Audio repair and restoration has always been a huge part of mastering – and not only for re-mastering vintage material.

Even modern recordings can have problems like clicks, thumps, hiss, amp buzz, distortion and many more. Ideally they’d all be fixed in the mix, but sometimes it’s not possible or they get missed – or maybe the best tools for the task aren’t available.

In this episode I talk to Mike & Alexey from iZotope about my personal favourite piece of software for this kind of task, and many more - iZotope RX.

Version 12 of RX has just been released, with many new features and improvements. We talk about this and much more during the episode including:

• Why I love RX and have been using it since 2011
• My favourite features
• Some “secret weapon” strategies
• The toughest challenges for restoration
• How using the “wrong” feature can sometimes be helpful

Links and more episodes here:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-109

Mentioned in this episode:

Mastering

Click HERE to work with Ian

Learn to master !

Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

I used to say that the Loudness Range (LRA) measurement wasn't really useful when mastering - but recently I changed my mind. In this episode I explain why, and how loudness range is actually something you might want to pay attention to, as well.

Topics include:

• What is the Loudness Range ?
• How is it different to Dynamic Range ?
• What even IS Dynamic Range, anyway ?
• Why did I say that LRA wasn't helpful ?
• How I changed my mind, and why
• How LRA could be useful for you

Links and more episodes here:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-108

Mentioned in this episode:

Tools

For Ian's mastering plugins, click HERE

Learn to master !

Click HERE to see Ian's courses and mastering resources

Leapwing

Find out more about Leapwing's plugins

More and more people are choosing to get vinyl copies of their music made one at a time, rather than having hundreds of copies pressed at once. Or in very small batches, or allowing fans to order copies on demand.

So how does this work, and what does it mean ? How do you get the best quality results, and minimise the risk of getting something back that you're not happy with ?

Mastering for vinyl is a whole different ball-game, as I discussed in detail with Scott Hull in Episode 94. So in this show, Joe Caithness and I dig into the topic in detail, discussing:

• What is a "lathe cut" or "dubplate"
• How are they made, and how are they different to traditionally pressed vinyl ?
• Do you always need to have your music mastered by a dedicated vinyl cutting engineer ?
• How do you get the specs for the audio you should supply ? And
• Why this can be trickier than it sounds
• Do you really need to mono the bass on vinyl ? And what about phase ?

Links and more episodes here:

www.themasteringshow.com/episode-107

Mentioned in this episode:

Mastering

Click HERE to work with Ian

Tools

For Ian's mastering plugins, click HERE

Leapwing

Find out more about Leapwing's plugins