All of my mastering was done in adobe audition, I bounced the tracks from Pro Tools and imported them in. The first thing that was done to the tracks once mixed was to clean up the beginning and the ends, some cases there were large amounts of banter and silence, I deleted time that was not needed and faded in/ out on some of the tracks this can be heard the best on Take Your Time.
To get the songs to CD volume I took two steps - the first was using a MultiBand Compressor which allowed me to define the crossover frequencies and compress them which will give me the option to raise the volume up slightly.
With that little bit more space to work with the second step was to fill it. I then used a hard limiter and depending on the track raise the volume of the track above a defined threshold but also taking care of any clipping that may occur.
Surround Sound
The surround sound mix for Glad You Could Make It was also done using Adobe Audition. I bounced a few tracks from the session from pro tools these were;
- Main Part of the song (drums, vocals and guitars)
- Outro Solo
- Backing Lead guitar for the choruses and
- Violins
These were then all sent in various directions with automated movement as the song went on. The lead guitars were split left and right forward whilst the violins were sent to the back and brought centre left and right.
