6-19-12 UPDATE
Posted by Vincente E. Woodward on Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Have spent the past several days setting up near field reference monitor speaker system for mastering.
For those who are not familiar with the terminology, in music recording, the master was originally a wax disk from which the plastic discs would be made.
It was the original disk from which all others would ultimately derive.
So, it was "the master", in the sense of the original.
All others being copies of the original.
The terminology continued on as the technology changed.
In our modern digital age it sort of means the same thing, except for the fact that everything is "digitized".
This means that it is all written out as a series of zeroes and ones in what is known as binary code.
In order to reduce the space by about 3/4 the binary is converted into hexadecimal (base 16).
It is this series of numbers which is the final result of the analog to digital conversion.
Now, whereas "the master" will never change, while copies made from the master will degenerate a little more each time they are reproduced, there is not such problem in the world of digital masters.
So, the language is a little bit archaic, but continues in use because of it's very important and non-archaic history.
So, in the world of digital audio workstations (DAWs) the art of mastering is the science of audio engineering being applied to the final product which is intended to be copied or more precisely, cloned multitudinous times without any degeneration whatsoever (except for the ubiquitous and ever-present "rounding errors" which seem to be lurking around every corner, usually completely unexpected, and certainly uninvited).
Until very recently it would be stupid to attempt to "master" any recording in a home studio or small studio.
The software was prohibitively expensive, the understanding of what you are supposed to be doing was very limited, and there was very little eductional material available.
In addition,the hardware that would be required was ridiculously prohibitively expensive and complicated and required years of continuous practice to be used effectively ---
sorry about that - I seem to have fallen asleep in mid-sentence at about 1:30 a.m.
Was it exhaustion finally catching up with me?
or was it that the subject is just so tedious and boring that it knocked me out?
I think you know which.
This is the morning after = 6-20-12 at 8:25 a.m.
w/love to all
vw
For those who are not familiar with the terminology, in music recording, the master was originally a wax disk from which the plastic discs would be made.
It was the original disk from which all others would ultimately derive.
So, it was "the master", in the sense of the original.
All others being copies of the original.
The terminology continued on as the technology changed.
In our modern digital age it sort of means the same thing, except for the fact that everything is "digitized".
This means that it is all written out as a series of zeroes and ones in what is known as binary code.
In order to reduce the space by about 3/4 the binary is converted into hexadecimal (base 16).
It is this series of numbers which is the final result of the analog to digital conversion.
Now, whereas "the master" will never change, while copies made from the master will degenerate a little more each time they are reproduced, there is not such problem in the world of digital masters.
So, the language is a little bit archaic, but continues in use because of it's very important and non-archaic history.
So, in the world of digital audio workstations (DAWs) the art of mastering is the science of audio engineering being applied to the final product which is intended to be copied or more precisely, cloned multitudinous times without any degeneration whatsoever (except for the ubiquitous and ever-present "rounding errors" which seem to be lurking around every corner, usually completely unexpected, and certainly uninvited).
Until very recently it would be stupid to attempt to "master" any recording in a home studio or small studio.
The software was prohibitively expensive, the understanding of what you are supposed to be doing was very limited, and there was very little eductional material available.
In addition,the hardware that would be required was ridiculously prohibitively expensive and complicated and required years of continuous practice to be used effectively ---
sorry about that - I seem to have fallen asleep in mid-sentence at about 1:30 a.m.
Was it exhaustion finally catching up with me?
or was it that the subject is just so tedious and boring that it knocked me out?
I think you know which.
This is the morning after = 6-20-12 at 8:25 a.m.
w/love to all
vw
