Perhaps things have changed, but in my day each track would be mastered individually on it's merits and the compiling into an album would be done by the balancing engineer.

The mastering process could include EQ, compression, or limiting and the amount of treatment would depend on how good the source material was. Sometimes, very little would be necessary.

Balancing would involve only volume changes to ensure that the perceived volume at the transition from one track to another remained the same. Think of an album, say Greatest Hits of whatever. The balancing engineer is never going to start applying EQ and compression to maybe twenty classic tracks where people have come to know and love those particular sounds.

It's a constant source of annoyance to me that the job of balancing engineer seems to have disappeared from TV these days, because most of the transitions between programs are appalling.

ROG.

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