Most home musicians and amateurs do not understand the process of creating audio recordings, so I'd like to put some light on it here. If you are a professional, please just skip it, it would be so boring for you :).

Part 1. Recording

Whether you are recording real audio or using virtual instruments, you have to understand, that this is the most important step. Never underestimate it. When you make this wrong, it will be wrong forever. Most problems can never be completely fixed. You can mix the recording many times, but recording itself happens just once, that's it.

There are people, recording engineers, who know exactly what this is all about. This is not an easy task, not like placing a few microphones and that's all. If you cannot hire one, take a long time preparing the setup, don't rush it. A few advices for you:

• Always record in at least 96 kHz and 24 bits.
  At the moment the technology is pretty cheap and all audio interfaces provide this quality, if not, get a better one. Do you want your sound to be distorted, without treble etc.? I don't think so.
• Select good microphones and preamps.
  Microphones and preamps make a huge difference in resulting sound. Never use ultra-cheap technology when recording an album. You don't need to spend fortune on it, but don't take the cheapest devices either.
• Find the best position for the microphones.
  Every millimeter makes a difference. You can also change microphones, but if you don't have much experience, you probably won't hear the difference, so just play with the location. Your goal is to make the microphone record the most of it.
  For example, when recording a bass drum, it will never sound good without some equalization, but do not move the microphone somewhere just because it sounds better at the very moment, there must be bass frequencies, middle frequencies and high frequencies. Then you can remove what is not needed using an equalizer, but you cannot equalize, what is not recorded!
• Preparation is more important than the recording itself!
  You will spend hours placing microphones, setting up preamps etc. Once you are finished, it should be done well. If not, you will destroy the recording and even the best musicians won't save it. And please do not change the settings later. Many amateurs do a quick setup, record a song and then they find out that the guitar microphone should be placed a little further away from the amp. They do not realize, that the mixing engineer expects similar sound in all of the songs. Otherwise he will have much more work with it, and time is money!
• Record in a good room.
  You would be surprised how this matters. It is not so bad with guitar amps, since the microphones are usually placed a few centimeters from it. But when recording drums or vocals, for example, it makes a huge difference. You may not hear it at first, but when the sound comes through all those compressors and equalizers, you will definitely hear the room you used for recording and it cannot be undone. And trust me, bathroom is not a good recording space even if you like singing in the shower :).

Part 2. Mixing

Mixing should be done by someone who didn't participate on the recording. Why? Because these folks have already some idea about the resulting mix created by the series of repeating the material all over again. Musicians want their instruments to be loud, because their tracks are the most important, and the recording engineer spent a lot of time setting up crappy bass drum, so he wants all that work to be worth something, hence the bass drum should be loud, right? :)

The purpose of mixing is to take all the recorded tracks and put them together, so that the listener hears exactly what you want him to hear. Read this again. Note that before you even think about mixing, you should decide, what is important. Most beginners think they could just adjust the volumes, so that all tracks have similar loudness. Actually it is an extremely complicated and time consuming task, which, as you might think, doesn't involve volumes and panoramas only, not at all. But there will be a special tutorial for it.

Anyways, the resulting mix should be a stereo track, which may not sound perfect, it may not be bright enough, loud enough etc. However when you are listening to it, it must be clear, all instruments must have distinct tone and it must tell you what you should hear. For example, during a guitar solo, a listener should focus on the guitar. When he wants, it should be easy to hear the rhythm and harmony too, but the guitar solo must be the first thing to hear. It's just the modern way of life - people are lazy, you must even tell them what to hear, otherwise it would be too much work for them :).

One reason why mixing is so difficult is the so-called "ear fatigue". During the process of listening to the same part of the song again and again your ears become adjusted to it and you are no longer capable of judging it. So here comes another rule: always take breaks. Your ears cannot be trusted after a certain period. With experience you will become more resistible, but it will probably take years. And trust me, you will not mix your song in a single day. Take a week for it and improve it every day.

Part 3. Mastering

Interestingly many people don't even know there is something like mastering. This last part is very important though and it in fact defines the resulting sound.

Mastering should be done by someone not involved in the process, again, because that would be the only person not affected by all those things that happened before. And of course, if this is a professional, even better, because this also takes years to learn.

Mastering engineer takes a mix and "makes it sound good for particular purpose". Most importantly, he equalizes it, so it has all the necessary frequencies, adjusts dynamics, so there are not such huge differences between silent and loud parts, and makes it sound louder, since louder means "better" these days. See mastering tutorial for more information.

Why don't you mix and master at once?

• First because you don't have unlimited CPU power and mastering processors usually take lots of it.
• Next because it should be done by 2 different people, so they can judge the sound correctly.
• Finally and most importantly, because it would be seriously inefficient. For example, mastering usually involves using multiple dynamic processors and equalizers. So just for simplicity imagine you place a compressor on the master track and continue mixing with it. Let's say you just don't hear the bass enough. So you increase volume of it. But that increases the whole mix level, which the master compressor doesn't like so you loose more dynamics and as a result you need to increase the threshold of the compressor. But that increases level after the compressor, and since there is probably a limiter, it will start pumping or distorting or something like that. You can easily imagine similar scenario with equalization. And this is just a basic inside, the reality is much more complex.

The result of mastering process is a set of audio files with specified parameters. For example, all tracks of your new CD. In that case you request sampling rate 44100 Hz, 16 bits resolution and maximal level say -0.2dB. Also all the songs should have similar spectral character and volume (this is actually not that simple).

And that's all. Just 3 steps. If you take your time with each of it, you may create a great new CD. If you rush it, it will eventually end in your own garbage :).