There's a popular local band that plays out here in the boonies… not unlike the thousands of bands I have seen in my home town, Canada's most eclectic city, Toronto. They are a young university age group who have been playing together a few years and have their CD for sale in all the local shops in the Northumberland region from gas stations, flower stores, to gift shops, right at the cash, plus they sell them off stage.

I liked their name, I liked the unique jacket cover (no band picture) and their website. I was looking forward to giving it my attention. The music would be perfect for the university market was my first impression. I could get that out to the stations for them, and once we knew who picked it up, we would book gigs in those towns… you know the basic grass roots approach. They have a large following out here and they need to expand on it.

I played the disc and immediately realized they were better live. That happens when you go into the studio for the first time. You often loose the feel and they had no producer, just an engineer… not to disrespect engineers, but they often simply lay down the tracks and give you what you ask for. A producer is more apt to help arrange the songs, musically, structurally, vocally…and make a silk purse out of the proverbial sow's ear. Even so, I still thought they had a chance at nabbing some university stations. But their biggest problem was they did not master the CD, which is common with new bands. They just don't know that in order to compete for radio time you NEED to have your CD mastered before you send it for replication. It's an added expense (ranging from 50 bucks per song to hundreds or just a block fee for the whole disc of $1800 to $2500). And therefore young bands have limited funds and knowledge so this process if often overlooked.

What does mastering do?

We got this detailed process from Rainbow Recording Studios

1. First it (your disc) is transferred into a digital audio workstation (DAW). In doing this, you keep it at the highest resolution possible (maybe 96kHz @ 24bits).

2. Then the songs are arranged in the final CD order.

3. Each song is checked for sonic quality, and judgments are made to optimize frequency response, clarity, low end, crispness, high end, mid frequency mud, etc. Then the processes are applied to correct or improve these sonic elements. This could include, but is not limited to, EQ, compression, peak limiting, multi-band compression, aural exciting, de-essing, volume, pan, parametric EQ, notch filtering, expansion, glitch removal, noise removal, and so forth.

4. Each song is optimized for volume. Consideration is made for the genre of music and what volume level it must be to compete with other similar commercially available CDs that are out there.

5. Transitions are established. This would include fade-ins, fade-outs, cross-fades, spacing between songs, and removal of any noises between songs.

6. Song markers are set for each song.

7. Titles and artist credits are imbedded with the CD and each song.

8. Final CD masters are created, CD back-up and file back-ups are archived.

9. A final CD master is sent to the client for approval.

10. Upon approval, a CD master might be sent directly to the CD manufacturing plant for replication.

Well, I wrote this band back as they were eager to hear my opinion. I remind everyone, that they can take my opinion or leave it. I had taken a good half hour detailing what they could do with the record, how and where they could mail it out, where to find directories for all the university stations etc...How much it would cost for mailers and postage etc… and said that I thought they would have very little chance of airplay on commercial stations because the CD was not mastered and the quality was not up to productions standards upheld at most stations. I was kind and encouraging, and still thought they would have a chance with some College radio etc, and you know what, they never even thanked me for taking the time to share my thoughts AND they told people that I told them their CD sucked. (Which I never said). In all my years, this was the first band to not at least write back and say "thanks for your opinion but, I disagree" or "I appreciate the info, next time we will look into mastering" or … " I think you have your head up you're @ss all our friends love it".

Well I sure hope they consider mastering for their next project because I know they will be thankful they did.

To hear a sample before and after master mix click on the link Xtreme Audio has posted at www.xtreamaudio.com/mastering.html and look for the demo on right side bar. They have a few samples in different musical genres.