Mastering Audio - The Art and the Science - Reviews

Nigel Lord reviews Bob Katz's latest contribution to the mysteries of audio mastery

Price: £30.00
Website: http://www.focalpress.com

Review by Nigel Lord

Mastering Audio - The Art and the Science This book’s unusually incisive rear-cover advertising blurb proclaims that, “To master audio, you must become a master of audio” – and that’s precisely what it sets out to
help you achieve. By the time you’ve navigated your way through the 300 well-illustrated pages, you realise that the dual meaning of the title is no accident.

Mastering Audio – The Art And The Science covers all the processes involved in mastering music. But, as author Bob Katz has correctly identified, for this to reach any kind of successful outcome you’ll need a reasonable understanding of the entire recording process – digital and analogue. In fact, the book focuses as much on the philosophy of sound and recording as it does on science – though it’s certainly no worse for that.

Written from the perspective of the professional mastering engineer, it does perhaps go into greater depth than most people would need in a home or project studio environment. But no one ever suffered from having too great an understanding of a subject, and it’s always useful to know what constraints the professionals have to work under.

Like many technical authors from the US, Katz’s approach is highly idiosyncratic, but from page one you feel you’re in the presence of someone who’s ‘been there and done that’ – and gained the experience to point out the pitfalls. Katz also relates the technology to real-life examples of the kind of equipment used in mastering applications, although the rather odd sepia toning applied to the pictures does make them look like they should have engineers in brown coats poring over them in some pre-war recording facility.

But don’t be fooled, this book is bang up to date and essential reading for anyone hoping to produce commercial music.

9/10 Verdict: A comprehensive and often demanding read, but one of the best reference guides on the subject to date.

Score: 9/10

This review first appeared in Music Tech Magazine issue 09
Filed under Books

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