[LAU] mastering - do I need it?

Dave Phillips dlphillips at woh.rr.com
Fri Nov 23 10:05:26 EST 2007


Atte André Jensen wrote:

>I almost finished a cd of electronic music with my linux laptop. Now I'm 
>thinking about making an actual cd of it. Now I'm wondering if I need to 
>pay for mastering...
>
>I think the recording sounds quite good by itself, but I have a vague 
>idea of mastering doing something magical to my audio. Can anything 
>general be said about the need for mastering of electronic music?
>
>Also, can I do a good enough job with jamin? Are there any tutorials 
>that I should read? What will I be aiming for in the process, 
>considering I think it sounds fine already?
>
>Any input appreciated!
>  
>
Short answer: Yes, you should employ JAMin and work at mastering your 
work before printing to disc.

Longer response: Learn by doing. JAMin isn't a terribly difficult app to 
learn, but learning exacty what doses of which process to utilize, that 
takes some time and experimentation. For example, compression was 
something of a black art to me, but I've learned much more about it by 
playing around with JAMin's excellent tools.

I started using JAMin just to balance the overall volume between my 
tracks. Now I'm exploring its compression and EQ sections and finding 
some cool ways to improve my recorded sound. I recommend it highly (and 
even when I'm not high :).

Best,

dp






More information about the Linux-audio-user mailing list