[neilh23]

It's hard getting something that sounds consistently good in all listening environments - I've seen cases where music is offered in digital format either as 'play anywhere' loud .mp3s or 24-bit high dynamic-range .flacs for DJs, but most commercial music is mastered for the poorest environments (in the car, over the radio).

Getting a good master is very important - I'm reminded of a story I heard about an album that was mastered by the artist, and pressed to CD with a high-pitched whine over the top which the artist hadn't been able to hear - like Aphex Twin's Ventolin, but unintentional.

[Nav_Panel]

> most commercial music is mastered for the poorest environments (in the car, over the radio).

One thing to consider (at least, that I consider when mastering my own music) is what processing might be applied in the future.

I helped out at the radio station back in college, and you can see the signal chain for audio coming from the studio onto the airwaves. Radio stations often add at least 9 dB of gain via compression, sometimes more. So, if you want a quick and dirty "how does my track sound on the radio?" toss on a master limiter and give yourself 12 dB of gain, then see whether it sounds as you intend (then don't forget to remove the gain after you've made your tweaks).

> a story I heard about an album that was mastered by the artist, and pressed to CD with a high-pitched whine over the top which the artist hadn't been able to hear

Funnily enough, this was common in albums recorded in the 80s and 90s. Reason? CRT monitors were used in the studio, and the high-pitched sound of the screens would get picked up by the microphones. A little discussion here: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/high-frequency-tones-o...

[flyinghamster]

Aside from being one of the singers involved, I make archival recordings of my community chorus's performances. In my case, I use a rather simple setup: a pair of small-diaphragm condenser mics (usually but not always set up in the ORTF configuration), a preamp, and a digital recorder. Audacity has all of the capabilities I need for the editing/mastering phase.

One thing I've noticed is that the dynamic range of a live choral performance tends to exceed the useful range of typical consumer audio equipment[1], and it's necessary for me to deal with audience applause (usually by temporary dropping its level), and I also need to carefully apply some limiting on peaks - and sometimes a little bit of compression can work wonders.

If I resort to compression, I typically use parallel ("New York") compression, in which the uncompressed audio gets mixed with the compressed audio. It can be a bit fiddly, since it's necessary to apply the right settings to the compressed track, and to find the right proportion of compressed to uncompressed audio in the final mix.

The finished result tends to sound a bit more "up close" than the raw recording, which can be useful when I'm forced to record from the back of the room.

Even so, I find that I have to turn the volume up quite a bit higher than I would for typical pop music (especially since the Loudness War).

[1]What I mean above is, "being able to listen to the recording at a reasonable level without the peaks distorting or blowing out your speakers."

[disantlor]

Certain models of SSL consoles could produce a ~15khz ringing in the master output. I had this exact thing happen to me, and eventhough my hearing good enough to hear it clearly once I was paying attention, in the middle of working I didn't notice it at all, until I got home. I heard that it happened on some Peter Gabriel records (he was famously a fan of SSL consoles). Probably wouldn't be too hard to remove in mastering, incidentally.

[goldbrick]

Actually, the car is one of the best listening environments most people have ready access to - an enclosed space (perhaps dolby 5.1) with sufficient bass, with all the channels pointed more or less equally at your head. Many audio engineers use a car as a reference point.

[andrewflnr]

I dunno. Between road noise and my crappy speakers, GP made perfect sense to me. :)