Edoardo
500+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Feb 10, 2009
- Posts
- 856
- Likes
- 23
Quote:
Whatever format the recording is being releasing on, the pre-master created by the producer still needs mastering, which includes compression, EQ and various other processes. The point of mastering is to alter the original mix so that it sounds good on a variety of consumer equipment, rather than sounding good just in the studio in which it was produced.
Well there are several "schools". Those who compress and eq real-time in the analog domain and then send the mix directly to a stereo ADC, and those who pass every track directly to a multichannel ADC and then mix, glue, paste, add reverb, choruses, whatever, and then compress and put into stereo, everything digitally.
So I don't know what you mean with "original mix": one thing is to heavily compress digital tracks which may have been recorded indeed in different towns or countries for summing them up realistically, another thing is summing/mixing several channels into stereo, and then converting the signal into digital, without making any big change afterwards.
"rather than in the studio"... It depends what's the producer target. If he wants to make the recording sound as better as possible, he will mix it as better as possible in his studio, period... I doubt DG engineers' mix timeless masterpieces thinking about how crappy Mr Smith's rig is. Or audiophilia would not exist. I don't see the point.
Conversely, it's Mr Smith's speakers to be, most of the time, built with the intention of making sound decently anything sort of crap Mr Smith could play with them, without, of course, caring about the positioning of the speakers themselves which is also very important.
P.S. anyway a couple of active multiamplified monitor speakers such as Genelec or K+O, actually used by those engineers, cost less than many systems seen here on head-fi...