anybody know what is exactly involved in "mastering" a track or CD? Is there a specific program you can buy, or filters you run it through.....or do you have to take 4 years at a technical college in order to understand any of it?

:Wacko:

Re:: Track/CD mastering

Check the PDF guides on this page : [url]http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/guides.html[/url]

The Ozone plug-in on it is considered one the best multi-purpose mixing-mastering plug-ins out there too.

Looks like a cool program but a bit expensive also.

Re:: Track/CD mastering

I own this and absolutly love it.

[img]http://www.t-racks.com/Picts/product/box_24.jpg[/img]

Download the demo and give it a whirl

Re: Track/CD mastering

[quote=nietzsche]or do you have to take 4 years at a technical college in order to understand any of it? [/quote] It would take that to learn the technicalities of it, but to have a mastering engineers ear you can never learn. mastering is one of those black arts that very few people can do, 90% of popular music that you hear on the radio was mastered by one of a handful of well known mastering engineers.

However as pointed out, there are software and hardware packages that give you the tools to do a reasonable amateur job of it. The main things involved in it is multiband compression and parametric equalisation.

thanks guys....will check it out, Nigel.

Re: Track/CD mastering

[quote=ian]multiband compression and parametric equalisation.[/quote]

Oi! That just went over my poor head! :mrgreen: