Guest article from Big Tone Mastering - Online Audio Mastering
Mastering… it’s an area that has come under fire over the last few years, with computers becoming much more clever as algorithms continue to advance and in this sense, advanced to have the ability to understand what we need or understand what we think as music consumers. The recording industry has been affected by this too.
We take a look around us and without us really taking too much notice, there is a whole bunch on functionality in all of our pieces of software that aims to increase our work flow, our efficiency and quality of output, all by attempting to predict our next move as sound engineers and producers.
Once area in particular is mastering. For years now, mastering has been a fine art, a beautiful example of man and machine working in harmony to achieve only the best product. But what if we were to remove the man from the machine, and let machine take over? Can a computer algorithm really understand what needs to be done to make a track, a song, a piece of art become what it truly deserves and on top of all that, be good enough to please the artist?
There are endless places online that offer just that, the ability to upload our track, to run it through their software and to have it mastered in a heartbeat to a standard that is promised to be professional.
We’ve tried these places out ourselves, only out of curiosity and we just aren’t so sure they deliver on their promises. A song is a piece of art and should be treated that way from start to finish. A trained ear and the best possible equipment is the only way a song can shine as bright as it should, the attention to detail, the skill and satisfaction, these are the only factors that should matter when mastering a track. Well, that’s what we think anyway...