A Statistical Approach to Automated Offline Dynamic Processing in the Audio Mastering Process
Mastering audio is a complicated yet important step in music production. It is used for many purposes, an important one is to ensure a typical loudness for a piece of music within its genre. In order to automate this step we use a statistical model of the dynamic section. To allow a statistical approach we need to introduce some modifications to the compressor’s side-chain or more precisely to its ballistics. We then develop an offline framework to determine compressor parameters for the music at hand such that the signal’s statistic properties meet certain target properties, namely statistical central moments, which for example can be chosen genre specific. Finally the overall system is tested with songs which are available to us as unmastered, professionally mastered, and only compressed versions.