10th October 2000 - Mastering Workshop

The subject of the Section's October 10th meeting was mastering. The panel consisted of experienced mastering engineers and was chaired by Crispin Murray of Metropolis Studios. On the panel were Ian Cooper (Metropolis Mastering), Ray Staff (Whitfield Street/ Sony Music) and Sean Davies (everywhere that counts!), all of whom have many years’ of experience in the mastering business.

The panel started by discussing the changing role of the mastering engineer. In the early part of the twentieth century there was no role of mastering engineer as such. Recordings were made direct to the final master in the session, with the recording engineer having the responsibility of balancing the sound and controlling the cut of the record at the same time. This approach had limitations such as the recording had to be made in one take and any mistakes would require the cutting of a whole new disc. In addition, the disc was not physically robust, especially in warmer climates.

The improvement of the technology of tape recording meant that it could be used as an intermediate medium. This meant that the creation of the final product for the consumer could be handled with more care and patience away from the pressures of the recording session. This created a new role in the recording process, that of the mastering engineer.

In the early days the task of the mastering engineer was to simply transfer the tape to the record. However, the limitations of the disc format meant that modifications sometimes had to be made to the audio during the cut. The panel discussed the physical limitations of records, including the effects of the varying groove speed as the cutting head moves towards the centre of the disc. It was suggested that the discs should perhaps have run from inside to outside, as most music has the loudest parts towards the end. However, this meant that the cutting head would fall off the end of the disc if the recording was a little too long.

The panel revealed that throughout the 1970s the role of the mastering engineer increased from simple transfers. Initially the tasks were involved with fixing problems with the recordings so that the discs could be cut successfully. This evolved into enhancing the sound and providing creative effects. When CD arrived in the early 1980s, this again started as simple transfers, quite often exactly the same audio that was being cut onto the record. It was commented tha quite often the request was to make it sound 'like vinyl' as that was the familiar sound.

Again, more experimentation was introduced as the properties of the relatively limitation-free CD format were explored. The introduction of more sophisticated tools means that the role of the mastering engineer has further expanded to include digital editing, equalisation, compression, compilation for different formats, and sometimes even overdubs. The results of this is that the process that used to take a few hours can now take 5 days or more.

The panel observed that there is an increasing demand to master each of the release formats differently. This means different mastering for CD, cassette, vinyl and even different radio masters. There is still a large demand for vinyl masters, mainly as promotional copies for the record company to distribute.

Then the discussion progressed to the acoustics of mastering rooms. It used to be the case that the mastering engineer worked in a poor acoustical environment. However, the limitations of the system would be known and taken into account. Modern mastering studios have acoustic treatment more similar to recording studios with the aim that the room and monitoring will not add its own sonic imprint.

The panellists pointed out that mastering engineers are very familiar with their own systems, and listen to a wide range of recordings on them. Because of this they have more of an idea of what will sound right on other systems, perhaps more so than a recording engineer or producer who mostly work on their own material.

Also mentioned was the increasing pressure from either musicians or record companies to make each project sound louder than everybody else's. The mastering engineers explained that even though they don't like having to do this, if they didn't comply they would lose the work to someone who would. The discussion then turned to the problem of project decisions being made based on budgets with apparently no-one in the record companies responsible for quality control.

Other issues such as archiving and watermarking were discussed. The session concluded with some hilarious tales of awkward clients and inept record company staff. Crispin finished the workshop by thanking the panellists for their stimulating discussion, and Crispin was thanked for organising the event.

Russell Mason