Mastering

Your tracks will undergo these procedures, enhancing them to their fullest potentials during mastering:

• Compression: Depending on the track more or less compression is applied to reduce the peaks and raise the overall level in order to make the track sound "bigger".
• Equalization: Proper spectral balance is one of the most important characteristics of a good sounding track.
• Multiband dynamics processing: applying compression to certain frequency ranges without altering the rest of the spectrum is most helpful in many tracks.
• Bass management: Delicately enhancing the bass leaving other musical instruments unaffected.
• Stereo enhancement: One of the reasons mastered tracks sound so full. The full stereo image potential of a good mix is gained in this stage.

• Noise reduction: Removing unwanted noise from the audio.
• Fades: applying perfect track beginnings, fade outs and proper silence in between tracks.
• Level maximization: Boosting the overall level without overloading or distortion.

Example:

This is a sample of a great sounding mix (Many thanks to my good friend Rob Beaton), A nice recording and mix like this one takes at least 8 steps to get mastered, each step requires listening over and over, and tweakingthe gear to reach a nice balance.
For a mix that has not been recorded with pro equipment, and has not been mixed professionally, The steps and the time and effort taken are much more, It takes a long time to eliminate clicks and pops, to reduce noise, to automate the adjustments for different parts of the song (something that should be done in mixing), even to get a fair frequency balance and punch.
So the steps below happen only on the luckiest day of a mastering engineer.

Originally it sounds like this (of course I have decreased the level a little to provide some headroom):


After listening carefully, and deciding what steps should be taken and which gear to be used, here we go:

1. This is how it sounds after Stereo enhancement. Notice that the stereo image gets wider, but the tricky part is that the center should not be lost by overdoing:
   
   
2. It seems that the song can benefit from a little cut in the high and high-mid frequencies,this is done by a couple of great sounding digital EQ's:
   
   
3. Multi-band dynamics processing, this is done by a good digital multiband compressor and two digital uni-band dynamic processors. This is done mainly on the bass and low-mid frequencies, the high and mid-range frequencies can also benefit from this stage. the changes may seem subtle right now but after the compressors get in, it shows itself by the great sounding and punchy kick drum and the controlled and softened mid-range:
   
   
4. We are still in the digital domain, two great digital mastering compressors are in now:
   
   
5. Fasten your seat belts we're going out into the analog world. First in the analog chain there are two high-end mastering EQ's. we do the boosting with the analog EQ's. Bass, midrange and air:
   
   
6. Two great analog mastering compressors come next:
   
   
7. Alright we're back in the digital domain now with the help of an excellent A/d converter that also has a soft limiter great for mastering. Now we're going into a high-end digital limiter:
   
   
8. Back in the box again, some mastering reverb to soften things up, parallel compression, a little tape emulation warmth and a final digital limiter and that's it:
   
   

Alright, as I said this was a great sounding mix and I really enjoyed mastering it, and it was easy too.
All the adjustments take time and effort and nothing can be saved as presets, by the way using the right gear for a song and in the right place in the chain and getting the best sound out of them needs knowledge, talent and good ears.
If there are more than one song (an album), and if the other songs are alike in many aspects like genre, frequency balance and overall mix specs, the other songs will take less time considerably.