Mastering

The term goes back to the dark ages of recording, when the output of microphones engraved a wax cylinder in the 'Edison process'. As you can imagine, that cylinder was a pretty fragile thing, and you only had one of them. The cylinder would get coated by lacquer to make it hard enough to make a casting (a negative image of the grooves), and then copies would be made using the casting to create positive images that would last longer.

Each copying step introduced some sound degradation in the analog process. As more copies were made, the castings would become worn, and they would pull another negative from the original - the 'master' copy.

Now that we're in the digital era, there's no sound difference between a master and a copy... a copy can be used as a master without any ill effects, so there's no longer a real 'master'. The process still bears the name, though - the master is the one that's good enough to make copies from... it's what you get when the mix down and editing is finished, and 'mastering' is the final tweaking that gets you there.

Thank you, thats really rather interesting :lol:

Not gonna argue with the above thats real interesting stuff.

On my Boss-Br1180 cd The "Mastering stage" is where you take your finalized multitrack recording and add all the finalized effects and EQ youd like. There is like 15 pre-settings and they all boost your signal, cut highs and lows, add reverb and de-essers stuff like that.

Mastering sometimes means taking your track in raw form and adding the final touches.

Kido