Welcome to issue #68 of Tape Op.

So, you've finished mixing the last track for an upcoming CD, vinyl and/or Internet release. What's the next step? Some sort of mastering process will need to take place (though in the case of CDs, it's technically pre-mastering). Mastering fulfills a number of roles prior to product replication such as, getting your songs in proper order, song volume level adjustments, possible application of EQ/compression/limiting, adding PQ codes (for CD) and the creation of a CD, lacquer or file that can be used for manufacturing. However, don't let this process lead you to believe that mastering is some matter-of-fact technical process with no art involved — every mastering engineer will bring unique ideas to the project at hand, as does any recording engineer. We've collected several articles on the subject of mastering for this issue. By no means are we presenting "everything" one could learn about this art, rather it's more a sampling of some helpful hints. As a bonus, we have a nice chat with long-time mastering engineer Arnie Acosta — U2's go-to guy for their projects. And check out our guest end rant for more thoughts on this subject. Enjoy! -LC I remember looking forward to my first professional mastering session, way back in the days of vinyl. I'd been tipped off to a good guy at a new place called Masterdisk; I'd seen the name "Robert C. Ludwig" on all my treasured Nonesuch Explorer Series records. Bob (as he prefers to be called) was very amiable and musically literate. He quickly did his seemingly magical work on my 4-track home recordings with a friendly smile on his face. But every now and then I'd see him briefly cringe as a particularly rough edit or clumsy fader move would cross his path. As I continued to master my first homemade productions with him, I made it a goal to one day bring in projects that would not make his smile dim! At its basic core, mastering is the process of making a cohesive, playable audio collection out of a group of recordings that may be less than consistent. After mastering you should be able to play the record without getting out of your chair to adjust the bass, treble, balance and volume controls as each song comes up. It should also be free of extraneous sounds — clicks and pops — that interfere with the experience of hearing the music. There is also a 'Sherlock Holmes' element to mastering — breaking the code to figuring out what sounded great in the (perhaps less-than-perfect) mixing room, and then creating a final release that will sound as good as possible on a million other nonlinear systems. Beyond this mandate, there is an art to the process and every mastering engineer (ME) will do things a bit differently. But in order for these "masters" to arrive at the point where they can exercise their art, the bottom-line "cringe factors" of less-than-perfect recordings must be dealt with. It's easy to get carried away by the music at a certain point in the heat of mixing a song. Just because you and everyone else involved are thrilled doesn't mean that your ME will be. There's always more to do in a mix than there is time to do it, and "perfection" and "art" make strange bedfellows in any case. But if you take a little more time and use this article as a checklist, you'll get to take full advantage of your ME's awesome talents. Although I've been involved in a lot of mastering sessions over the years I'm not an ME myself, so I emailed Greg Calbi (Sterling Sound), Brent Lambert (Kitchen Mastering), Bob Ludwig (Gateway Mastering), Jeff Carroll (Bluefield Mastering), J.J. Golden (Golden Mastering), and Dave Harris (Studio B Mastering) for some of their pet peeves and recommendations