Loudness Wars and Quality Online Mastering

ISLINGTON, U.K. - April 1, 2013 - PRLog -- With another Dynamic Range Day at the end of March being a great success, the “Loudness War” is finally receiving the widespread awareness it deserves.  We are also starting to see increased implementation and support of the EBU R128 standards.  Initiatives like Dyanmic Range Day are helping put an end to the “Loudness War” once and for all.

The “Loudness War”, is simply a recent trend to have hit the music industry, whereby the volume levels of music productions are being pushed to the limit, in an attempt to make them sound louder and louder.  What many people fail to realize however is that louder does not necessarily mean better.  

It is often the case that when faced with the choice of two identical pieces of music, one of them being slightly louder than the other, the majority of listeners would opt for the louder one.  As a result, CD and MP3 volume levels have steadily increased over the last few years.  Take a Michael Jackson track from the 70’s and compare it to a modern-day pop song and you will instantly notice the difference.  The music back then had much more room to breathe and actually sounded better and less distorted.

All this has led to audio engineers having to produce masters that are as loud as possible to remain competitive.  However nowadays, while mastering plays a crucial part in helping a track stand out from the competition, it should not be solely based on how loud a track sounds.  The good (and more expensive) studios and online mastering services would know all about that.  In a perfect world, artists would master each and every one of their songs at these studios.  But this is often not possible because it is extremely expensive to do so when you have a large amount of tracks to master.

Then there are the cheaper online mastering services.  However most of them unfortunately will usually get away with using software plugins to simply make a mix sound louder, giving many artists the impression that their mix has been mastered properly.  These services usually don’t give much importance to dynamic range and the careful craft that goes into good analog mastering.  

One of the few online mastering services that provides quality analog mastering without breaking the bank is Phat Mastering (http://phatmastering.com).  They provide a proper mastering service at extremely affordable rates and are big dynamic range fans.

The team at Phat Mastering have built a network of studios and mastering engineers who are able to provide professional mastering for cheap due to the large amount of work they bring in for them.  What is also unique to this service is that each of their engineers is specialized in a particular genre or style of music.  Therefore they guarantee that the right engineer for the job will be used and whose strengths and experience will complement the style of track being mastered.  This is very important as one engineer might do a good job on a Techno track, but that same person might not quite nail it on a Rock or Indie song for example.  What they provide essentially, is audio mastering that will sound great on all soundsystems, done by the right engineer and without breaking the bank.

Here is what a couple of their clients had to say:

“The final mix of my track was missing some loudness and clarity, and the guys at Phat Mastering definitely helped in achieving that at mastering stage. I would recommend them to anyone looking for a good external ear, and a final master that will sound good in a club.”

- Jay Zinga (Jay Zinga Music)

“The tracks made an impact due to the solid mastering: very warm low end and an overall organic feel. Highly Recommended.”

- Owen Jay (Batti Batti)

To find out more about this new service visit their site at http://phatmastering.com