Dr Alan Anderson, Lecturer, Department of Music, School of Language, Literature and Performing Arts, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. alan.anderson@stonebow.otago.ac.nz
In these days of digital convergence people could be forgiven for assuming that delivering music and professional audio over the Internet no longer presents any significant obstacles. Internet radio (Webcasting) and Podcasting has gathered momentum and community support while music production software manuals espouse the benefits that new protocols for file exchange over the Internet bring to the musician, audio engineer and producer. Accordingly, many recording studios have begun to offer online mastering or ‘e-mastering’ services. This is interesting given that only a few years ago, a keynote speaker of the Audio Engineers Society (AES), described the Internet as “inadequate for transmitting music and professional audio. Performance and collaboration across a distance stress beyond acceptable bounds the quality of service.” To investigate the current state of affairs this paper examines what the Web is doing for audio engineers, with a particular focus on the services that ‘e-mastering’ services offer their clients.
In a music-recording studio, the audio engineer is responsible for recording, editing, and mixing sound. Using multi-track recorders, engineers capture the sound of each voice, instrument or sound separately. They can edit and manipulate each track, re-record parts they are not satisfied with, or add additional voices, instruments, or sounds (White, 2002). After tracking (recording to tape or hard disc) they mix all the tracks together, adjusting and balancing them to create the desired effect. Mastering is the process that takes place after the final mixing and editing has been rendered into a stereo track. During this process the recordings are given a final ‘polish’ to eliminate any sonic problems and add extra clarity [HREF 1].
The general opinion among record industry professionals is that mastering should not be done by the engineer who mixed the music (Inglis, 2005, p.110). Instead, a mastering engineer with specialist expertise and ‘fresh ears’ should balance the tracks, equalise them for consistent sound, handle fades, segues and compress and limit the tracks as required to achieve the best possible sound for transmission over a host of different mediums. A typical mastering session for several 3 to 4 minute music tracks, with the client and the mix engineer in attendance, would usually take at least a day of the mastering engineer’s time, and could cost the client over AUD $3,500 (Inglis, 2005, p.110). Such costs are commonly incurred by artists signed to major record labels, but are generally prohibitive for people recording in low-rent studios or at home so they tend to do their own mastering or not bother. The end result is usually a sonically less-than-perfect stereo master track indicative of the gulf between the high-cost-high-quality world of production and the smaller grass-roots studios and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) enthusiast [HREF 2]. Recent advances in digital audio recording technology have (to some extent) helped to even the playing field between the professional studio and the home studio. Used in conjunction with a powerful desktop computer, current digital audio technology provides the user a host of production capabilities, including mastering software with plugins modelled on outboard mastering hardware and software found in the major, state-of-the-art professional mastering studios (Senior, 2003, Anderson & Ellis, 2005, p.10 [HREF 3]. Nevertheless, the expert ears and knowledge of the professional mastering engineer remain the missing ingredient in this scenario, not to mention the array of state-of-the-art professional-level mastering equipment and software they have at their disposal.
Now that broadband Internet access is widespread the grass roots studio has a range of new and more affordable options to outsource the mastering of their music. To investigate the current state of affairs, this paper investigates what the Web is doing for audio engineers, with a particular focus on what ‘e-mastering’ studios offer their clients.
A Google™ search of the Web for the terms ‘e-mastering’ and subsequently ‘online mastering’ located thousands of Web sites. Upon closer inspection of a sample the following categories emerged, sites that offer:
Features of a category 5 service plus state-of-the-art studios, a custom designed FTP interface, custom designed “reference player” software (free download) specifically designed to allow the client to hear and choose between different mix options [HREF 13; HREF 14].
