I leave for London tomorrow. I am going to master the new record at Abbey Road, my 2nd favorite recording studio in the world.
With any luck, Andrew Lloyd Webber will not prove to be in vulturelike evidence. I do not know if EMI is trying to sell the place after all.
Mastering records is straightforward in its purest form. Take a stereo recording and transfer it to formats capable of easy reproduction. The lacquer or copper master for an LP. Whatever the hell they use to make CDs in their last dying iteration.
It is not long at the mastering studio, however, before the arcane nature of the proceedings is evident. To optimize a recording, much may be done. Often quite more ‘optimization’ is done in mastering audio than is necessary, but such is the story with recording music, making music, and indeed making art in general.
Steve Rooke at Abbey Road is an able craftsman who has yielded nothing but excellent results at previous sessions. I trust his ears are still sensitive and his work environment intact.