The Story Behind "mixing and mastering "
​When I am mixing and mastering a record, the goal was to let his unique vocal performance breathe while carving out a heavy, spacious landscape for the riddim. Wayne had that deep, haunting roots delivery, and my job at the console was to act as a conductor—using tactical fader moves, filtering, and echoes to elevate the emotion already captured on the tape.
​The Realities of Mastering: No Compressors Allowed
​There is a big misconception today that mastering requires a heavy chain of plugins, limiters, and maximizers to make a record sound "professional." When we were cutting these classic tracks to vinyl, compressor-limiters were not a part of our mastering tool.
​The philosophy was simple: once a song is mixed properly, the dynamics are exactly where they need to be. If you did your job right at the mixing desk, you didn't need to manipulate the audio further. Over-compressing a mix kills the transients of the drum and flattens the weight of the bass.
​The Art of Mastering vs. The Digital World
​What is happening now in the digital world is not mastering. Today, people use the term "mastering" to describe slapping digital limiters, multi-band compressors, and loudness maximizers onto a file just to make it artificially loud. That is simply an extension of mixing—or worse, a way to try and fix a bad mix after the fact.
​The true art of mastering is entirely mechanical and physical: it is the process of moving music onto disk.
​Mastering was never about changing the sound of the music; it was about the precision engineering required to translate a master tape onto a physical piece of lacquer or vinyl so it could be manufactured. The workflow followed a strict step-by-step sequence:
​Step 1: Set the Cutting Levels – Dialing in the optimal volume to get the track as hot as possible on the wax without overmodulating the signal.
​Step 2: Set the Groove Pitch – Manually adjusting the physical spacing between the grooves on the disc. Because reggae has massive low-end energy, you had to widen the pitch so the heavy bass modulations wouldn't bleed into the next groove or cause the needle to skip.
​Step 3: Cut the Record – With the levels and spacing locked in, you let the lathe do its work.
​No fixing it in the mix, and no hiding behind a limiter. What you heard on the mixing board is exactly what went onto the vinyl.