Most of the Web sites examined promote the specialist expertise of the studio in relation mastering a particular style or styles of music. Indie (Independent label) specialists [HREF 15], for instance, emphasise their understanding of the Indie ethos and the advantage this gives them in capturing the essence of the style. Others cater exclusively to a very specific niche market such as Hip-hop artists [HREF 16; HREF 17]. Many of the larger professional studios promote their state-of-the-art facilities and the star-like profiles of their individual mastering engineers [HREF 18]. Each engineer typically has a particular area of specialisation and an impressive discography including major film credits as well as music CDs for major artists past and present. Generally, the higher the industry credentials the higher the price per hour, in contrast with the smaller home-studio level mastering services such as described in Category 3 that generally promise quick turn-over at a fixed price. Having said that, some of the major studios generally reserve their top engineers for the higher-priced ‘attended sessions’, leaving much of the after-hours e-mastering work to their protégé’s [HREF 19]. One category 5 site, “AudioIntegrity” [HREF 20] also offers free test mastering of one full-length song. Others, [HREF 21] allow potential clients to sign up for an account and FTP-upload up to 1 GB of files to their server before committing to pay for the service. This gives the client a preview of the process and the ease of operation. Something that varied from one site to another was the extent to which they included external links to relevant sites and music production discussion forums. In some cases, this seems to be a missed opportunity to help the client gain a better understanding of the terminology, make informed decisions and communicate a clear and realistic set of instructions to the mastering engineer.
Inglis (2005) compared the services provided by three of the UK’s leading online mastering specialists to determine whether on-line mastering is really a viable alternative or a false economy. In his review of their respective file exchange facilities, Inglis notes that several had specialist FTP applications designed for them. He reports that all were simple to use with the possible exception of one called iMastering™. iMastering “uses a complex Java applet which will only work with some recent Web browsers” (p.112). Mac users, for instance, need Safari or Omniweb 5, and not IE or Firefox. The beauty of this system, however, is that you can select batches of files, making it well-suited for handling a large number of tracks. It also includes useful features such as a status bar showing upload progress while others do not (Inglis, 2005, p.112).
Inglis (2005) submitted the same three tracks to each of the three eMastering specialists. The completed masters were then subjected to a double-blind test process involving mastering engineers and Inglis’s journalist colleagues at Sound on Sound, an International professional audio publication [HREF22]. After comparing the results, Inglis concluded, “if I was going to have an album mastered I would be happy to have it done online, and online mastering will save … money compared to an attended session” (p. 118). He did however express some reservations about the limited opportunity for communication between client and mastering engineer, and rated the services that did the most to facilitate communication (by email and phone) higher than one that did not give the client so much as the name of the mastering engineer.
The cost of having an album mastered online could be as little as one third of the fee charged for a conventional attended session, so less communication could be seen as a fair trade-off. On the other hand, accessibility to the mastering engineer might play a more significant role than either the service or the client realises in the first instance. The significance of the client’s prior experience is not addressed comprehensively by Inglis (2005). His review panel of professional audio journalists would be likely to qualify as ‘expert listeners’(Adorno cited in Moore, 2001, p.182) capable of hearing subtle differences in the mix. A larger, random sample of listeners with varying levels of expertise may well shed a different light on the subject.
With the exception of Web sites grouped under “category 1”, all provided an online registration form with fields in which the client can write specific track details and instructions for the mastering engineer. If further clarification is required, correspondence is usually by email. Email can be useful to set out initial instructions or to reply and confirm approval of reference tracks, but without a good working knowledge of audio engineering, mixing and mastering processes this could be easier said than done for inexperienced clients. Inglis (2005) argues that more communication during as well as before the mastering process could improve outcomes because when attending a session in person there is a natural tendency to act, evaluate the results, discuss possible changes and then refine the work accordingly. Indeed, during a conventional ‘attended’ mastering session, with the mastering engineer present (and possibly the original mixing engineer as well), even inexperienced of clients could be guided to hear and discuss in person the effect of applying different equalisation settings, compression and effects. Providing immediate feedback in this way can obviously help the engineer to understand the client’s musical preferences and vision of achieving a particular sound.
