<story><title>The Dark Art of Mastering Music</title><url>http://pitchfork.com/features/article/9894-the-dark-art-of-mastering-music/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Benjamin_Dobell</author><text>This is a long article that starts off stating that mastering is difficult to explain, and then proceeds to not explain mastering.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re implying that poor mastering was to blame for Metallica&amp;#x27;s album. Weren&amp;#x27;t people complaining it was over-compressed? That&amp;#x27;s mixing &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; mastering!&lt;p&gt;Mastering is a matter of making sure that listening to an album from start to finish sounds consistent. That&amp;#x27;s why songs that go on compilation albums are mastered once on the original album, and again on the compilation - they most certainly aren&amp;#x27;t mixed again.&lt;p&gt;Mastering may involve a small amount of compression across all components of the song (although it really shouldn&amp;#x27;t), but it&amp;#x27;s mostly controlling loudness, and loudness at different parts of the audio spectrum (more low-end, more high-end). Mastering is effectively something you could do yourself with your stereo&amp;#x27;s settings (if you were constantly adjusting the settings through-out the song), mixing is fundamentally different and consists of combining &amp;quot;tracks&amp;quot;; vocals, guitar, harmonies, drums, sound effects, adding samples over drums (i.e. mix in a better sounding drum, or hit there-of, over the drumming recorded for the song).&lt;p&gt;EDIT: For clarity, me stating:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Mastering may involve a small amount of compression across all components of the song (although it really shouldn&amp;#x27;t)&lt;p&gt;is my subjective opinion. Master-bus compression does happen regularly enough &lt;i&gt;during mastering&lt;/i&gt; (in addition to during mixing), but as stated, it is typically only a &lt;i&gt;small amount&lt;/i&gt;, compared to what a Mixing Engineer can get away with on a per &amp;quot;track&amp;quot; basis.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>maldusiecle</author><text>Compression of individual parts happens during mixing, compression of the entire audio track happens during mastering. (Compression of the master bus sometimes also happens during mixing, but mastering engineers prefer not to work with tracks that have already had heavy compression applied to the master bus.)&lt;p&gt;The kind of brickwall limiting Metallica&amp;#x27;s album had, where the volume of the track is maxed out at all times, can only come from compressing the master bus, which is properly a part of mastering, not mixing. (See also: the comically overcompressed mix of Raw Power that resulted when Iggy Pop was allowed to remaster the album himself.)</text></comment>
<story><title>The Dark Art of Mastering Music</title><url>http://pitchfork.com/features/article/9894-the-dark-art-of-mastering-music/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Benjamin_Dobell</author><text>This is a long article that starts off stating that mastering is difficult to explain, and then proceeds to not explain mastering.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re implying that poor mastering was to blame for Metallica&amp;#x27;s album. Weren&amp;#x27;t people complaining it was over-compressed? That&amp;#x27;s mixing &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; mastering!&lt;p&gt;Mastering is a matter of making sure that listening to an album from start to finish sounds consistent. That&amp;#x27;s why songs that go on compilation albums are mastered once on the original album, and again on the compilation - they most certainly aren&amp;#x27;t mixed again.&lt;p&gt;Mastering may involve a small amount of compression across all components of the song (although it really shouldn&amp;#x27;t), but it&amp;#x27;s mostly controlling loudness, and loudness at different parts of the audio spectrum (more low-end, more high-end). Mastering is effectively something you could do yourself with your stereo&amp;#x27;s settings (if you were constantly adjusting the settings through-out the song), mixing is fundamentally different and consists of combining &amp;quot;tracks&amp;quot;; vocals, guitar, harmonies, drums, sound effects, adding samples over drums (i.e. mix in a better sounding drum, or hit there-of, over the drumming recorded for the song).&lt;p&gt;EDIT: For clarity, me stating:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Mastering may involve a small amount of compression across all components of the song (although it really shouldn&amp;#x27;t)&lt;p&gt;is my subjective opinion. Master-bus compression does happen regularly enough &lt;i&gt;during mastering&lt;/i&gt; (in addition to during mixing), but as stated, it is typically only a &lt;i&gt;small amount&lt;/i&gt;, compared to what a Mixing Engineer can get away with on a per &amp;quot;track&amp;quot; basis.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>louthy</author><text>&amp;gt; Weren&amp;#x27;t people complaining it was over-compressed? That&amp;#x27;s mixing not mastering!&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not true.  Mastering is the process of taking the final output of the master bus and processing it to the final release versions (for the various formats).  Depending on where and who does it it can combine many processes: compression, limiting, EQing, stereo widening, bouncing to a tape, etc.  It can be a totally functional exercise as well as a creative one.&lt;p&gt;Something that&amp;#x27;s over-compressed could have had each instrument on each channel over-compressed (if it was mixed on an SSL for example where there&amp;#x27;s a compressor per channel), or it could have had far too aggressive master-bus compression.  So saying it&amp;#x27;s definitely mixing not mastering is a stretch.</text></comment>