Audio Mastering Equipment - Analogue Vs Digital

Mastering is a final stage in audio production and it's remit is to adjust the tone of music and enhance the music before it is released it is also a quality check on music before it is released on the final release medium whether that is a vinyl or a CD disk. (or digital file for online distribution .MP3/.AAC/.wav)

In a carefully constructed audio mastering studio the music will be listened to on very accurate equipment and speakers in a room which is acoustically treated to provide a linear frequency response. Here an engineer will make tweaks and adjustments to prepare the music for playback on many different sound systems such as laptops, nightclubs and car radios.

In a mastering studio you will find both analogue and digital technologies.
Both types of equipment have their advantages and disadvantages in a mastering environment. Digital is compact and can reside within 1 machine saving studio space, it also has instant recall of setting within the digital audio workstation environment. Development in PC power and software programming means digital software is much improved now and better sounding than ever. This has reduced costs of ownership and an all digital mastering environment is now much more viable although still deemed as being the domain of the semi professional. Despite this there is continued demand for good sounding analogue equipment, vintage units can be very costly to own and these masterpieces of electronic design have been recreated in digital form known as "emulations" or "retro style plug ins". A classic unit that has been emulated is the Fairchild 670 audio limiter which would set you back 16,000.00 whereas a plugin emulation might be 250.00. However in mastering most engineers opt for a mix of both analogue and digital so the strengths of both types of equipment can be employed which is usually the right choice for optimizing music mixes before release.

Analogue audio equipment has a long history and has been used since the origins of recording began so it has a strong body of history and use which to this very day retains it's favour as being able to create "warm" and "well rounded" sounds. The equipment sometimes has quirks and if vintage in nature can be unreliable. Classic analogue designs have stood the test of time and the electronic circuits employed are still revered to this very day.Analogue is "hands on" and mastering engineers like the operational qualities along with some of the character's that analogue can provide such as smooth, warm, softening and thickening. Digital software EQ and compression is convenient during mastering and yet many engineers suggested something was missing or different about the digital sound when it first arrived, suggesting that it was "sterile" and "characterless". Digital processing is a more recent development starting with DAT (originally a failed consumer format)/DCC machines and digital multi tracks back in the 1980's. With the common use of a PC or Apple computer the DSP (digital signal processing) has followed in the footsteps of analogue with digital EQ, compression and other forms of processing which were not easy to implement in the analogue domain.

So to sum up both analogue and digital have their place in a mastering studio
but it would be a wise engineer who employs both using the strengths of each to make the best masters possible for his clients.