Digidesign, a division of Avid Technologies, developed ProTools/HD™, a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) for music production and digital audio editing. ProTools/HD has a reputation for being one of the most popular, industry-standard digital recording systems in the professional audio world, including audio for film and television. It is also among the most expensive of systems and therefore less common in the average ‘low-rent’ studio or home studio. Nonetheless, for those who can afford it, digidesign’s professional-level products such as Digidelivery™ can make transfer of large session files between professional studios convenient and fast in comparison with posting to a public FTP site or burning a DVD to mail or send by courier [HREF 23]. Digidelivery’s proprietary communication protocols accelerate the transmission of data between server and client while “lossless compression (optional) reduces the size of the files to be exchanged by as much as 50%, resulting in faster upload and download times while ensuring a totally bit-accurate copy on delivery. In the case of a lost connection, DigiDelivery re-establishes contact and picks up the transfer from where it left off rather than starting over again, as an FTP process would” [HREF 24]. In sum, proprietary file-exchange systems such as Digidelivery, and custom designed eMasteringPlayer software such as probably come as close as is currently possible to providing the client with best way of hearing pre and post mastering versions of their music from a remote location. Of the various systems used by the different e-mastering services examined, these systems also appear much closer to the Audio Engineering Society’s (1999; 2003; 2005) recommendations in respect to providing data integrity, data security and reliability in the transmission and receiving of music and professional audio over the Internet.
Most mastering studios recommend that clients submit their tracks for mastering on the media such as DAT cassette, CD-R, mini disc, or CD-Rom with uncompressed files such as WAV, SD II, or AIFF. However, some offer MP3 Mastering as well, in some cases promoting it as a speciality. Carrot Cottage, for instance, makes a bold statement on their Web site home page: “We offer a unique MP3 Mastering Service, where we promise to bring your MP3s up to a commercial standard for only £35 per track” [HREF 25]. This statement is in stark contrast to the sentiment expressed by Amarosi (2006, p.1) whose Web site informs potential clients that “sending mp3 formats eliminates all the good that mastering can do for your song. Any company that says they will master an mp3 for you is just wasting your time” [HREF 26]. It is important to evaluate such opposing points of view about the merit of MP3 mastering in the light of technical information about audio formats and codecs. An audio file format is essentially “a container format for storing audio data on a computer system,” whereas, “a codec is a computer program that compresses/decompresses digital audio data according to a given audio file format or streaming audio format compression standards [HREF 27].
There are three major groups of audio file formats:
“Lossy file formats are based on psychoacoustic models that leave out sounds that humans cannot or can hardly hear, e.g. a low volume sound after a big volume sound. MP3 is such an example. By discarding portions that are considered less important to human hearing, a smaller file size is achieved (Wikipedia [HREF 28]. In contrast, ‘lossless’ audio formats “provide compression about 2:1, but no data/quality is lost. When uncompressed, the data will be identical to the original” [HREF 28].
This is not to say that no MP3 recording could ever be improved by mastering. However, it is important to understand that all MP3 files have discarded some of the information stored in the original, uncompressed signal and this leaves the audio mastering engineer with considerably less to work with, as inferred by Amarosi [HREF 29]. Carrotcottage MP3 mastering studio, mentioned previously, provides potential clients with ‘before and after’ examples of MP3 files they have mastered. In addition, they include a note to clients: “Please note that if you want the best possible results, you should send your tracks in high resolution format. For MP3 files, this means at least 160 kBit/s, 44,100 kHz” [HREF 30]. This at least helps the potential client to make an informed choice. In the light of the previously mentioned technical limitations concerning the mastering of MP3s, however, providing such information should really be considered a minimum requirement for providers of such services.
