What is mastering?

Volume

Many people know that mastering is the act of getting the overall volume of a track to be as loud as possible without clipping using a limiter or a maximiser. However, many don't realise that a track can only have a maximum of about 3Db peak limiting before it becomes unnaturally distorted. Therefore the overall loudness of a track is achieved mostly in the mixing process by having a low crest factor.

Harmonic Distortion

In the age of digital music production it is easy to make music sound sterile and cold. Luckily, there are ways of adding warm sounding harmonic distortion back into the track. This can be done by running the track through external hardware or by using digital plugins to emulate the same effect.

Stereo Imaging

Stereo width is important to make the song sound like it is bursting out of the speakers! it is important during this process to avoid any phase issues that can occur when listening in mono, which is common on phones and other mobile listening devices.

Album Consistency

Another aspect of mastering is making sure each song in an album or E.P is consistent in both volume and spectral content. The listener can be distracted by even a small change in average volume or overall EQ so these must be matched to be consistent.