Актёр (Actor)

Track 4 of 7 on «Ностальгия» (Nostalgiya, “Nostalgia”), the album by Полуживые (Poluzhivye), on poems by Arseny Tarkovsky.

On the site: https://vovazakharov.com/music/actor

Files

• actor_mix.mp3 — the mix, unmastered: what the master was made from.
• Полуживые - Актёр.mp3 — the master. The mix survives only as an mp3, so the master is one too.
• mastering/ — the script that made the master: master.py, the spectrum.py it imports, and their requirements.txt.

How it was mastered

pip install -r mastering/requirements.txt
python mastering/master.py actor_mix.mp3 ref.flac actor.mp3

with ffmpeg on PATH and the reference below saved as ref.flac. Half strength (master.py's default): Matchering matches the mix to the reference, half of the EQ difference goes onto the mix, and a limiter keeps the decoded file under -1 dBTP. master.py's docstring has the whole chain.

The reference

«Ночной сад» (Nochnoy sad, “Night Garden”), Полуживые, at vovas-music/sad@34d860b — raw download: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vovas-music/sad/34d860bc22425910efaaa654e3e0b8f901064129/Poluzhivye%20-%20Nochnoy%20sad.flac

It was picked blind: three catalogue masters each mastered the mix, and the operator ranked them unlabelled, loudness-matched, before learning which was which. It is linked rather than copied here, since it already lives in this organization.