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This is why many go into larger studios to 'master'. They simply don't have the money to afford the
outboard gear that the pro studios have. Some of the consoles in these studios have 6 band
sweepable EQ, are automated, and cost upwards to the 200,000 dollar range. The monitoring
systems in these studios are also superb, using such monitors such as Genelec, which can cost near
8000 apiece. Money doesn't make a great mix though. It takes a good ear and patience, plus a
house engineer that is creative and gives a shit, and understands your music goals, 'cause if they
don't, they will waste your time and money and give you a mix no better than you could have
gotten out of your home studio. I have heard great masters come straight out of Cubase VST audio
(using VST automation of course). Finalizing: This is where audiophiles and tweak phreaks go to a
pro-studio (usually) and use all the fancy shmancy outboard (usually outboard, but it can be done
with computer plug-ins as well if your 'pre-master' is in WAV file format and you have an audio
editor like Sound Forge. I like to use TC Native EQ, and Timeworks Mastering EQ as well as Waves
products, which I have used extensively to improve my overall mix), gear to boost certain
frequencies, add stereo separation, increase clarity and spaciousness to their completed 'pre-
master'. You are not recording anything else at this stage of the game, just improving what is
already there. The bigger studios are using products such as a TC Electronics Finalizer (on the low
end of the price spectrum) all the way up to more expensive gear, which I have never used, but
falls in the price range of 10,000 grand for one rack mount box. This pre mastering phase can be
done at home as well, or you can go into a larger studio and take advantage of all the good stuff to
make your pre-master sound "bigger", so to speak. Remember though, garbage in, garbage out. If
the original pre master sucks and wasn't performed correctly, no amount of sweetening is going to
fix it. It will simply sound like a big, wide-open shitty mix. Commercial Mastering: What is says.
Your completed Finalized master is taken from whatever format you recorded it to (DAT and CD
usually these days) and is transferred to whatever medium the end user (consumer) is going to
hear, be it 12" vinyl, or CD (or cassette... yeach... if you are a DJ type pushing ya mixtapes... but
most never go to the second stage cause the songs they recorded were already pre mastered to
begin with). This process involves taking your master, and simply duplicating it. Not much EQ'ing
should ever be done at this stage, and if it need be, the engineer at the reproduction plant will
usually inform you of what needs to be done, get your approval, then charge you for having to do
what you should have done in the 'Final-mastering' stage. This rarely occurs with CD's and DATS,
cause you can run them way over 0db with no distortion, and the plant engineer will simply lower
the levels when duping from it. They again may charge you a nominal fee. The big problems lie in
vinyl, and this is because of the high sibilants involved with higher frequencies recorded to CD and
the problems that occur when transferring to vinyl. Basically, the higher the freq, the smaller the
groove will be cut into a record. Crash cymbals are notorious for transferring from CD to vinyl
incorrectly and will cause a groove to be cut that is smaller than the diameter of your standard
record player stylus. Because of this, the needle will skip out of the groove, so the mastering plant
engineer will contact you and tell you that they need to 'DE-ess' some of the sibilants out of the mix
while 'cutting' your master plate (that which the vinyl copies or duplicated from usually made of
aluminium). This is quite common today, because so many people are cutting vinyl from cd's rather
than tape (less high end definition) which was the old school way of pre-mastering'. Because of this
commonality, they usually don't charge you anything to fix this minor flaw.
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Samples can be triggered in the SP-808 with Notron no problem, and the SP-808 responds to
velocity information from external sources, but little else – the Notron seems like it is designed
more for controlling sounds in a MIDI engine,rather than using MIDI to trigger samples
External Sequencers/Triggering Samples
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