MASTERING

There are two meanings, in general to phrases that have to do with banging heads.

There is head-banging music, which is a good thing (in certain circles). It means that the music is full of a kind of energy and vigor that’s impossible to get from any other source.

Then there’s banging your head against the wall. That’s bad. It means frustration, and it also makes us think of one of our favorite definitions of insanity — doing the same thing over and over and hoping for different results.

Those two head-banging and banging-heads definitions came together in one place with a story we saw from Road Runner Records.

The story is about a previous album from Metallica — head-banging music if ever there was such a thing.

There are fans of the group that have said loudly and publicly that they prefer versions of a certain set of songs that appear in the video game Guitar Hero to the ones that have been released on CDs.

Yes, you read that right. People liked the video-game version better than the one that was designed for home music systems. Why? Better mastering.

Ted Jensen, the engineer who mastered the album at Sterling Sound in New York, responded to fan complaints that the CD is too loud and the audio is pushed to distortion levels by writing, “I’m certainly sympathetic to your reaction, I get to slam my head against that brick wall every day. In this case the mixes were already brick-walled before they arrived at my place. Suffice to say I would never be pushed to overdrive things as far as they are here. Believe me, I’m not proud to be associated with this one, and we can only hope that some good will come from this in some form of backlash against volume above all else.”

Mastering is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device, the “master,” from which all copies will be produced.

Certainly the quality of the original makes a huge difference in the quality of the audio mastering work, but excellence in mastering can make a world of difference for the listener.

If you’d like to talk to someone about your needs for audio mastering, please contact us.