Unlike major recording studios with their walls full of vintage gear and blinking LEDs, the best mastering engineers’ setups are relatively modest-looking affairs. If you visit a mastering studio, you might be surprised by just how Spartan most of them are. A good mastering engineer will make subtle decisions about sonic balance, bringing out the most important frequency ranges of different aspects of a recording and achieving a blend between the bass and high frequencies that can give a mundane track some punch and make a good track even better. In the right hands, the smallest increments of compression or equalization can have a major impact on the entire track. Mastering is truly an art form: a blend of technology, psychoacoustics, educated ears and musical intuition. But mastering and mastering well are two different things.

In the same way that anyone can lay down some loops and create a track, it’s not hard to plug in a mastering compressor and tweak a track’s parameters. Technical explanations aside, trying to explain exactly what it is a good mastering engineer does is right up there with trying to define the process of a talented songwriter or producer.

Mastering audio tracks