Analogue mastering in the most simplest of terms refers to the mastering of music using analogue mastering equipment. Such equipment can include EQ's, compressors and other processing units. Each item of hardware you will find in a mastering studio has a specific purpose and it's own unique sound.
At Audio Animals we have carefully selected the equipment we have in our mastering studio, to achieve a mastering chain that gives us the ability to obtain a highly detailed yet loud master. We always recommend analogue mastering over digital mastering. The reason for this is we feel that analogue mastering achieves a far superior sound to digital mastering. Watch the video below and I explain the difference between analogue and digital mastering.
Another common assumption of analogue mastering is that digitally produced songs can not be mastered in the analogue domain and can only be digitally mastered. This is not the case, 90% of analogue masters performed here at Audio Animals are produced 100% digitally. Digitally produced music massively benefits in many ways from analogue mastering. Digitally produced music when digitally mastered can lack a lot of fullness and never really achieve that warm rounded sound so many producers long for. Taking a digital track out of the box and into the analogue domain achieves a far louder whilst more dynamic master.
At Audio Animals we pride ourselves on using some of the industry best analogue mastering equipment. Below is a list of equipment we have installed into our analogue mastering studio.
EQ's
- Maag EQ4
- Kush Klariphonic
- Dangerous Music BAX EQ
- Elysia Xfilter
Compressors
- Maselec MLA-3
- Maselec MPL-2
- Shadow Hills Dual Vandergraph
- Elysia Xpressor
Special Processing
- Rupert Neve 254 Tape Saturator
- Elysia Nvelope Transient Designer
- Bison 500 M/S Matrix
- SPL Twintube
- SPL Vitalizer MK2
Monitoring & Interfacing
- Lynx Aurora Interface
- SPL Phonitor 2
- ATC SCM20ASL MK2 Pro Monitors
