Anthony Lee Winns Jr. is a respected IT professional who has experience providing support at all organizational levels as a project manager. With a longstanding interest in music, Anthony Lee Winns Jr. enjoys audio recording and production work in his free time.
One of the fundamentals of bringing together sounds to create songs is mastering, which has its roots in an era of music leading up to the 1940s, when recordings were produced live in the studio and directly transferred to a soft metal alloy or wax disc. This disc was then used to mass produce commercial records at a manufacturing plant.
By the 1950s, magnetic tape had taken over this function, with elements such as equalization used to improve the sound that reached the end listener. One core function was in balancing the levels between tracks, such that all of the tracks on a record tied together, each within an optimal loudness range.
It was only in the 1970s, with the advent of digital technologies and the digital audio workstation (DAW), that mastering truly came into its own as a distinct discipline from mixing. While there is no definite dividing line between the two stages toward completing a recording, mastering involves a recording professional attuned to various speakers and headphones creating a blend of sounds that avoids jarring elements that keep the listener from enjoying the recording as a whole. It also positions elements such as bass and keys in ways that do not conflict and sound pleasing to the ear, whether on a home system or in a club environment.
