16-bit: A particular width of samples within an audio file. This is the resolution used on audio CDs. It is good quality, but is nowadays not considered good enough quality for professional mastering processes.
24-bit: A particular width of samples within an audio file. This is a step up from 16-bit CD quality, and is in widespread use in the audio industry.
32-bit: A particular width of samples within an audio file. This is the best quality in mainstream use in the audio industry.
44.1KHz: The industry standard frequency of samples (per second) in a digitally-encoded sound. Other common frequencies are 48KHz, 96KHz, and 192KHz.
AIFF: This stands for Audio Interchange File Format, created by Apple, that allows a sound to be represented digitally with no loss of quality (other than the loss caused by the digitisation itself). A competing lossless format is WAV.
Album: A collection of about ten songs that are presented as a single coherent artistic work.
AU$: Indicates an amount in Australian Dollars.
Australian Business Number: Every business in Australia (whether sole trader, partnership, or company) has a unique business number called its Australian Business Number that enables the business to be unambiguously identified, and which enables regulators and customers of the business to identify the legal entity that is conducting the business.
Compression: This is an ambiguous term that can refer to several different things depending on the context. In audio production, it refers to the reduction of the dynamic range of a piece of music, typically to increase its loudness. In audio file management, it refers to the coding of a sound in a different format that uses less space (bytes) in the audio file. Typically audio file compression reduces the quality of a sound, but reduces the space that it takes to store and transmit.
dB: Decibels. This is formally a logarithmic metric for measuring the difference in the value of two different quantities. In music production, it is used in this relative way, but is also used in an absolute way to refer to the loudness of a sound, where 0dB is very quiet and 100dB is very loud.
EP: This is an acronym that stands for Extended Play. It is a collection of typically three to five songs. The EP stands between a single and an album.
EQ: This stands for "equalization". It refers to the process of changing the balance of different frequency components in an audio signal.
Filepass: A particular commercial website that facilitates the communication between audio service provides (such as mastering engineers) and their clients.
Final Mix: A song's final mix is a single stereo audio file (e.g. WAV or AIFF) that contains all the tracks of the song blended. A song's final mix is the input to the mastering process.
Hyperbits: An online music production school.
In The Box: This phrase is used to indicate that audio processing is performed entirely inside a computer. The alternative "outboard" indicates that audio processing is performed by dedicated audio hardware.
ISRC: Stands for International Standard Recording Code. This is a code that is included in the digital representation of a song that can be used to formally identify the owner of the song so that royalties for playing the song can be sent to them. Song distributors usually embed these codes in songs and then monitor the world's media to see if they turn up anywhere.
Limiting: The process of limiting the dynamic range of a song, but providing an absolute limit to the loudness of any part of the song. After limiting, the song can be made louder than before. Limiting is like Compression, but more drastic.
Loudness: A measure of how imposing in magnitude a sound is to a human listener. Loudness is measured in RMS (Root Mean Square volume) or LUFS (Loudness Unit Full Scale).
Master: This refers to the final mastered form of a song, typically a single WAV or AIFF file.
Mastering.com: An online school that provides instruction to train people to become mastering engineers.
Mixing: The process of taking several "tracks" and blending them into a single "Final Mix" ready for mastering.
Saturation: The process of taking a sound and adding harmonics to it to make it sound more prominent and/or louder.
Single: One song. If you have a few songs, it's called an EP. If you have about ten or more, it's called an album.
Song: A piece of music typically lasting a few minutes. The term is now ambiguous because it has historically been used to refer only to music that contains vocal singing, but has in the last decade been co-opted as a term used to represent any short self-contained piece of music on services such as iTunes and Spotify, regardless of whether it contains vocal singing.
SoundGym: A website where musicians, music producers, recording engineers, mixing engineers, and mastering engineers, can train their ears.
Stem: A stem is single blended form of one or more tracks within a song. For example, a song might consist of seventy tracks arranged into four groups: percussion, bass, keyboard, and vocals. The stems of the song would be four WAV files containing the blend of each of the four groups of tracks. The stems of a song can be provided to a mastering engineer to enable the engineer to perform a Stem Master.
Stem Master: A master that has been generated with access not just to the Final Mix of a song, but also to the song's Stems.
Track: This is an ambiguous term that can refer either to a "Song" or to one of the "tracks" that are mixed together to form a song.
US$: Indicates an amount in United States Dollars.
Vinyl: This refers to the audio medium of vinyl records. Vinyl was popular throughout most of the twentieth century, but declined when digital media become prominent. It has recently had a revival in popularity.
WAV: This is an audio file format created by IBM and Microsoft that allows a sound to be represented digitally with no loss of quality (other than the loss caused by the digitisation itself). A competing lossless format is AIFF.
WeTransfer: A particular website that provides a free service for transferring large files from one person to another on the internet.
Learn Learn about audio mastering. Formats Learn about audio file formats. FAQ Frequently Asked Questions. Resources Mastering books, courses, YouTube channels, and more.