The Best Audio Mastering Book, Video, and Course by John Rogers

I've used dozens of different brands of speakers in my career and I do like a few better than others.  But, this article deals more with types and sizes of speakers, not with the brand choices.

The main mixing and mastering speakers I currently use are Dynaudio 100w powered studio monitors with 7" woofers and 1.1" tweeters.  They have nice EQ adjustment options on the back and I know these speakers very well.  If you get speakers that are a little bigger, you'll get better LOW-end out of them, but I'm happy with the size I use.

The most important part of your speaker setup (that a lot of newbies don't know about) is having a sub-woofer on the floor between your main studio monitors. It's impossible to correctly mix or master any music content under 150hz without having a sub-woofer.  7-8" studio monitors will not play the low 50hz sub-bass AT ALL, and they're weak at best in the 100hz area.

Technically, you can properly mix or master in any room size.  But, I believe a smaller room is better than a very large one for someone who's just starting out. And when I say smaller I mean closer to 12'x15' than to 20'x30'.  I've mixed and mastered songs for a number of years in a 20'x30' room.  It took me a few days to get used to it, but after that I could do it.

The obvious problem with a big room is it's a very open space. If you don't have a good acoustic setup, the room will add reverb to every song.  You have to compensate for this on every song you mix or master, because the extra reverb you hear isn't really in the music.  It's coming from the room.

In a smaller room, even with no acoustic treatment, your mixes and masters will all sound more true. They won't be discolored from bouncing around a big room.

A Mid-Side Effects Processor lets you target two different parts of the stereo field. The outside and inside (center) of the stereo field.  These two ranges are preset and you don't have the option to change them, nor do you know specifically what the ranges are.  From my experience, I would say CENTER usually covers roughly the range of L70 to R70.  The SIDES are L to L71 and R71 to R.

WHY WOULD YOU NEED THIS? WHEN WOULD YOU USE THIS?
1. I use a Mid-Side Processor mostly to check the stereo field of a mix.  I use the Mid-Side 5-Band EQ and solo the SIDES.  If I don't hear much musical content on the sides (or only light reverb), the mix has a weak stereo spread and is basically a mono mix.  I then either ask for a remix or boost whatever is on the SIDES (which usually doesn't achieve much).

2. Sometimes a client mixes their stereo guitars (or background vocals) very loud and they overtake the entire song.  A Mid-Side 5-Band EQ can easily fix this problem by cutting only the SIDES down a few dbs.  Or by boosting the CENTER.

3. If the lead vocal is buried by guitars and the guitars are stereo panned well, sometime a Mid-Side 5-Band EQ boost around 2-3k in the CENTER will bring the vocal out.  You could also combine this with a SIDE cut.

Note - For mastering, I only use a Mid-Side 5-Band EQ, NOT any other Mid-Side Processors.  And when I do use it, it's only for the few instances I mentioned above.

The title pretty much explains it.  You're listening back and forth between a commercial industry standard reference song and the song mix you're mastering, comparing sonic qualities between the two.  How does the song you're mastering differ from the commercial reference song?

As you master a song, your goal is for it to sound more and more like the industry standard reference song in every sonic area.  You continue listening back and forth, while adding effects until you come as close as possible to replicating it.  I say as close as possible because if a the mix you're working on is very poor, you won't be able to replicate it.

A/B comparison is "trial and error testing against the reference track."  That's what you're doing in effort to match it.

It's funny how this works, but after you do this a while, the industry standard reference track is in your head!  You know exactly where each sonic quality is supposed to be and how to quickly apply the effects needed to get your master there.  When you reach this point, this is when you can master songs a lot faster.