5.3 Pseudo Mastering
The whole question of mastering can create a serious dilemma, especially for less experienced users.
Kind: concept (reamix-section) Chapter: 5 Cooking the Mix Source: ReaMix (October 2009)
The whole question of mastering can create a serious dilemma, especially for less experienced users. What do you do if you don’t have enough money to pay for a professional mastering engineer, don’t have enough experience to master to a professional standard yourself, but need to produce, say, a demo recording.
In an attempt to provide a stop-gap solution, I’ve added a section later in this primer on Pseudo Mastering. This, I fear, will cause more than a few eyebrows to be raised. In this section, you will be shown a few relatively straightforward techniques that should be able to at least improve the overall sound of your final mix. This Pseudo Mastering is not intended to serve in any way as a substitute for correct mastering. Pseudo mastering should only be considered in specific circumstances, and then only as a short term solution. Meanwhile, let’s look at the issues involved in pre-mastering – that is, getting your project ready to be mastered by somebody else.