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If you think about mastering in the sense of how it would apply to a whole album then it’s all about making the volumes and tone of each track on the album more consistent. Once everyone has finished mixing the individual track and they are happy that the levels for the individual components in the track are correct then you have moved from mixing to mastering.
The 3 keys of mastering

1. Compression – Bring out the zing in the track
2. EQ – Make sure that zing works on your £2000 system and your grannies stereo without causing damage to either.
3. Normalising – Get it as loud as a CD you buy.

The 3 golden rules of mastering

Back up – Back up – Back up

I can’t stress this enough, before you even think about starting your project backup the original. It is almost guaranteed that you will have to go back to it one day.

What you need to master

1. A good set of ears. If you don’t have these then get it done professionally.
2. A good wave editor to do all your mastering on. There are lots out there like Sound Forge, Cool Edit and Gold Wave. Most of these products now come with the VST plug-ins that you will require but if not there are quite a lot of good free ones available on the net.
3. Something to listen on. I have a good set of headphones, a cheaper set that has a mono option, computer speakers, a Technics stereo and a car system. Make sure that it sounds good on them all. The mono option is handy to let you know how the sound will work on mono systems. Does the bass disappear?

Lets get going

Don’t come at your mastering project after a good night out on the tiles, you need to be fresh and so do your ears. Listening to a couple of commercial tracks, that are similar to the one you are working on, beforehand will get your ears ready to hear the subtle changes that you may need to make. Remember and take regular breaks so that your ears stay fresh, your not going to achieve this process in one session so take your time. Throughout the development of the master listen to it on as many different systems as you can manage. This will make sure that what you are doing is going to work throughout the broad spectrum of devices that it could possibly be played on. Start with the track that you would like to be track one on your album. If you get this one right and the use this as a template for the rest of your album then it’s going to sound more professional.

Create a folder for your track with two sub folders called Pre and Master. Save your original mix in the Pre and don’t save to it again.

Load your wav file in your editor. Use a noise reduction plug-in and use a section of silence as a noise print to remove background noise across the whole track but be careful that you don’t go too heavy on this as it may remove a bit more than you bargained for resulting in a dullness. Save your result as ‘Master-Title01.wav’ in your master’s folder. Now run the track through a multi band compressor to tighten up the mix again. Save it as ‘Master-Title02.wav’ in your master’s folder. EQ the track until it sounds comparable with the commercial tracks you were listening to before. Again save it as ‘Master3-Title03.wav’ in your master’s folder. If any of these steps go wrong you know you can always go back a step without having to start from scratch again. The final step will be to maximise or normalise your track so that your loudest sections all sits nicely at 0db. Save this as ‘Master-Title04.wav’.

Compare your Pre wav with Master4 and the commercial tracks that you listened to at the start of the project. Does it sound better than it did? Does it sound as good as the commercial track? If you’re not happy go back and adjust and try again. Save your copies with letters after them i.e. ‘Master-Title03b.wav’, ‘Master-Title04d.wav’ as you may find that your first attempt actually was the best. If this is track one on your album then instead of using commercial tracks as your sounding block for future tracks use this track instead. Try and get them in a similar style to your first and the whole album should sound like it was recorded in one session and has some cohesion about it.

Remember, keep taking breaks and keep backing up and you can’t go far wrong.