[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by Ben Jenssen

All you have to do is put a limiter on the main output, set the threshold so it cuts a couple of db's here and there, and bounce. This won't give you the crazy loudness that commersial stuff have, that requires professional help, but it will get you closer. (Remember that the master fader, as opposed to other PT faders are before the plugins in the signal chain, so if you move it, it will affect the input level on the limiter, and you have to adjust it again.)

I wish people would stop calling it "mastering".
The term comes from back when a "master mold" was needed for pressing vinyl. The mastering engineers job was to get the mix to translate well to the finished product, not nessesarily to improve it. The ME layed out the tracks, the distance between the grooves, maybe cut a little extreme lows to stop bleed. Translation from tape to vinyl. Analogue.

Professional mastering today is something else completely. No transition, it's all digital. Good, experienced ears that can perhaps give a little finishing touch to mixes and set the relative levels of songs. The sad thing is, because of the "volume war", these guy most often are asked to pump up the volume so much that it compromises quality. Squashing the peaks to raise the overall volume. Like a limiter does.

So one should think of the mix as the final stage. If you need to fix lots of stuff in "mastering", then your mix is incomplete. You should have fixed it in the mix.

So I think it's a complete misunderstanding when people sit at home, bounce their mix to a "mastering session", insert all kinds of multiband compressors, linear EQ's (sounds pro) to "better" the mix. In the same room, on the same monitors! Why didn't you do it in the mix?

Rant over.

Yes, it's technically called Pre Mastering. But it's just easier to say Mastering.

And no, it's not all done digitally these days. It of course has to END in the digital domain, but most highend Pre Mastering occurs in the analog domain.