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Last Updated on August 2, 2020 by Tom S. Ray
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What Audio Mastering Won’t do for Your Music
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I often receive tracks from artists that are not yet ready for audio mastering. While audio mastering will enhance your music and is an important step in the music making process, there are some things it just can’t do.
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Audio mastering won’t fix your vocals. The process operates on the already mixed material where the tracks are bounced into one file and so it can’t separate the vocals.
Audio mastering won’t fix your timing. You have to make sure all your tracks are in time as a mastering engineer won’t be able to fix that for you.
Audio mastering won’t retrieve dynamics from a “squashed” mix. Make sure you leave enough headroom for your mastering engineer and don’t put a limiter on the master channel.
Audio mastering won’t fix poor recorded material or a weak mix. You have to ensure the recording process and the mix itself are well executed.
Audio mastering won’t make an mp3 file sound good. No one can. Never bounce to mp3 as you loose a lot of sonic qualities from the music.
Audio mastering won’t remove noise from your audio. If your music has a really bad noise level in the mix you have to address it within the mix not the mastering process.
If you consider all the above points and make sure you follow the guidance you have much better chances of getting the big, full, deep and crystal clear sound the audio mastering can offer. Just make sure you know what mastering won’t do for you and what you have to do prior to sending your music for mastering.
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Hey I’m Tom, I’m a mastering engineer here at Audio Unity Group. I mostly look after Vinyl production and audio side of things. I hold a bachelor’s degree with honours from Kingston University in London. I love audio and helping others create outstanding-sounding records.
