Mastering

Recording and mixing an album's worth of tracks is a big enough challenge, but turning the results into a consistent-sounding CD requires specialist tools and skills. The former, at least, are now available to anyone with a Windows PC...

Last month we showed you how to go about recording a complete (jazz) band to stereo on location. Now let's examine the ways in which you can compile and process the different takes to make up a coherent whole.

As one of the senior engineers at New York's famous Sterling Sound, Chris Gehringer has mastered some of the biggest hip-hop and R&B hits of recent years.

We provide some tips for making your masters sound as loud as commercial tracks, without sacrificing too much sonic quality along the way.

Twenty years after Steve Levine first produced Culture Club, he reveals how he has been using a new generation of digital tools to restore those original recordings.