Mastering - Posted on 2014-12-30 by Debbie-Ann Lindo-Peterson

     Ahhh! A sigh of relief.  I'm right there.  I'm almost finished with my course work.  I'm so proud of myself.  With going through a divorce, living with a mental illness, going to school full time, taking care of my son, and life in general, it's been rough.  But I'm making it!  Slowly but surely.  This chapter was about the mastering process.  Mastering can not be fully completed inside of Pro Tools, you can basically just pre-master.  To have a song fully mastered, it has to be ready for duplication.  All the levels have to be right for playback on any device, and it has to end up with a sample rate of 44.1 kHz, and a bit depth rate of 16 (16 bit).  Music data is encoded onto a CD using LCPM which stands for Linear Pulse Code Modulation.  Pro Tools doesn't allow us to insert metadata or album info, and that's why we can not fully master a track in Pro Tools.  We were given a final mix assignment.  We are to completely mix a track from start to finish.  We need to adjust levels, add time-based effects, add pluggins, routing to different busses, and anything thing else we have learned in our Basic Audio Engineer Course.  I am so excited!!!