Nate,

As you probably know, in the good old (vinyl) days, mastering was the process of taking a "finished" album tape and actually cutting acetate or lacquer to make 45 records or LP's. This usually involved compression and eq and level adjustments, both for sonic polish reasons and to try to compromise the sound the least in translating it to vinyl. The groove has/had physical constraints that had to be obeyed if you wanted to prevent the needle from skipping.

Stuff like the bass being only in the left channel, for example, pretty much had to be fixed.

CD's reproduce whatever you put on them; there's no physical constraint, save if you go over digital zero anywhere, you're clipping or distorting the signal. But that's easy to prevent.

So mastering now is basically one or more of the following:

polishing the sound in a variety of ways
adjusting the frequency balance if needed
adjusting the levels of songs relative to each other
sequencing songs with the proper spacing
making sure your CD has the proper PQ codes and other things that are needed for mass reproduction via glass master

A lot of the reason for still having mastering is in having someone who is impartial (and in theory has a proven track record in mastering successful recordings) review what you have to make sure there's no problems. Mastering facilities usually have monitor setups that exceed the quality of most studios, so things that might have been missed in the mix could be caught.

So to a certain extent, if you do your own mastering, you're trusting you'll be impartial and that your monitor setup isn't mis-representing your mix. I myself am very skeptical of my own stuff, for this reason. This is not to say you can't do it, but you have to recognize your own situation's shortcomings and compensate as best you can.

So mastering, for me personally, is a time consuming process. On something important, I mix it, burn a temp CD, and listen on every setup/car stereo/boom box/headphones I possibly can, and make notes, and make adjustments. Then listen again, on everything again, because (for example) an adjustment to fix a problem in my truck's stereo may make it sound bad on my studio's speakers. So compromise is the order of the day. Once you do this enough you get to where you have an idea of where stuff will land on other systems. However, there can still be surprises, especially if you change sonic palettes a lot e.g. acoustic bass on one song, fender P bass on another, etc. will make getting the low end consistent a challenge.

I bought a recently released CD that has one song where a single piano note literally jumps out of nowhere, way out of context, in my truck. As far as I can tell, it's perfectly fine on my Sony boom boxes, but I haven't given it a critical listen on my studio monitors. That's the type of thing you want to catch in mastering.

IMO there is no single 'best' program for mastering, just like there is no single best way to play a G chord on a guitar. Every one of the tools out there has a learning curve, and limitations. If you like a given program and are happy with the results, then good. If not, you have to try something else.

I run Sonar 6, and use the multiband compressor and eq that comes with, and iZotope Ozone. I've been pretty happy with the results, and more importantly, impartial but picky third parties have said "sounds good".

IMO anything that improves a demo is good. But you have to look at your time investment in the demo. Will it make the difference in getting a cut or whatever? Probably not, if everything else isn't great on the demo.

John

"Mojo" is in the mind of the beholder.

A.K.A. "Steck"