Yamaha AW4416 User Manual download pdf (Page 28)

Tutorial—Mastering

28 — Tutorial

Mastering

When you think mastering, think “subtle”. But just because it’s subtle doesn’t

mean that it can’t have a huge impact on the overall sound of a song. Mastering is

the process of making ﬁnal adjustments to the overall sound, usually involving

the application of EQ and/or compression. In some instances an engineer might

even decide to add a touch of overall reverb. In the context of an album contain-

ing several individual songs or compositions, mastering also covers the process of

matching levels and sound between songs, and deciding on the amount of space

to leave between tracks. For our discussion here we’ll concentrate on mastering

and “burning” the song to a CD-R disk which can then be played in just about

any standard CD player.

Step 1: Set Up the “Master” EQ and Dynamics

It won’t always be necessary to use EQ and dynamics during mastering; in fact,

we’ll use only compression for this example. The dynamics are set using the STE-

REO channel processor. Press the STEREO channel [SEL] key, then use the MIXER

[DYN] key to access the dynamics parameters. The nice thing about this system is

that you can hear how your master EQ and/or dynamics settings affect the overall

mix immediately. In some cases you might even decide to go back and make

changes to the mix because of the way everything sounds “mastered” as opposed

to straight, before committing to a speciﬁc set of mastering parameters. Generally,

though, the better the mix, the less master processing is required.

To enable the pre-programmed “mastered” automix:

1. Press the AUTOMATION [AUTOMIX] key and, if necessary, press the [F4]

key to select the “Event List” page.

2. Move the cursor to the SCENE/LIB button on the display and press [ENTER]

to highlight it.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ACCURATE MONITORING

One of the most critical factors in successful mastering (and mixing, for that matter) is to

have a good monitoring setup. This is also one of the most difﬁcult to achieve simply

because it involves not only your amp and speakers, but the room you monitor in and

everything in it as well. Quite simply, your mix will sound different on different systems

and in different rooms. If the environment you work in tends to be bass deﬁcient, you will

probably crank the bass up too high and end up with excessively boomy sound on other

systems. If your “studio” is reverberant (we don’t recommend mixing or mastering in the

bathroom), you won’t be able to accurately judge the effect of ambience processing on

your mix. What you really need is a mixing and mastering environment that is relatively

dry (in the sonic sense, that is) and has a broad, ﬂat frequency response without unnatural

dips or peaks. If your studio isn’t perfect (and this is the norm for home studios) then expe-

rience is the answer. The more you mix, master, and listen to the results on different sys-

tems and in different rooms, the more you’ll get a feel for how the sound of your studio

relates to the real-world “average”. Listening to your own work in a variety of environ-

ments is a very good idea in any case. Listen on big, expensive hi-ﬁ systems as well as

cheap portables. Don’t forget car stereos, either. The more you listen, the better your mixes

will become.

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Yamaha AW4416 User Manual Page 28

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