a master button? Good God, I hope not! Mastering is the final polishing of a finished stereo mix, and preparing it in various formats, depending on whether the client wants digital files, physical media, etc. Where mixing involves combining the various parts of a performance to produce a cohesive stereo mix, mastering is the polishing of that mix and preparing it for various formats and delivery methods.
Mastering often involves many of the following: equalization, compression, peak limiting, mid/side balancing of the stereo field, track sequencing and average loudness comparisons between tracks, fade ins and outs or crossfades between tracks, resampling and dithering to a target bit-depth and sampling frequency,preparing various formats for the client, including correct metadata tagging, and possibly preparing a DDP fileset if the master is going to a CD manufacturer.
In terms of compression, equalization, and stereo balance, how much of those you need usually depends on the quality of the mixes you start with. Excelent mixes will require very little tweaking by the mastering engineer. Sub-par mixes will need a lot of work.
You can probably do a lot of that in various audio editing programs, like Goldwave, Sound Forge, etc.
You ask why Audacity isn't considered a DAW. I would say all of these are DAW's, since that simply means digital audio workstation. Some are multitrack, others are not, some deal with MIDI as well as audio, etc. etc.
At 01:58 PM 4/13/2014, you wrote:
Hello,What is involved in mastering? I'm surprised you can't master in Gold Wave, Audacity or Wavepad. Is there a "master" button, or wouldn't you select the whole project and hit equalize? I don't know about any sound editors but Audacity, but Audacity lets you have a lot of tracks. I've had up to 20 in one project.Someone should go the extra mile and make audacity into a daw... thanks, Brandon Keith Biggs On 4/13/2014 10:08 AM, D!J!X! wrote:Some people like to work on the finished product as a single track project, instead of a multitrack product. For example, allot of people will mix their projects in sonar, and export them as a wave file that they master in sound forge (audio editor). One of the main differences between daws and audio editors is multitrack abilities; the daw programs can and do multitracks of audio and MIDI data, the audio editor is usually limited to 1 file/1 or 2 tracks of data (mono or stereo files), or 5.1 for surround sound in some cases. The other thing, a DAW can use instruments and vst's, while some editors can use vst effects and such, don't think you could run a virtual instrument through one and record it and edit it. Also, MIDI is a crucial part of a DAW like sonar, for inputting musical data from a keyboard or guitar controller etc, but for audio editors, this area is usually limited and mainly it is used for controling features of the program itself, like using MMC. The DAW will let you edit and manipulate the MIDI data, do more with it in terms of recording, than an audio editor would. While some of the functions do overlap, there are some differences. For example if you are mainly going to be recording simple stereo files with no multitrack needs, then goldWave or sound forge is fine. Or I know people who literally do a mix on their mixers and record it as a stereo file as the final result, they do everything else outboard, compressors, effects etc. While this limits your ability to edit each part individually, this method works for them and that's how they do it; they use GoldWave to record the stuff, apply some final compression and whatever effects they want, and distribute online. It all depends on what you need, what your requirements are, and what your workflow is. HTh, D!J!X! -----Original Message----- From:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ddots-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Brandon Keith Biggs Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2014 1:37 AM To:ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [ddots-l] Point of Audio Editors? Hello, What is the point of an audio editor? Don't Daws work just as well as an audio editor? I've been looking at different accessible audio editors and daws and Gold Wave, Wave Pad and Audacity seem to just have destructive editing, ability to record sound and add effects. Each of the above 3 have their own nifty stand out feature (gold wave will play sounds as you arrow through a large list of sounds without you opening them, Wavepad does batch file conversion and Audacity is free with one of the best noise removal plugins out there). But when it comes down to recording and making a quality recording, Reaper, Sonar and Pro Tools seem to have the same features of the sound editors as well as midi and way more effects. Reaper is the same price as any of the sound editors and Sonar is massive with a huge library of sounds. I understand people using Audacity, but I don't understand why one would go for the $60 of the other audio editors unless their little extra features are really worth it. Thanks, -- Brandon Keith Biggs PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE! To leave the list, click on the immediately following link: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type unsubscribe For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the immediately following link: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq or send a message, to ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type faq PLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE! To leave the list, click on the immediately following link: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type unsubscribe For other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the immediately following link: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq or send a message, to ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type faqPLEASE READ THIS FOOTER AT LEAST ONCE! To leave the list, click on the immediately following link: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe If this link doesn't work then send a message to: ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type unsubscribeFor other list commands such as vacation mode, click on the immediately following link:ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=faq or send a message, to ddots-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx and in the Subject line type faq
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