What Do Mastering Engineers Actually Do? VIDEO
Video of What Do Mastering Engineers Actually Do?
Mastering is a job that is widely misunderstood and misrepresented. Can it really turn lead into musical gold? Or is it just a waste of money?
To complement Sound On Sound s recent in-depth series of tutorials, in this video Editor In Chief Sam Inglis explains why mastering engineers are necessary, what they can do for us, and whether we can really replace them with plug-ins!
And here s the series of video tutorials that Sam refers to:
Mastering Essentials: The SOS Techniques Guide
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Scope Labs Periscope
With its built‑in compressor set to ‘smash’, the Periscope earns its place in more sessions than you’d think.
Scope Labs’ Periscope looks like an eyeball lodged in a piece of Victorian plumbing, and comes in a replica treasure chest lined with shocking pink satin. If there was an SOS Award for Most Steampunk Studio Item, this would sweep the field. It also gets a special commendation for having the only spec sheet that’s ever made me laugh out loud.
The metal hemisphere at the business end actually houses not an eyeball but an ear, in the shape of a miniature omnidirectional electret microphone capsule. Within the Periscope’s copper‑coloured body, meanwhile, your 48V phantom supply doesn’t only feed the impedance converter. It also powers a built‑in analogue compressor, hard‑wired to nuke the signal into oblivion.
Synchro Arts VocAlign Ultra
After a major overhaul, is Synchro Arts’ VocAlign still an essential part of the vocal producer’s toolkit?
The raison d’être of Synchro Arts’ VocAlign is simple: to match timing between vocal recordings. Originally, it was an offline Pro Tools plug‑in targeted at post‑production tasks such as ADR (automated dialogue replacement). Over the years, it’s been made available in other formats, and is widely used for sung vocals as well as instrumental sources. Its makers now estimate that 80 percent of VocAlign users are music producers.
Synchro Arts also offer the standalone Revoice Pro, which includes all of VocAlign’s functionality plus detailed pitch‑correction, the ability to create fake double parts, and much more. Over the years, new features have tended to make their appearance in Revoice Pro; the VocAlign feature set has remained simpler, to retain the emphasis on speed and efficiency. Now, though, Synchro Arts have embarked on a
JZ Microphones BB29
Boutique Latvian company JZ Microphones have earned a reputation for their classy mics, and their latest design doesn’t disappoint.
JZ Microphones take their name from the initials of designer Juris Zarins, who established the company in 2007. And, unlike some microphone manufacturers I can think of, JZ actually manufacture microphones. In other words, they don’t just commission something that looks nice from a Chinese factory and put their name on it; JZ mics are hand‑built in the Latvian capital of Riga, from the all‑important capsule upwards.
In an era when many ‘boutique’ companies focus on copying the same old Neumann and AKG designs, JZ’s emphasis on innovation is also refreshing. This is most apparent in their industrial design, which eschews the usual cylindrical and conical bodies in favour of more radical shapes, including the unforgettable Black Hole mics. However, Juris is also an innovator at a more fundamental level, thanks to h