Mastering and Mastering Tools

[Duck]

With MC 6 home version as presets chained I have CD Master 1 and 2, Mastering Compression and Reverb, and Mixdown and Premastering which are presets in Classic compressor. I know that mastering can be mysterious but to me it's trying to get the final mix to sound as good as it can. Sometimes the presets smooth out the mix very nicely and other times I have to tweak setting and go back and readjust tracks. Then again much of mixing and mastering is subjective.

I don't have a specific question but I would like to hear everyone's thoughts on the subject.

[Mark Bliss]

I think if your trying to spark a debate, you picked a good subject.

Ok, I'll bite.

1: I think that when most DAW users think they are "mastering" they are doing nothing of the sort. (ouch! )
2: Using a compressor preset isn't "mastering."
3: Nothing personal, but "trying to get the final mix to sound as good as it can" is simply the definition of mixing.

Subjective indeed. That includes the concept that is you are getting results you like, whatever you are doing or using is good for you. Upgrading or adding gear wont improve your results, you will.

Perhaps lets go back to your previous post and define a bit......

[Duck]

After you have your tracks mixed and EQed what are your steps?

What tools are you using?

Here's what I do and let me know what you think.

1. If I have a track that is close to peaking but still isn't up in the mix I apply a limiter. It still sounds loud enough but it's not peaking.

2. I reference with headphones and speakers.

3. I add a touch of reverb to the mix. Usually with the preset in MC 6 I remove some.

4. I send what I think sounds best to a friend and get his opinion.

5. Remix and sometimes solo the Bass and the drums and then start add the other tracks back in.

6. Add or remove effects.

7. Wait a day and go back to it.

8. Realize I don't like it and go back and try more stuff.

What's made it tough for me is that when I was between bands I did live sound using analog boards, gates, compression, delays, digital reverb, sonic maximizers, crossover, spectrum analyzers. I realized Mixing and EQing for a room is a whole lot more different than mixing for a CD. I'm still figuring out capture for tracking. I guess what I'd, like given my limited knowledge and skill is a bunch of tweakable presets for mastering. There seems to be a very fine line between a lively sounding recording and a dead sounding one when it comes to my recordings. I want to get better at this mysterious dark art.

The other thing is a matter of taste. I like things to sound live but some of today's music sounds smoothly produced but bland over produced and too slick for my tastes. A lot of that may be the music itself.

[gypsy101]

this guy has some good info on mastering. read a few of his blogs-
http://www.massivemastering.com/blog/in ... tering.php

also good-
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid= ... cience+pdf


https://www.google.com/search?sourceid= ... .........0.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evJo5_qt6mY

be sure to google "loudness wars" too.

[the pannacotta army]

Personally, whatever FX I use I apply at the mixing stage (or before) to individual tracks. All adjustments and tweaking are also done at the mixing stage. I try to get everything sounding how I want it (or as good as possible) then bounce down to a single WAV file.
The only "mastering" I then apply to that WAV is a limiter to get the finished track up to a decent level. My personal experience is I've never found a really good freebie limiter and it's the one effect that I've spent a bit on (I use FabFilter's Pro L).
If anything sounds like it needs adjustment after the limiter, I go back to the mix stage to fix it rather than trying to apply further FX to the single WAV file.

Apart from getting a decent volume level, my view is that “Mastering” (whatever that is exactly) is not really a necessity for amateur/bedroom producers, but it’s rather something we feel we should be doing.

[Mark Bliss]

my view is that “Mastering” (whatever that is exactly) is not really a necessity for amateur/bedroom producers, but it’s rather something we feel we should be doing.

That right there IMO is a thoughtful and enlightened observation to be further considered folks.

[Rolling Estonian]

I'm relatively new to this but the way I look at mastering is if I'm going to be distrubting an entire 'album/cd/record'. I may get there someday but for now, and for most everyone I know, mastering is the final step before mass production, A good mix will do fine.

M

[GovernmentMule]

I send all my music out to be mastered. The company is called Izotope.
I slap Ozone 5 on the Master Fx and scroll through the presets and find one I like. Then I set back and listen and then tweak the verb or whatever else I think needs a little something and then mixdown. Easy Peasy.

