A: In mixing you are concerned with the tracks that comprises the song. While in mastering, you are concerned with the song as a whole, and how it relates with other songs in the same compilation.
Mastering ensures consistency. The song should translate well on all mediums. The song may sound good in your player but it might not sound good in another’s player. Mastering does not greatly change the final mix but it makes the song as loud as possible without distorting. Louder songs are perceived to be better sounding than quieter ones.
Increasing the volume does not merely involve raising the levels of the volume meter, but also involve the intricate and careful setting of normalization, compression, eq, and limiter levels.
Mastering also is needed in cases where you have more than one song in an album. As much as possible, you want the songs in the album sound alike, so it conveys a consistent whole and some sort of continuity when tracks are played one by one. Here you need to eq and compress again.
Mastering cleans up and applies fade in and fade out at the beginning and end of each song, and also lays down the final sequence of the tracks.
Although there is no huge audible difference between the final mix and the mastered one, a careful listen will reveal an indescribable improvement in the sound. Common descriptions and observations are the song seem to pack more punch and that such mastered songs are “in your face”. In large, this is due to compression and limiting. And this is what mastering addresses- consistency.
Q14: What does the package deal consist of?
A: Package deal concerns multitrack recording. So the package already includes, 4 songs (# of songs of a standard EP album), 16 hours of recording time, 4 hours of client sit-in remix and unlimited time for initial mixing and mastering.