Audio Mastering Cleveland Ohio

Audio Mastering, the final and crucial step of audio production, requires a meticulous approach. It involves three distinct stages. The first is the delicate task of balancing all the instruments of a stereo mix. The next step is to optimize playback across all media formats, a process that demands precision. The final stage is to ensure that each song on an album resonates with the others, creating a cohesive and harmonious body of work.

Traditionally, mastering uses four tools. The first is equalization. The second one is the compressor. A third device on the list is limiting. Last is a stereo enhancer. The stereo enhancement would include a sum and side processor.

Audio Mastering, whether in Cleveland, Ohio or elsewhere, takes a holistic approach. It treats all the songs on an album as a unified entity, not just a collection of individual tracks. The treatment of songs follows a three-step process. The first purpose is to make the songs sound like they belong to the same record, creating a sense of unity. The second goal is to attain cohesiveness in your songs, ensuring they flow seamlessly from one to another. Lastly, the audio engineer should raise the volume of the pieces of music to the industry-standard level for distribution on all forms of media, ensuring they are ready to be enjoyed by the audience.

Analog Designs Black Box - Our Secret Weapon for Audio Mastering

Starsound Studios has high-end mastering equipment and takes an immaculate sonic approach to mixing and mastering audio. We meld them together instead of taking the traditional approach of combining the audio of a song independently of mastering. Then, we open another program to master the music separate from the mixing stage. We do it all together at once.

We first run the summed audio from the analog summing box into our analog 500 modules. Next, it goes through our three Rupert Neve Designs modules and the Analog Designs Black Box. Finally, an auxiliary track brings the analog stereo result back inside Pro-Tools 2021.12.

The audio then receives further digital processing by plugins on that auxiliary track. First, the new processing would include our custom-made pre-set on the Studer tape plugin. We then use a very surgical approach with our Sum and Side plugin. Last but not least is the audio limiter. A limiter at the end of the chain will bring a song track up to that competitive radio level.

Audio Mastering Process

The Audio Mastering process in Cleveland, Ohio, is comprehensive. First, we start with the usual plugins on the master AUX channel. Then, we bounce the master AUX track to a second AUX track with three plugins to reach exacting LUFS and genre-specific Tonal Balance. Of course, those three plugins are in a specific order for a particular reason. Ozone 9 Advanced EQ is first. Ozone Tonal Balance is second. The third and most important is Process Audio's plugin, Decibel. The Ozone products speak to each other. That inter-plugin communication lets us use Ozone's research into hundreds of songs within Tonal Balance. We can see if we have reached the same EQ balance as their research. Usually, we are close if we still need to achieve their exact target. If we do not hit the precise target, ozone 10's Tonal Balance speaks to Ozone 10's EQ. We can correct that without leaving Tonal Balance. The last plugin in the chain is Process Audio's Decibel. Decibel is a powerful audio LUFS meter that lets us achieve exacting social media standards.

Our use of these three plugins is about meeting standards. This approach ensures strict LUFS mastering standards and genre-specific EQ. The final step is to bounce the meter AUX track to an audio track, meticulously recording every LUFS goal to stereo audio WAV masters. You receive one for every social media standard, including the -11 LUFS, -14 LUFS, and -16 LUFS targets. We then transform these into MP-3s from the WAV LUFS standard masters, a process that takes place in the standalone Ozone 9 Advanced. We've found that Ozone 9 Advanced produces superior sounds to our ears compared to simply bouncing out of ProTools. We also appreciate the metadata creation within Ozone 9. The process may be long and tedious, but it's a testament to our commitment to delivering the best possible results.