Recording - January 2016 - 72

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Complete Audio Mastering: Practical Techniques
By Gebre Waddell. 240 pages, illustrated B/W, trade paperback, also available for download in formats for iTunes/iBooks, Amazon Kindle, and PDF.
McGraw-Hill Education, 2013. ISBN 9780071819572.

This book won't teach you to be a mastering engineer; you won't get to be a mastering engineer by reading a book. But this
book will teach you what mastering engineers do. It will give you a good idea of what to expect when you go into the mastering
room and what the engineer is going to be doing and why. It gives you a lot of the background that you will need in order to ask
the kind of questions that you need to be asking in the mastering room. And, although it's certainly not a substitute for interning
under a mastering engineer, it's a good book to read to decide if you want to intern under a mastering engineer or not, because it is
a good and fair overview of how mastering engineers work and what they do.
Now, if you read the blurb on the back cover, it will promise that this book will teach you everything you need to know to be a
mastering engineer. This is literally a case of "do not judge a book by its cover". This is a worthwhile book that can teach you a
lot, but if you go into it with the unrealistic expectations engendered by the back cover marketing, you will be disappointed. This is
not the fault of the author. Just put a book jacket on it so you don't have to see the back cover, and you'll be fine.
The book starts out with a basic overview of what happens in mastering and what goes on in a typical session. It has a chapter on the sort of equipment you'll encounter in a mastering studio, with a little discussion on the monitoring chain. I don't think
there's enough discussion about the monitoring chain, but there's only so much space available. I think the discussion in here
about brand names is kind of strange, but in a world where people are overly obsessed with gear it might give less experienced
people an opportunity to see what kind of gear is common in the mastering world. On the other hand, the equipment lists seem
to be weighted toward what is currently flashy and popular rather than the traditional old-line gear.
There is time spent in discussion on general techniques, and on solutions for specific problems that mastering engineers
commonly encounter. I'd like to have seen a little more discussion on some of the more common problems, like getting the
low end to sit right, but again, the book is only so large. There is also a good bit of time spent talking about the boring parts
of mastering, like getting correct spacing and transition between songs. That stuff is very important but seldom gets the attention that it deserves, and in this book it does.
The last part of the book, Chapter 16, is the best part of the book, though, and it's worth the price of admission all by itself.
It's a list of various short writings from mastering engineers about a number of mastering-related subjects. Good writings.
Interesting writings. Stuff that you really need to know, and stuff that you'll find interesting.
Are there errors? Sure... on page 5 the book talks about Red Book CDs made for the pressing plant being "also called" PMCDs. In fact,
PMCDs are something else and contain additional information that a Red Book CD doesn't have... and PMCD is a proprietary format
from Sonic that nobody uses any more, so it really shouldn't even be mentioned. On page 137 there's a note about the Red Book standard permitting running time up to 79.8 minutes, which isn't really true either-but to discuss why, you have to talk about groove pitch,
which I wish the author had done. On that same page they mention index marks, but there's no other mention of them in the book or why
you might want to use them (or not use them, as is more likely the case). Oh, and car stereo equalizers aren't shelving equalizers.
There is no real discussion about physical quality control-making sure both the CD sent off to the plant and the CDs coming
back from the plant have low error rates and good S/N coming off the disc. There's no mention of eye patterns, although
there's a brief mention of checksums. There's only very limited discussion of LP mastering, which is surprising given the current
LP renaissance, and no discussion at all about old-style realtime mastering with an A/B chain, which is something that you
might well encounter if you take a recording in to have an LP record cut.
This is a good book, and the only thing that could make it significantly better would be to make it larger. I'd love to see a new edition of
this book at twice the size, with that chapter of outside contributions from working engineers made much larger. But even in its current
form, this is still a useful book for anyone who wants to get a feel for what is going on when they take their recordings in for mastering.
Scott Dorsey (dorsey@recordingmag.com) is a live sound and recording engineer who moonlights as an electrical engineer,
working out of Williamsburg, VA.
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RECORDING January 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - January 2016