

world, which is why its so vital to get it right.

S r tht e ix

A lot of producers, even some at the top of the

industry, now work almost entirely in-the-box, which

means that music is started, worked on and finished

without ever leaving the computer. This has a

number of benefits, not least that it greatly reduces

the amount of physical equipment you need to do

your job. For those of us working in home or project

studios its very useful to be able to do everything on

one setup.

All major DAWs, such as Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools

and Reason, now make mixing in-the-box a powerful

experience. Although its possible to layer up lots of

plug-ins on modern systems, its strongly advisable

to separate the mixing and mastering processes

because they have two distinct and different aims.

Mixing is about balancing the elements of a track,

and mastering is about affecting the overall soundonce the mix is done. You will probably spend a fair

amount of time on your mix, and possibly go slightly

mad from listening to the same track hundreds of

times, so its a very good idea to leave a little space

between the two processes. Have at least a night off,

preferably a couple of days, before you come back

and start mastering. Its also a good idea to master

tracks in the same sessions if they are destined to

end up on the same album so theres an overall

coherence to the sound.

What you should end up with after a mix session

is a track or a bunch of tracks that sound well

balanced and hang together nicely. You might have

also already used a little master buss compression

during mixdown, which is a good trick to give a kind

of audio glue to your mixes and magically bind

everything together.

When you export a mixdown you will have a few

options. The most common technique is to export a

stereo audio file at the same quality as the sessions,

which might typically be 24- or 32-bit, and any

sample rate from 44.1, 48 or even 96kHz. Dont start

reducing quality during mixdown, as its much better

to keep everything at maximum and compress web

versions and so on much further down the line.

Some producers will mix down a collection of

stems for mastering and this is technically fairly easy

IK Multimedias T-RackS is a self-contained mastering suite whosemodules also work as plug-ins. It has a nifty loudness suggestionfeature so you can master appropriately for a specific genre.

Tech Terms

A/BINGThe process of temporarilymuting processing to hearthe original version of thesignal and judge how you arechanging it. Also applies tocomparing your work-in-progress with commerciallymastered material to helpdecide if youre heading inthe right direction.

STEMSGroups of tracks that bear

some relation to each other,eg, drums, guitars or vocals.Stem mastering enables youto alter the balance of theseelements during mastering,which isnt otherwisepossible if you have a stereofile to work with.

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MTStep-by-Step Mastering a track using Ozone

01 Load up your stereo mix in a DAW andcreate an instance of Ozone. Start witha preset that sounds close enough to whatyou want, and then make the necessarytweaks. You can cycle through presets whileauditioning the track, and dont be afraid totry one or two whose names might notautomatically match your style of music.

02 Go through each processing stage andactivate the ones you want to use, settingparameters as you go. Here we have dialled insome EQ to pull specific sounds up in the mix alittle. Using a wide Q value for an EQ pointcreates a broader EQ curve and a narrow Qvalue means that only a very precise frequencyis affected.

03The Maximizer section is where thelimiting takes place, and here youshould set your output level to 0dB or -0.1dB.Then use the Threshold and Margin sliders todrive the input level up against the limit tosqueeze more gain out of the track. Use yourjudgment and leave some dynamic range sothe track isnt being squeezed too hard.


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to do by using mixer grouping and batch exporting

from a DAW.

Stems are groups of tracks that all have a common

theme as defined by the producer, so for example you

might export drum stems, guitar stems and vocal

stems for mastering. The idea is that this affords you

more flexibility during mastering because you are

able to vary the levels of the different stems (which

you cant do using a stereo file of the whole track),

effectively tweaking the mix even after mixdown.

Its an interesting approach, although it does add

an extra layer of complexity to the mastering stage. If

youre fiddling around by altering stem levels you

might get bogged down in changing the mix instead

of focusing on the mastering processing. Technically

its not so different from stereo mastering, its just

that you load up four or five synchronised audio

tracks and route them all through master effects

instead of just the one. Potential problems can arise

from giving yourself too many options, so consider

whether you trust yourself enough to get the mix

right and use a stereo file, which is usually simpler.