The resolution of audio signal is determined largely by “the number of source samples per second stored in a given format. Bitrates are a measure of the amount of data stored for every second of audio”, whereas sample-rates (measured in kilohertz, or thousands of samples per second) measure the frequency with which the signal is stored [HREF 31]. The standard sample-rate of commercial CD audio is 44.1kHz or 44,100 samples per second. Audio professionals often work with 48kHz audio and, more recently, 96kHz. Although a 96kHz sample-rate allows for storage of frequencies well outside the human 20kHz threshold, “sampling theory states that if the output is to be reconstructed accurately, samples must be taken at a minimum of twice the frequency of the highest harmonic likely to be encountered (White, 2000, p. 18). 24-bit 96kHz audio is used by DVD and may become the standard hi-fi format in the future (White, 2000, p. 18) [HREF 32]. In any case, the perceived wisdom in the recording industry is that where possible it is preferable to aim for the highest possible resolution, thus allowing for alternative or new (possibly not yet invented) mediums for storage and transmission [HREF 33]. If this is difficult to imagine, consider for a moment the sheer volume of “digitally remastered” back-catalogue music in the shops, streamed over the Internet and to mobile phones today.
Being well aware of the impact the previously mentioned technical limitations have on music, the AES are not likely to redefine what they deem to be ‘professional audio’ or ‘broadcast quality’. Yet for the masses, defining precisely what constitutes ‘acceptable’ broadcast quality may be quite subjective. Internet radio enthusiasts typically load up their software with MP3 files and let them play, or they may use software such as Shoutcast, “streaming software for ‘bedroom broadcasting’ which lets you convert any audio source (such as a home stereo) into an MP3 stream [HREF 34].
A sizeable portion of the general public seem quite accepting of lower-quality audio for the sake of convenience. Talk radio stations, for instance, “often stream at 11kHz or 16kHz” .. whilst “streamed MP3 audio is often sent out at half, or even a quarter of the CD rate to compensate for slow Internet connection speeds” HREF 35]. Examining the question: What Is A Broadcast Quality Recording?, Flattum (2005) notes that music as it is heard when recorded and played back in a professional studio bares little resemblance to the way that most people actually listen to the final product. Different environments as well as the playback devices used impact on the way we hear the music. Flattum describes “a plethora of playback devices and locations including “CD players to consumer-based computer speakers, restaurant sound systems to 20-year-old car radios” … or a laptop sitting on a beach in Bermuda” listening to an “mp3 streamed on the Internet [HREF 36].
Internet, digital audio and Web technologies are facilitating dramatic changes in the music industry, especially in respect to music production and distribution. eMastering is beginning to revolutionise traditional work flow models and pave the way for increased collaboration on a global scale. eMastering could also have an emancipatory effect on the grass roots music recording industry as Internet and Web technologies provide a readily accessible bridge between smaller independent studios and the larger professional studios synonymous with the major record labels. In spite of considerable progress being made, some of the technical challenges identified by the AES and other stakeholders remain. Far from deterred, however, Webcast enthusiasts and the MP3 generation appear to be making the most of everything at their disposal, perhaps confident in the knowledge that Moore’s law will prevail and all the “dragons [of digital audio transmission] will eventually be slaine” (AES, p.1). Specific recommendations arising from this ‘snap shot’ examination of eMastering Web sites are as follows:
eMastering services that currently provide only minimal communication should provide more opportunity for the client to engage in dialogue with the mastering engineer.
Teleconferencing and videoconferencing should be explored as a possible means of improving communication between the remote client and the mastering engineer.
Studios providing services that include “MP3 mastering should make the technical limitations of mastering MP3 or other lossy format files clear to the consumer who can then make an informed choice before committing to pay for the service.
eMastering service providers should provide and maintain links to relevant educational resources and forums that can help potential clients to make informed decisions and requests regarding the mastering of their tracks.
Digidesign and other developers of proprietary file-exchange systems should continue to work with the AES and professional societies, corporations and governments on the improvement and standardisation of protocols.
Further research is required to determine:
the importance of communication between client and eMastering engineer in relation to outcomes.
the most appropriate medium and style of communication between client and eMastering engineer.
the key determinants for creating a high-quality and sustainable eMastering business.
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