Mastering in Music

Mastering in Music is a cutting-edge edited collection that offers twenty perspectives on the contexts and process of mastering. This book collects the perspectives of both academics and professionals to discuss recent developments in the field, such as mastering for VR and high resolution mastering, alongside crucial perspectives on fundamental skills, such as the business of mastering, equipment design and audio processing. Including a range of detailed case studies and interviews, Mastering in Music offers a comprehensive overview of the foremost hot topics affecting the industry, making it key reading for students and professionals engaged in music production.

John-Paul Braddock is a UK based mastering engineer at Formation Audio and is the co-chair of the Audio Engineering Society's Mastering Group. Russ Hepworth-Sawyer is a mastering engineer for MOTTOsound, teaches part time at York St John University, UK, and is the co-chair of the Audio Engineering Society's Mastering Group. Jay Hodgson is a mastering engineer at MOTTOsound and a professor of popular music studies at Western University, Canada. Matthew Shelvock made the transformation from session musician to mastering scholar, but is currently leading business affairs for Chillhop, the well-known lo-fi hip hop radio and label. Professor Rob Toulson is a leading scholar in the field of music production and is the CEO of RTSixty Limited, the company behind music based applications such as variPlay, iDrumTune Pro and Drummer ITP.

1 Introduction: Mastering Is Dead, Long Live Mastering (Hepworth-Sawyer & Matt Shelvock); Mastering: Practice; 2 The Creative Mastering Studio (Hinksman); 3 Surround + Immersive mastering (Legvold & Proper); 4 Towards a Definition of Compression Glue in Mastering (Moore); 5 Engineering Authenticity: The Aesthetics of DSP Modeling in Mastering Plugins (O'Connor); 6 Mastering For Streaming: Exploring a New Levelling Standard (Harker); 7 Mastering audio analysis: Teaching the art of listening (Braddock); Mastering: Music & People; 8 Interview with Darcy Proper (Toulson); 9 'Past' Masters | Present Beats: Exponential Sound Staging as Sample-based (Re)Mastering in Contemporary Hip-hop Practice (Exarchos); 10 Remastering Sunnyboys (Bruel); 11 Mastering Success: A Roundtable Discussion with Early to Mid-Career Mastering Engineers (Hepworth-Sawyer); 12 Opinion piece - Peak-Fi - Have we reached the ultimate reproduction standards needed to make humans happy? (Herrod-Taylor); Mastering: Future; 13 The Shifting Discourse on Audio Mastering (Nardi); 14 Opinion piece - Loudness - the sales gimmick (Hodgson); 15 Audio Mastering Facing Automation: The Embracement of the Human (Whelan & Birtchnell); 16 Transformations and Continuities in the Mastering Sector (Collins et al.); 17 Mastering in Music: a conference, a discussion, and a 'what-if' - a manifesto for an encapsulated audio delivery format (Braddock & Hepworth-Sawyer); 18 Signature Mastering: New Sound Aesthetics in Post-Production and the New Role of Mastering (Lund)