Developer Igor Vasiliev, creator of MIDI Pattern Sequencer, has announced Audio Mastering Studio for iPad, described as a “fully functional audio mastering application for iPad”.
Features:
- Linear-phase 10-bands graphic Equalizer based on phase shifts – has “unique soft sound, very close in sound to the quality analog devices”.
- Harmonic Saturator with three sets of harmonics
- Stereo Imaging “takes control of sound space of your composition and lets you make sounding wider or narrower in each of three bands.”
- Loudness Maximizer can increase RMS of your track without audible distortion.
Here’s what he has to say about Audio Mastering Studio:
This project is done in cooperation with a professional sound engineer Andrew Startsev who has been developing and producing audio devices and software for audio recording and mastering for many years.
This all-in-one tool lets you process sound, converts audio formats, change sample rate, convert bit depth, cut part of track for demo or preview and make fade-in and fade-out.
With very easy and clear interface you can tweak all controls in real time and hear final result right away. All settings will be stored for each track and you don’t lose accidentally the best sounding of your composition. Also this feature allows you to upbuild common style for all tracks of your album and finalize all of them at once.
Built-in presets for popular styles allow you to quickly find the general mood of composition and slightly tweak to get a better result. If you have own preset that you want to use for future you can save it in one of presets hotkey.
Audio Mastering Studio for iPad availability and pricing are to be announced.
Nice one. Looks promising.
Even if I don’t own an iPad I am very curious about this app. Mastering seems to be of the esoteric mystical side of music production. Musicians are often encouraged to mix their tracks and perhaps at most pre-master them, but the mastering itself should be done by the “pros”. Can this app be a game changer? Maybe, but ultimately it’s all about your personal knowledge regarding mastering. You can have the top of the line mastering program and still master tracks badly if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Folks often have the misconception that Mastering is some sort of esoteric mystical art. It’s really not. There is nothing mystical about properly understanding Compression and EQ. Understanding parallel compression, gating, side chaining, and eqing to remove or boost certain frequencies with a good listening environment is pretty much all it takes but it does start with a good mix. Mastering for an album release also involves balancing the song volumes for each song. Most pro mastering studios often have a really good listening room and some high end hardware EQs, compressors, limiters, etc. This app will give you some of the general tools needed but you can’t polish a turd so to speak. There is only so much you can do with a bad mix. Get a really good sounding mix down and do little fine tuning with this app. I wonder if it will have a Spectrum analyzer. This is the only app to date that was designed specifically for mastering. I’m def going to check it out.
Exactly my point. I’ve seen (and sometimes bought) a lot of magasines focusing on the techniques of recording and mixing, but rarely have I seen an issue dedicated to mastering. The usual stance in the mainstream (printed) media is that yes, you can be good at both recording, producing and mixing your music, but that mastering is to be done by the pros; warlocks in ivory towers applying magick to your tracks. And at best one can find guides on how to pre-master the music and thusly making it easier for the person responsible for the mastering, but the media seldom focuses on the mastering process and makes it look far more complex than it actually is. And I don’t mean to denigrate anyone working professionally in mastering, it’s just that I feel mastering should take a bigger place in today’s music production culture, both in printed mainstream media and on the internet. That’s why I’m glad an app like Audio Mastering Studio will be available.
Mastering is all about having some good monitors, a room with good acoustics and an audio interface with clean converters, so as long as there are some pro audio interfaces that work with ios mastering on the ipad should work just as it works on a dektop, on the other hand mastering is not really something that can benefit from the computer being more mobile.
Spectrum analyser is a must so you can actually “see” what you are doing and obviously listening to your tweakings. You can mix on a mobile computer with excellent cans, not ideal but can be done with great results.
Mastering is often cast as a “black art” of sorts in the project studio world, but in the traditional studio world engineers and producers understand the value of a talented mastering engineer with a professional mastering suite at his hands. The idea of “mastering” on an ipad in the sense of what happens in the professional production world is akin to saying you’re going to race your Golf GTI at Le Mans. Yes, you can race a GTI, and have a great time going it, having fun and learning as you go, but it isn’t the same thing as say the Audi team racing their monster prototype machines at Le Mans.
Traditional mastering tools are more than just “a good EQ” or “good converters”. Most mastering suites are using esoteric gear that even leaves the audiophile community scratching their heads. Some of the converters popular in mastering houses are $20K boxes. High end, purpose built analog summing amplifiers and specialty EQs for the subtle tweaks required are also par for the course. One of the loudspeaker pairs popular with big name mastering engineers cost nearly $200K. Yes, on one hand it may be overkill, on the other, when you consider the scale of a major music release every little detail becomes hypercritically important.
Now, we all end up at some sort of “mastering” stage in our work, and indeed you can master with any toolset in any environment. This ipad app can certainly be used to fine tune a demo or self-release. I go through a mastering stage in Logic or FLStudio as my last steps of a mix. Just don’t delude yourself into thinking any of it takes the place of seasoned professionals in half-million dollar mastering suites.
Don’t think this app will be a gamechanger. It doesn’t change the need for what makes a good mastering session possible. Might be more convenient for some to get their feet wet however.