LESSON 19 | MASTERING |  AUDIO ENGINEERING & MUSIC PRODUCING
Channel: Recording Connection Audio Institute
Date: 26/10/2013

Lesson Nineteen of our audio engineering and music production curriculum deals with mastering: http://www.recordingconnection.com/courses/audio-engineering/audio-lesson-19  In the early days of recording, mastering was a very, very simple process. Basically what you were doing is you were getting the finished product ready for the world. So this had to do with cutting vinyl in the early days. But vinyl had limitations as far as frequency content and things that could be included in an audio signal to kind of get the most out of the vinyl. The bigger the groove, the more the frequency content. And the bigger the groove, the more space it takes up on a record. So if you were doing an LP with multiple tracks, you had to accommodate for that. So you had to shrink things in a way that allowed you to get what you needed out of that vinyl. Now, we've kind of ultimately gone beyond that because we have no such limitations in the digital world. 

Early on, mastering became the process of putting the final polish on the mix. It's too late to make drastic changes, but you can do subtle things that increase the performance of the audio and ultimately, get the audio loud enough to compete with what's going on in the radio. So this chapter is a very basic understanding of the mastering process, because to be honest, a whole curriculum could be written about mastering.  

This is Lesson Nineteen of the Recording Connection Recording Programs.