Of course if you are mastering material that has been

mixed by someone else, getting stems will give you

more flexibility in the event of a poor mix.

tart ng heprocessYou can master in various different kinds of software

since its really just a case of loading up an audio file

Using master buss compression,such as here in Reason 7, canhelp to glue a mix together andmean that less compression isrequired at the mastering stage.

MTTechnology On the move? You can still master!

Mastering hasnt just made the leap from professional to home

studios, its now even possible on iOS too. There have been advanced

DAW apps on iOS for a couple of years and its possible to use insert

effects in those, just as on your own desktop, to perform mastering

tasks. Cubasis, Auria,

GarageBand, NanoStudio and FL

Studio Mobile HD are just some of

the apps that will enable you to

do this. With advanced

technologies being developed for

iOS all the time, things such as

Audiobus and Inter-App Audio

now enable you to stream audio

between apps without having to

export it from one to the other.

Perhaps the most interesting

development has been the

release of a couple of dedicatediOS mastering apps. Positive Grid

produces Final Touch (10.49), an

excellent iPad-based mastering

solution with a slick interface

that has a maximiser, pre- and

post-EQs, four-band dynamics,

stereo imaging, reverb and dither, and is perfectly optimised for the

touch interface. Far more advanced than you might expect, it has

detailed controls for every aspect of the mastering process as well

as great metering and comprehensive import and export options for

putting music directly online.

Alternatively, an app called Audio

Mastering, also for iPad and priced at

8.99, has a more scientific interface

but is nonetheless very powerful. It

has a parametric EQ, stereo imaging,

multiband compressor, reverb, stereo

imaging, maximizer, spectral analyser

and more, and has basic and

advanced control modes.

Just as with your computer you

will want to use a proper audio

interface and serious monitoring in

order to get the best possible results,but its interesting to know that you

can now master on iPad using very

similar tools to those that you would

use in your studio.

a ri salso i i o W ycreating a ioa inse f s

and running it through some effects. As you might

imagine, though, some apps are better than others. A

simple wave editor that can load plug-ins will do in

a pinch, but a pro audio wave editor is preferable

because it will usually have a more efficient way ofhandling plug-ins, looping, metering and the like.

Steinbergs WaveLab for Mac and PC is designed

specifically for mastering, and Sonys Sound Forge is

another excellent choice both have some great

built-in processing and editing tools. Sound Forge is

now available for Mac too, though it is rather

different to its PC sibling.

Mastering is also possible using your DAW by

simply creating a single audio track and then using

insert effects on that channel or the master buss to

process the mixdown that you import. Any major

Final Touch is a dedicated and powerfulmastering app for iOS.




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DAW will enable this, and as youre not going to be

using any MIDI or arrangement tools the only really

important thing to do before you start is make sure

the project settings match those of the audio you are

importing so that no unexpected format conversiontakes place. Although the vast majority of mastering

effects come in plug-in format there are some

dedicated mastering apps as well, probably the most

complete of which is IK Multimedias T-RackS CS,

which has some excellent tools and is a staple of

many peoples mastering setups.

Its quite possible to master using the bundled

plug-ins that come with your DAW, though these will

of course vary in quality depending on how high-end

the software is. The core effects you will need are

compression, EQ, limiting and ideally some stereo-

widening and metering tools as well. The major DAWs

such as Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools and the like come

with most of these. Others can be added for free, but

if you are doing serious mastering its worth looking

at some more heavyweight plug-ins. Suites such as

iZotopes Ozone or some of Waves plug-ins are great,

and not just for mastering but for general tracking

and mixing tasks as well.

S eeze the ounTheres no strictly defined order in which to start

processing your master but many producers like to

begin with compression. If you have applied master

buss compression during mixdown you may want to

go a little easier during mastering so as not to

over-compress or pump the sound and risk sucking

the musicality out of it. Used carefully, compression

is an excellent way of pulling together the louder

and quieter parts of the signal to create a more even

feel, ensuring that quiet bits arent inaudible and the

loud bits dont deafen you. Listen to any track where

a singer practically whispers one line then screams

the next and yet both seem weirdly about the same

volume: thats compression doing its thing.

