Audio Mastering - Essential Practices

by Jonathan Wyner

(Berklee Guide). Improve the sound of your recordings. Mastering is the art of optimizing the sound of a recording, finding the ideal levels and tonal quality, and addressing all the details necessary to produce a professional quality distribution-ready master. This book discusses the essential tools and concepts of audio mastering. It will provide you with a foundational technique for working in commercial and home/project studio environments. Technical discussions address gear, studio setup, methodologies, goals, and other considerations for making tracks sound their best, individually and in relationship to other tracks. The accompanying audio supports two detailed case studies where readers can follow an engineer's manipulations step-by-step through real-world mastering processes. This second edition includes updated material on loudness and level, and on AI and its place in mastering. You will learn * Use the tools, techniques, and setup of a mastering studio * Assess and improve sound quality by using meters, EQ, compression, limiting, and other sound processing tools * Understand the goals of mastering, and how the engineer's toolset is used to achieve them * Produce masters customized for their target media, whether for digital downloads, CD, vinyl, or other formats * Assess recordings to determine how to improve their sound

Genres: Music

Kindle Edition

First published May 1, 2013

Reviews

[Ro Arce · Rating 3 out of 5]

So many things have changed since 2013. It needs a 2nd Edition.

[Rodrigo Gonçalves · Rating 1 out of 5]

Most interesting part of the book, a walk-through of the mastering process, refers audio tracks from an included CD…but this is 2025: CD players are not common anymore!!

The publisher or the author should make the audio content available online. Would be beneficial to everyone…