"Mastering Hell"

So, you’ve actually recorded your own music and gone through the arduous, though fulfilling, process of mixing it yourself… “so far, so good” you think. But now for the finishing touches, the dreaded MASTERING phase of your recording. Ah yes, the arcane yet fine art of polishing a, hopefully, already good sounding mix (rather than polishing a turd, one hopes?). The one stage of the recording that, rumor has it, even the most hardened DIY masters don’t dream of doing themselves. Dr Dre, Tiesto, Trent Reznor – none of them even come close to grappling with the mysteries of mastering, favoring instead to hand off their carefully considered mixes to, often, an anonymous engineer – crossing their fingers while putting their baby in the arms of a stranger. “WOW!” you exclaim to yourself, “If producers of that calibre don’t trust their ears at that stage, it must involve some kind of dark magic that a lowly unknown producer like myself shouldn’t even attempt!”
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