What is CD Mastering?
You’ve been into the studio, recorded your tracks and mixed them down to stereo, and left the studio with a studio master, usually on CD-R, or maybe a DAT tape or WAV files on disc, containing the master mixes of your tracks. Now you want to make your own CD album from your tracks. CD Mastering is the technical and artistic process of transferring and compiling your studio material to create a CD Master in a format that is ready for Glass Mastering – which is the first stage in CD manufacturing. So, in a nutshell, CD Mastering is the interface between the recording process and the CD manufacturing process. Mastering is a technical process because the transfer has to take account of such technical aspects as analogue to digital conversion (if the material is from an analogue source), sample rates, pre-emphasis, signal level, PQ encoding, ISRC codes, not to mention the choice of format and creation of the final CD Master. On the other hand, mastering is an artistic process because a surp
