Mastering

July 9th, 2003 · No Comments

Been busy today mastering the clacal C.D. after first beta made yesterday.

Three main problems I wound up needing to solve. The first was too large of a sonic difference between various tracks. Some were warm while others were crisp. At first listen on my home stereo, I was worried that overall the C.D. lacked hi end, but I believe I’m too acustomed to turning the treble up in my car stereo. After listening on a boom box, I was more certain that the warmer tracks were the ones to be duplicated, and I should put a small shelving EQ on the high end of others.

Second was a problem with levels from one song to the next. This has been solved on 5 songs so far and proved to be a larger problem then the sonic differences as it involves not simple volume changes from one song to the next, but also average volume inside each song, and maintaining the dynamics of the original recording. Spent the most time on “Jesus Christ the Apple Tree,” which I believe is a stellar song.

I benefited from this article on VU Meters in working at levels.

Last issue, which was easy to fix was that the reverb was a little too strong in places. Simply turned it down.