AES London 2010
Recording Industry Event T2

Saturday, May 22, 15:30 — 17:00 (Room C1)

T2 - Mastering for Broadcast

Presenter:
Darcy Proper, Galaxy Studios - Belgium

Abstract:
Mastering has often had an aura of mystery around it. Those "in the know" have always regarded it as a vital and necessary last step in the process of producing a record. Those who have never experienced it have often had only a vague idea of what good mastering could achieve. However, the loudness race in recent years has put the mastering community under pressure; on one side from the producers or labels who want their product louder than the competition and on the other side from the artists or mixers who don’t want their work smashed into a lifeless "brick" and maxed out by excessive use of limiter plug-ins.

Darcy Proper is a multi-Grammy-winning mastering engineer whose golden ears (and hands) have put the finishing touches on a vast array of high profile records, among many others those from Steely Dan. She will talk about her approach to her work and will also demo examples with various degrees of compression with a legacy broadcast processor as the final piece of gear in the signal chain, simulating a radio broadcast. The audience is then able to experience the effects and artifacts that different compression levels will cause at the consumer's end.