[Duck]

There's some good stuff coming out of a place in Equador called Big Audio Ghost. https://www.clowdy.com/BigAudioGhost If I can't master mastering I'll be sending my demos to them. Anything I release for sale will be going to them. Their prices are rock bottom because it is so much cheaper to live in Equador than in the US. These guys are magicians.

[aquataur]

Mastering is an art and a craft. I do not fulfil any of those qualifications and leave my hands off it.

Yes I can output a CD, but it will be not master-ing, it will be apprentice-ing.

-helmut

[Mark Bliss]

*Full disclosure, This is just one persons opinion, based on one persons perspective. I admit in part I find it almost humorous, because I have no real interest in producing music for sale. In part because I am a realist. I do this for fun, mental exercise and self entertainment. I have long since accepted that my best efforts garner little interest from even those closest to me, much less present a marketable product.
And when I speak of "us" I am speaking of the home producer in general.

I have often pondered the question of why there seems to be explosion of interest in the last two years or so on the subject of mastering, DIY or otherwise, amongst the home studio community.

Over the last 5 or 6 years, as I became deeply re-immersed in studying music production in earnest, I was very obsessed with mixing, and I listened to a LOT of people's work, analysing for clues as to what made good work tick, and what mediocre work might benefit from. I slowly formed the opinion that many or most of us doing this, for a hobby or with higher aspirations, would benefit greatly from backing up from mixing, and work harder on performance, arrangement, composition and basic rudimentary recording skills. Many of the mixes I was hearing, were clearly work that wasn't ready for the mixing stage. And the result of too many i'll conceived decisions to add more plug-ins and processing to tracks that no plug-in or process could fix.
A great deal of us would qualify as delusional and should consider taking up golf to be honest. I am not talking about all, but yes, majority. Us.

And I often wondered why the market was so flooded with mixing tutorial content, often from well known award winning producers, seemingly eager to sell all the things they had learned at bargain prices. The condition of the professional music industry and the need to supplement income might certainly be a major factor, despite the common selling presentation that "they just want to help anyone with the desire to learn to do this"...... Hogwash. Lets get real. Its easy income from an eager consumer market. They are hearing the same attempts as me and they have nothing much to worry about as far as maintaining their careers. And lets face the fact that many of these people are a fraud, at best just re-presenting what others before them have already offered. Its cash flow, and we are the cows.

So it has expanded to include "mastering" and the same people who think they can mix, are now becoming DIY "mastering engineers".
There's some good people like Ian Sheppard offering good advise, make no mistake. But for the most part, this is a bad joke. My best example is a guy who has marketed himself well enough to consistently get hits near or at the top of the Google list when you search for information on the subject. I can summarize what his paid tutorials offer in one quick sentence and save you some money. "Compress and limit your tracks until they sound pretty bad, then a little more. That will be just about right."
Fraud, charlatan and idiot. Cash flow. Cows.

So with that explanation of where I am coming from, realistic or pessimistic, your call- I'll add this opinion:
Adding another EQ and compressor/limiter to the main bus of your song is not really "mastering" at all. That is still "mixing," just the same as if you placed those plugins on a submix bus.

Now go ahead. Shoot me.

[fredfish]

Now go ahead. Shoot me.

Bang!

[fredfish]

Seriously Mark - you talk a lot of sense - I struggle to input tracks that are worthy of listening to, let alone mastering to a full blown CD. Dosen't stop me enjoying the tinkering - but to be honest these ever ageing ears increasingly cant notice the subtleties of a good master anyway! I have long since decided that for creativity I will concentrate on the playing and doing a bit of Mixing - but full blown mastering, not high on my list of priorities.

Cheers

John

[Mark Bliss]

Missed me John!

[aquataur]

There used to be a program, or web-site, that offered some (free?) software that would scan your tracks and then, based upon some sort of past experience, make some adjustments like multiband compression and equalization to the tracks for a homogenous CD.

I thought whenever I was in the need for stuff like that I would use it, but I cannot find it again. But it is out there.

-helmut.