The act of mastering is a completely different ballgame than production and mixing. It’s like trying to compare soup and croutons, they go together but they are completely different in so many ways.
The act of mastering is the finalisation of a song. The final steps towards making your tracks sound perfect. They use everything from stereo imagery, to multi-band dynamic compressors, to maximisers, etc, to push the limits of your track as far as possible.
‘The sound of the finished product rests solely with them’ Practical Music Production. (2019). The Mastering Engineer – A Key Role In The Production Of Music. [online] [Accessed 4 mar. 2019].
- Online mastering is quick and easy and will allow you to get a mastered track or sample within minutes, whilst mastering yourself is a skill that is hard to learn, incredibly hard for that fact, and takes hours upon hours to get your perfect final result, even for professionals.
- However, online mastering usually only gives you three options for how you want your track mastered. Low, medium or high intensity, which doesn’t give you much space in terms of choice. Whilst mastering something by hand gives you total control over how the effects work, and how it affects your track. The human ear is a much better tool in music than a computer.
Some online services, such as LANDR, provide other services alongside their monthly subscription plans, such as distribution, or sample banks. These services can sometimes mean, depending on the producer, that the quick mastering service, whether its high quality or not, is worth the money for the extra perks. However you can find these services elsewhere as well, but for the bundle, its great value for money. Especially considering the fact that mastering software can set you back around £600, not including the time it takes to learn.
When mastering a track, you are looking to do 5 things;
- Use equalisation to bring out the quieter parts of the track
- Use compression and limiters to flatten of the waveform as much as possible without distorting the track
- Add texture, stereo-phonically and generally, using stereo imagery and other effects.
- Push the gain of the track as far as possible, using a maximiser.
- Most importantly… DON’T effect the overall original sound of the track too much from the artists original view.
One of the best tools, I believe, for mastering is the Izotope Ozone 8 mastering software. It contains the essentials needed to master a track, including all of the above. In fact, it also has AI software to help guide you in the right direction when mastering, and through my own use of the software, I find that it gains much better results than LANDR, or any other online mastering service for that matter. Especially in terms of reserving the original sound and quality of the track. I personally love this software, my results have been better with this, and although it will set anyone looking to purchase it back around £600, there is a free trial 2 week period in which it works fully, which is plenty of time to master one EP.