With mastering you want the compression to glue

the whole signal together and smooth out the peaks

r el o press o c e - y rtracksa r l

i cr a p c ived n

FabFilters Pro-L is a greatlimiting plug-in that can be usedto squeeze the maximumamount of power out of yourtracks without crushing them.

Tech Terms

DITHERINGChanging the bit depth ofaudio, say when mixing downfrom 32-bit to 16-bit, canintroduce distortion into thesignal. Dithering adds noise

thats more or less inaudibleto our ears in an attempt tominimise this.

GLASS MASTERAn increasingly outdatedconcept, the glass master isthe master copy of a digitalalbum that is used to press alarge number of CDs from.Your pristine, full-qualitydigital files that result frommastering fulfil much thesame role.

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and troughs but without sounding artificial. As

such its usually better to apply a relatively gentle

amount with a low-ish ratio and an attack time thats

not too quick. When you apply a compressor across

the whole signal it has to deal with everything fromthe bass to the crash cymbals, so using a decent

quality model is preferable.

Singleband compression is common but you can

also use multiband compression if you feel confident

enough. Multiband compressors enable you to set the

crossover points and compression levels for several

frequency bands independently, so you can effectively

pull different bands up or down selectively. Though

different from EQ this can be a very useful trick

because it helps you to deal more effectively with

rogue groups of sounds. For example, if the bass is

too loud in the mix, using EQ to take it down might

lessen the power and impact of the track, but using

multiband compression to control it serves to level it

off rather than knocking it out and should also help itto blend with any nearby frequencies.

Be om heeq lizerWith your audio glued together by compression its

time to use EQ to sweeten and balance the sound.

You will invariably find that a little EQ during

mastering can really help, even for a track that has

been mixed well. A parametric EQ is a good choice as

it provides a nice visual representation of the EQ

curve and will have multiple points and Q controls.

The aim of mastering EQ is to pick out certain

elements of a track and then either back them off or,

more usually, enhance them by pulling their

frequency up a little. The Q settings of a parametric

equalizer are particularly useful here because they

control the width of the area around the EQ point

and thus the amount of frequency to either side that

is affected.

So to perform a broad boost to the lower mids,

for example, you might use a wide Q value and a

gentle rise in the gain. To isolate a single sound such

as a guitar, use a narrow Q value and pull the soundup or down, leaving similar sounds to either side

relatively untouched.

As good as your mixdown is you will always find

small improvements that can be made at this stage,

especially when the other mastering effects have

changed the character of the sound in their own

ways. Because you are applying an EQ curve across

the whole track you can control the feel of the

soundstage much more easily. There are some

commonly used techniques here in addition to

sweetening the sound, such as performing a very low

bass roll-off to deal with any sub sounds, and either

adding or cutting very high frequencies to add

sparkle or remove hiss.

Takei to helimitThe third core process in mastering is limiting,

which means driving the input level of the signal

while ensuring it doesnt exceed a predetermined

level. The goal here is to squeeze as much gain and

power out of the signal as is appropriate but without

causing it to clip and without crushing it so it

becomes dull and lifeless. Limiting comes at the end

of the processing chain because anything placed

after it could interfere with its operation by

negatively affecting the signal.

At their simplest, limiters just have input andoutput gain controls. You need to set the output level

to 0dB or just below, say -0.1dB, in order to ensure

that the signal will not exceed this level and thus not

clip. Use the input gain level control to drive the

A good parametric EQ will serveyou well for mastering. If yourbudget stretches far enoughthen Steinbergs Portico 5033 EQis an excellent choice.

DAWs on the iPad such as Auria have advanced insert effects sectionsthat you can use for mastering on the move.

e r sion,

t

Tech Terms

MULTIBANDAny processing that worksacross several frequencybands, usually withadjustable crossover points.Compression and EQ are themost common multibandtypes and are both usedextensively in mastering.

