Lightstreak Mastering 3.56

The main reason for mastering is: recordings should sound as balanced and as good as possible on any sound system – whether on a hi fi system, through headphones, on the radio, at a club or on a portable device. This isn’t as simple as it sounds, as there are so many playing options, and so many different devices. The artistry of the mastering engineer lies in their ability to create a balanced sound whilst doing justice to as many different demands as possible. The main things they have to consider are: well balanced frequencies, a good stereo image, mono compatibility, and dynamics. There are many hardware and software options available to modern mastering engineers to help them achieve these goals. Equalizers are used to optimize frequencies, and compressors and limiters are used for dynamics. When mastering an album, the volume of each track has to be considered in the context of the whole record, as the listener shouldn’t have to adjust the volume between tracks.
As vinyl records are produced relatively rarely these days, mastering engineers work primarily with data which can either be sent to CD pressing companies as a DDP file (Disc Description Protocol), or to the client (artists, labels, distributors) as a form of data (like Wave). The highly compressed audio formats which are used by digital shops such as iTunes sometimes require specialized mastering, which is often done according to the demands of the codec (e.g “Mastered for iTunes“).
(Imusicisian)