The tools used for mastering

Mastering, the black art of the audio process...

There are so many tools at your disposal when it comes time to put the finishing touches on a record. Do you know what they are? More importantly, how well can you use them?

Fab discusses the 8 tools essential to the art of mastering and shows you exactly how best to use them. This video is full of examples that are applied to a wide range of musical styles. You’ll gain a deeper level of understanding as he explains the theory and reasoning behind the application of every tool.

Tools covered:

• The Studio
• Metering
• Compression (and parallel compression)
• Multiband Compression
• De-esser
• Equalizers
• Peak Limiter
• Sum & Difference (aka Mid/Side)

Mastery of these tools allows you to enhance sonic characteristics while correcting mix balance issues, giving your recordings power, clarity, and focus.

Here’s just a taste of what you’ll learn:

• Why the room is the most important tool in mastering, why your rooms probably sucks, and how to deal with a less than ideal room
• The importance of great metering and why you NEED it
• Understand and optimize a song’s dynamic range
• How to make masters sound natural and maintain their artistic integrity
• The different roles compression play in mastering
• How to use parallel compression to add density to the track
• The role of EQs in mastering and why many mastering engineers use two EQs
• The purpose of the peak limiter