Every major record label recording project goes through the process of              mastering. Even with the best recording and the most expensive studios, mastering adds a  dimension of sound quality that is essential for commercial success.

Mastering is a second opinion. It is bringing your record to someone you trust who can listen to it with fresh ears. Many recording engineers develop long-standing relationships with their clients who they know they can count on to maximize the potential of their recordings.

Mastering is the difference between ending up with something that sounds good but is ultimately flawed in some way(too muffled, to bright, too boomy, too grainy, too splashing etc.) and something that sounds thorough professional(effortless, spacious, balanced, detailed, powerful).

First, you will want a reference quality D/A converter as well as serious de-jittering(please see below for glossary) tools so that you can compare different digital sources as accurately as possible.

• Build an acoustically correct listening room. It should be neither too live nor too dead. It should sound balanced across the frequency spectrum with no nodes or dead spots.
• Buy an accurate full range set of monitoring speakers. You are looking for speakers that can reproduce sub-bass without a subwoofer, are balanced and smooth throughout the frequency spectrum and are articulate and punchy with excellent stereo imaging.
• Match the speakers with a precision high quality power amplifier. Don't forget to use audiophile grade speaker cable.
• Hire an acoustics specialist to come in and tune your room.
• You'll need a good monitoring controllers(repamplifier or mixer). It's important to able to compare different sources at different volume levels without coloring the sound in any way.
• Now you need to think about getting some of the tools of the trade. A good computer mastering workstation is essential. SADiE and Sonic Solutions are the industry standards( and with good reason). You will also need mastering quality EQ's, limiters, compressors, enhancers and so forth.
• Spend some time becoming familiar with the speakers, the room and the gear. You want to be able to know what each piece's strengths and limitations are so that you can instinctively reach for the right processor when you want to achieve a certain sonic effect. Take your time, spend months or even years to fine tune your skills in this area. Practice with different kinds of material and different styles of music. Try to get recordings from talented engineers, artists and producers. Work on their material and get their feedback. This will be invaluable in honing your skills. Try to get a few commercial successes under your belt during this phase.
• Now you are qualified to master your own album.
• However, mastering your own album may not be a very good idea anyway since one of the main purposes of mastering is to get a final objective opinion on your recording project.
• A mastering engineer hearing your project for the first time, hears it with the same fresh ears that your audience will have when they first hear your recording. It is with this insight that the mastering engineer makes enhancements and addresses deficiencies in the sound.
• It is likely that you  have to spent too long writing, recording, mixing and producing your album to be truly objective about it. Under the circumstances, it might be wise to pass your album along t another qualified mastering engineer for mastering.

Here are some suggestions on how to get the best results out of the mastering process:

• When you send in your master recording for mastering, provide a track sheet listing the artist name, project titles as well as the start times,  end times and duration of each song. Also jot down any instructions you may have for the mastering engineer.
• If you are mixing down to DAT, record all your DATs @ 44.1 kHz. Record one to two minutes of silence at the beginning of each tape. Make sure that the DAT has A-time(absolute time) throughout and Start IDs at the beginning of each track.
• Leave 1-2 dB of headroom on your DAT. Overs are difficult and time-consuming to fix and the meters on many DAT machines are imprecise. The headroom will be made up transparently on the final master.
• When mixing, use a quality commercial recording in a similar style as a reference. This will enable you to  keep perspective and achieve greater tonal balance & clarity in your mix.
• Don't risk doing manual fades at mixdown. Good fades are quick and easy to do during mastering.
• Once your mix is in the digital domain(i.e. on DAT) keep it there. Further D/A and A/D conversions will  adversely affect the clarity and quality of your sound.
• Do not EQ, compress or otherwise process your stereo mix. This type of processing is best done at the  mastering stage. If you do process your mix,  send copies of unprocessed versions  to the  mastering lab so that the engineer can go back to them if necessary.
• If you are using a digital editor to compile your project, use it just for that. Don't use it for adjusting volume levels, processing, doing fades, normalizing or dithering. Every time you process and then return to 16 bit audio you will get increased graininess, loss of resolution and digital coldness. The only way to get around  this is to do all the digital processing in one step at a minimum of 24-bit signal resolution.
• If you haven't followed all of these guidelines, don't worry. There are ways to fix almost any kind of audio problem. That's what mastering is all about- making your recording sound as best as possible...

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