When you finish your recording and you want to get it mastered you need to be careful of who you get to master your recording. Alot of engineer’s will say they can master your recording, JUST TO GET MORE MONEY OUT OF YOU but alot of them dont have a clue of what mastering is let alone know how to do it. Here is a list of what should get done when a track is mastered, ask the so called mastering engineer what he is going to do to your track when he masters it. If he does not say 90% of what is on this list then he is a fraud. It will be evident when you get his answer if he knows what he is doing or not. In almost every mastering session, the following actions are performed:
- Optimizing average and peak volume levels for proper relative loudness
- Signal processing - compression & EQ
- Arranging tracks in final sequence
- Timing of the space between tracks
- Establish a sonic “field” for all tracks
- Place track markers at head of all tracks
- Remove unwanted noise like clicks, pops, hiss
- Clean-up start and ending of each track (including fades)
- Insert Master Track Log - the PQ codes required for replication
