Quote:
Originally Posted by redavide
Regarding mastering -- I realize you sent it out to a mastering guru, but is there anything a regular mortal can do in the way of mastering? In particular, how can one go about getting more volume on a fully mixed track?
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For starters, I'd suggest reading Bob Katz's book, "Mastering Audio". Its about more than mastering, and isn't light reading, but it's full of good stuff.
The basics of getting it louder, are just to increase the gain, usually with a bit of compression. Doing that without wrecking the sound, especially on a solo guitar part, is part of the challenge. But I actually wouldn't send my tracks out just to make them louder, I can easily just turn up the levels myself. The reason for having someone master is to have a different set of ears do the final tweaks (if any), like having your car detailed, or having a software package sent thru the QA and packaging departments.
For do-it-yourselfers, there are "mastering" plugins like Izotope Ozone that put the basic tools of mastering all in an easy-to-use package, with presets. Ozone seems to be a reasonably good quality tool, but you can also easy wreck your sound with it. The mastering process is more about listening and doing what's needed than any tool.