On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 05:57:41PM +0200, Arnold
Krille wrote:
On Saturday 09 July 2011 23:43:07 Fons Adriaensen
wrote:
Mastering as a separate step has two, maybe three
functions or
merits:
3. To equalise levels and atmosphere and create dramatic effect
when assembling an album consisting of several separate pieces.
The is the only function that remains today, in the circumstances
we are talking about.
Given that nowadays most music is sold in songs, not in albums, and even
if sold in albums, is played in tracks in random order on peoples
players, it is pretty futile to create a consistent effect for several
songs...
Not all music is 'songs', and some people still have an
attention span that exceeds 180s.
Even though my attention span is good enough for the whole 7 minutes of "Can't
you hear me knocking" or the full 15minutes of some dire straits sessions,
still my mp3-player destroys the "album feel" by using an artificial directory
sorting...
I know there is music that is not "songs". I know there is music that is
"songs in albums" that simply has to be played in order to make sense.
But we are taling about mastering here: If its a live-album that you mixed in
yourself and now try to master: There is no reason why you should use the
mastering step to create a certain connection for the album. You already have
all that is needed inside the mixing process. If its some other kind of epos
that has to be played in order and you mixed it yourself, why not use the
mixing-data to create the epos? Fixing mixing errors/problems in mastering is
what people make money with. But there is no reason why you should pay
yourself for mastering to fix your own errors from mixing...
Have fun,
Arnold