5 Things You Need to Know About Mastering Your Music
By Michael Romanowski

The mastering engineer is the last step of the artistic phase, and the first step of the manufacturing phase. It’s the final opportunity to listen, polish, and make a change in the sonic presentation. It is also the first step of the manufacturing phase, because it prepares the master in the way that best suits the needs of the manufacturer.

The goal is to listen to the broad picture; the actual content is immaterial. The mastering engineer is paying attention to EQ presentation, to level presentation, to dynamics presentation. It’s taking a collection of songs, and creating a flowing body of work.

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Thanks to the great folks at Universal Audio for posting this set of things to keep in mind when preparing for the mastering stage of record production. Make sure and look at the archives of their webzine. There is a lot of great information there.

http://www.uaudio.com/webzine/2009/december/basics.html

Here are a few photos of the studio.

(Please click on any image to see a larger view.)

ATRS

Lathe 1

Lathe 2

Congratulations on the great review of the Echo Falls cd in the SF Chronicle this weekend!
And a really great cover.

Thank you Pro Sound Web for a very nice piece in today’s news.