MASTER BUSSThe stereo output of yourDAW through which the wholesignal passes. During themastering process this is

where you would normallyplace the effects, althoughthey can also be used asinserts on your single audiotrack if you are only workingwith one track at a timeinstead of stem mastering.




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signal until you get a solid and consistent level,

which means your level meters are spending a lot of

time up near 0dB.

The aim is to bolster and boost the sounds gain,

and careful limiting is the reason so manycommercial tracks sound much louder than those

produced in home studios. Its also the culprit behind

the loudness wars where commercial studios have

tended to limit harder and harder, a phenomenon that

reached its nadir with MetallicasDeath Magnetic, an

album so tiring on the ears that some listeners

actually sent it back.

Its quite possible to over-limit and crush your

signal, either by running the output level over 0dB or

more likely by driving the input gain too hard. If your

level meters are consistently hammering up against

the zero mark, step back and listen to whether your

track is in fact being squeezed too hard. You dont

want to suck all the dynamic range out of it because

this kills its musicality the levels should have alittle movement left in them.

Its generally accepted now that the loudness wars

went too far; its not necessary to crush your tracks

to death, just use some judgement in balancing a

c aa instr i i

d

MTTechnology To really understand your masters, you need to check the meter

When mixing and mastering you spend a lot of time looking at the

master level meters in your DAW or on your mixing desk. This is

indeed where you can see if your signal is too loud or quiet, but it

offers only one kind of visual feedback.

To fully understand whats going on you will need to use some

more advanced metering tools. These can be applied as inserts

across your master buss and dont process or change the sound,

they simply analyse it. Your DAW may come with an analysis

plug-in or two but there are excellent third-party models

available too from the likes of Blue Cat Audios Analysis Pack and

Waves Dorrough Meter Collection and PAZ Analyzer.

What you gain by using proper audio analysis tools is a better

insight into the way the frequencies in your master are really

behaving. When you listen to sound through loudspeakers it is

being affected by all kinds of factors including the character of

those speakers, their placement and proximity to walls, and your

position relative to them. For example, bass can sound very

different depending on how you stand in relation to the speakers.By analysing the sound before it leaves the computer, plug-ins

can show you whats truly happening across the frequency

spectrum with phase issues and so on, and enable you to correct

these during mastering.

Tech Terms

IN THE BOXAny production that takesplace entirely inside thecomputer. Increasinglypopular as a standardworking method, someproducers start, work onand finish off whole trackswithout ever leaving theirdigital environment.

MASTERING SUITEA collection of plug-ins orprocessing modules thatcollectively make up amastering chain. Typicallycomprising EQ, compressionand limiting they may alsohave stereo widening andmastering reverb too.

The modules in T-RackS CS also work individually as well as in a suite,and can be loaded into any DAW.

strong level against retaining the right amount of

dynamic range.

Best f the rest

As well as the processors mentioned above you mayalso want to use stereo widening, and some more

advanced metering can also help. Stereo widening

should be used sparingly because it can quickly start

to really mess with the soundstage if you push it too

far, seriously altering the mix. Its good to use a

stereo widener with low and high controls and a

configurable crossover point so you can keep the low

end tight and centred while adding a little width to

the top end.

Regularly A/Bing your master both with its dry,

unprocessed signal and with commercially mastered

songs in a similar style can be invaluable in helping

keep you on the right track and getting the best end

results. Youll also need a decent set of monitors

because you need as accurate a picture as possible of

how your master is shaping up. And preferably get

yourself kitted out with a really good set of

headphones, since many of your listeners will

experience your music this way.

When your master is done you can export it out to

a stereo file and then top and tail it in a wave editor

to deal with any errant reverb tails or clicks. Before

signing off on a master its vital to listen back to it on

as many systems as you can in case you find that for

some reason the bass disappears on an iPhone, or the

cymbals are way too loud on a car stereo. Stuff like

this does happen and its well worth going back andrefining the master to account for it.

With a little practice and the right set of tools you

can use mastering to really enhance the finished

sound of your tracks. MT

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