Mastering:  An Introduction "What is mastering?" is a question you find everywhere today. Mastering is a discreet discipline, distinct in its specialty from those of the mixing, tracking, or live sound engineer. The dedication to subtlety, nuance, and performance are the mastering engineers strengths, and the ability to perceive, extract, and enhance the finer points of a mix are life-long pursuits of the mastering engineer.

Consider mastering as having two primary domains:  An audio domain, and a quality domain.

Audio Domain:

Within the Audio Domain, mastering achieves the complete realization of artistic intent using frequency, amplitude, and time as source.  This source is passed through the engineers tools of eq, compression, limiting, etc. while leveraging the skill and expertise of the mastering engineer.

Quality Domain:

Within the Quality Domain, mastering achieves consistent, measured results that meet if not exceed tolerances required by the manufacturing sector (CD, Vinyl), and data integrity checks & balances for encoded data (CD, Digital Assets).  Additionally, professional mastering delivers formats suitable for long term storage.