The following discussion is taken from my Audio Mastering book ‘Separating the science from fiction’, chapter 2, ‘Enabling analysis’.

Available at www.routledge.com/9781032359021

Music making often references previous creative outcomes. Whether consciously or unconsciously, creative people absorb a great deal from the music around them and from the soundscapes of everyday life. This osmosis of musical form is an audio engineer’s library of sonic reference.

Simply listening to music is the best way to improve your ability to record, mix and master. In many conversations with my peers over the years, I received one consistent piece of advice, to critically listen to as much music as you can. When I discuss audio with new generations of audio engineers, I feel it useful to point out that the only tangible aspect I possess as an engineer in comparison to them is my sense of perspective from my library of listening built from constantly referencing audio in critical spaces. It is not some technical prowess, critical insight or knowledge; there are no secret skills or dark arts in audio, all theory can be learnt and skills practised. I have just listened to a lot of music and developed a more sophisticated sense of average across genres to what quality is from these decades of absorption.

The nature of familiarisation with excellent sounding music will enable you to comprehend what makes a great sounding track, not just the music itself, but its tone and dynamic – the sonics. This sense of overview is critical. A song that translates in all environments, whether played in a venue, mobile device, massive club system or a beautiful sounding hi-fi, is a song that has the composite parts of balance required in both spatial and stereo impression, tone and dynamic, thus making it a great reference. The spatial is the ambience and dimensional depth or often referred to in mixing as the depth of field. The stereo impression is where instruments are panned in the stereo image. I’m not overlooking the roles song writing and voicing have to play in the creation of this positive sound balance. If all the instrument registers pocket in frequency and the riffs interplay and wrap around each other, then there is a natural density and balance within the song’s construction. This gives a positive balance to the mix and hence the master. A great sounding outcome has to have the correct humble beginnings in the register of the parts. If they clash, it is never going to have clarity or loudness. It will be masked and overly weighted.

References are highly personal; what makes great music is definitely in the ‘ear’ of the beholder. But the more genres and eras you digest, the more you will see that good tonal and dynamic balance is a consistent average throughout quality outcomes. Decades go through fashions in dynamic range and tone that are normally driven by the technology of the time and its use artistically. But when observing the music in overview, this premise of tone and dynamic balance holds true.

In my opinion, a reference should be a piece of music that ‘you’ feel sounds superlative wherever or however you listen to it – a great musical and sonic translation on all systems. In listening and analysing music, it is critical to be aware of the most important aspect of our perception of audio – loudness.