At its most basic level, mastering a record means quite literally creating a master copy of that record. Technically, releasing analogue music on CD necessarily involves remastering, insofar as it requires making a digital version of the original analogue master. For CD audio and most other digital audio, the sample rate is 44.1 kHz, meaning the analogue sound is sampled 44,100 times per second. Even a generation ago, recording music meant booking time in an expensive studio. Today, though, even a basic free-to-download digital audio workstation software offers the sort of functionality that used to be the preserve of professional studios.