What are the basic components of mastering. Is it more than compression, equalization, the right gear and good ears?
Throw the room in and that pretty much covers it. Contrary to what most people are told, there really aren't any "tricks" involved. All those maximizers, exciters, stereo imaging plugs, etc... usually do more to degrade the audio than help it. In order to hear that though, you need the gear, the room, and the ears. Most of that stuff sounds pretty bad in actuality.
Of course, there's the technical side regarding dithering, SRC, etc.. and the assembly process, the restoration including NR, spectral editing--preparing the actual disc to go to replication, but that's the boring stuff.
So "yes", it's all about EQ and Compression (and not multiband compression ;-) )
I guess the boring stuff is what i'm interested in! SRC, dithering, spectral editing and preparing for duplication are terms or processes I haven't heard.
I do my own now and it's just compression and EQ. Thats all i'm really working with.
My bands first CD is getting close to being finished and i'm weighing the pro's and cons of spending the money on outside mastering. I'm very sure a good M.E. would do wonders but this project has no goal other than to have it.
I have worked in a pro studio and that project was pro mastered. There is obviously a difference in sound quality but I wonder how much of that is mastering and how much was tracking with pro gear in a killer studio.
When I compare our work to the pro studio, there is a difference but thats not to say I think our stuff sounds bad. I guess i'm just looking for things to research so I can improve.
There is much more involved for a good sound engineer than just adding reverb, eq and compression. Just getting the levels right in relation to each other for anywhere from 12-60 tracks per song is a fairly time consuming task, and that's before you even get into effects. Then add in a few wrong notes, some background noise that accidentally occurs, a bassist playing slightly wrong time for 2 bars. Then add in solos, fills, interludes, etc. Then after you finally have all that going you'll probably want to tweak the EQ a little further bit for a better overall mix...and it keeps going.
There is much more involved for a good sound engineer than just adding reverb, eq and compression. Just getting the levels right in relation to each other for anywhere from 12-60 tracks per song is a fairly time consuming task, and that's before you even get into effects. Then add in a few wrong notes, some background noise that accidentally occurs, a bassist playing slightly wrong time for 2 bars. Then add in solos, fills, interludes, etc. Then after you finally have all that going you'll probably want to tweak the EQ a little further bit for a better overall mix...and it keeps going.
It's important to remember that any change made in mastering is a global change (to coin a phrase from the graphic arts), meaning it affects the entire mix. E.g. if you bring up the treble for the sake of the vocal, you bring up whatever other instruments are in that frequency range. So if you hear something you want fixed, fix it BEFORE mastering.