Hi all,

As there are a fair few musicians here doing things on the cheap, I thought you'd be good to ask this question to. My band've pretty much finished recording an EP, but so far it's all been done on home computers, avoiding the costs of the studio. We want the EP mastered to fine tune the levels out from start to finish and to give it more of a cohesive feel as one piece rather than a series. I read Bob Katz's Mastering Audio, but to be honest what I mostly took away from it was that I'm nowhere near qualified enough to be a mastering engineer. On the other hand, we don't have an abundance of money to start spending on others doing it for us, though the fresh pair of ears on the tracks would probably be a huge help.

So, any advice or recommendations? Are the automated tools (like Izotope Ozone) good enough on the whole? Is it worth investing extra into this stage of the recording, or will it barely make a difference?

Thanks!