Incredible Sounding Layback Mastering for Musicians

The music industry has several recording and mixing tricks to make the best commercial records. Analog mastering is one of the best secrets of the best mastering engineers today. Considering that most everything is recorded in the digital realm, the best mastering engineers will do what’s called layback mastering. This is where the digital recording is put back into an analog signal so it can be mastered through analog processors, though a lot of times it is also recorded to an analog two-track system in order to get the fatness that analog tape gives to the sound. It also takes the edge away from all digital recordings, and can even out the low end giving the bottom frequencies that signature analog sound.

Though CD mastering can cost a bit more than traditional all digital mastering, since it takes more time and there are the costs for the analog tape, but for serious projects, it can be the end step in achieving the top sound quality for the CD. The reason for this is digital recordings can feel harsh to a lot of people because regardless of how loud the signal gets, digital gives you flat reproduction. Analog tape, however, saturates as the volume increases in level, so peaks are smoothed over rather than clipped, which translates as a warm, rich signal as the harmonic series is excited. To the listener, this sound is much more very pleasing. Furthermore, a hotter input sound will result in a bigger difference. As the top ranges saturate first, this means that as the signal increases, the highs naturally smooth out a bit, resulting in a less brittle, and much better sound. This is the beauty of analog mastering.

There are several mastering studios around the world that have the tools to do CD mastering, however, it also necessitates you have a solid professional with the track record to get the best results possible with the tools. I have tested out a few studios and one of best quality is www.stevethomasmastering.com. He is a top layback CD mastering engineer, yet he also has done thousands of albums as a mixing engineer as well. On top of that, his quality is comparable to some of the most expensive mastering houses in the country. If you already have someone you are using that’s fine. But, I would really encourage you to give him a call. Seriously!