Anyone interested in a mastering showdown?

RedStone

RedStone

Member
I'm relatively new to the mastering world, but I really love it. I also have no mentors. Sooo - I'm wondering if we can get a few of the pro engineers together to master a tune? I will include myself on this list for the very bottom end of mastering. I consider myself a hack who can get reasonable results, but I'm interested to see if what I do and the choices I am making are coming at all close to what Pro engineers are doing.

What I'm really curious about is testing the following:

1) Can someone with keen ears and some understanding of the mastering process get "In the Box mastering" to be as good as, or close to as good as knowledgeable and more expensive "out of the box" mastering?
2) Is it possible to get a reasonably good master just using a well understood set of headphones and home speaker referencing?
3) Can a reasonable master be done on using roughly $300 worth of hardware + a laptop and only free plugins?
4) Is some hack mastering a song better than doing it with Mastering Box or LANDR?

The Pro folks will blow all of us out of the water, and that's ok. All the more reason to cough up some cash to get Massive or whomever you work with to master your tunes. I was more or less forced to learn how to master because of some serious cashflow problems, but it's turning out that it is one of my favorite things to do on this great blue and green planet :)

This also has the potential to maybe shift some thinking about Pro mastering. Do Mastering Engineers really need to spend thousands of dollars or more on gear to get a good sounding master? I use paid-for plugins for my client mastering work, but I am curious about if this sort of bottom of the barrel approach can actually work. I am not expecting anyone else to use free stuff. Throw the kitchen sink at this thing!

This will roughly be my "bottom of the barrel" ITB mastering Chain.
ReaEQ
ReaComp
ReaXComp
Marvel EQ
ReaFIR
Voxengo MSED
Voxengo SPAN
W1 Limiter
JS VU Meter
JS Dynamic Range Meter
JS MS encoder/decoder
JS HPLP Filter
JS Dither (if needed)

Rules:
1. The first qualifying song that is uploaded/shared will be the one to be mastered. Full productions of finished mixes only, and only full band mixes (i.e. no singer/songwriter stuff). Rock/pop only, since that is my wheelhouse at the moment.
2. Since we are using mp3s, perfection is not expected. However, if a 24-bit 44.1khz wave is shared, then we can open it up to "get it perfect". (Share using a public drop box link or something similar).
3. Each Participating ME lists the gear/plugins they used to get the job done. No settings or 'trade secrets' need to be revealed.
3. Assumption: The ME's room is treated. If not, mention that in your summary once you submit your final master.
4. Community votes on their favorite master. Once we have at least two other MEs and hopefully that includes at least one pro ready to participate, I'll set up a poll.
5. Time limit ... 1 week? ALL MEs post their results on the same day.
6. Final files no louder than DR9, to keep references consistent.

:guitar:
 
Why don't you just compare your results to similar music styles of top commercial releases, and then use your ears to get the affirmation you seek if you are coming close or not to what the pros are doing...?

Good luck though...curious to see how many pro MEs take part.

You could always pay Massive or some other pro ME to master one of your songs...and then there's your reference. ;)
 
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I'm sorry, but I fail to see the usefulness of this excersise/shootout.

I mean what's the point? To see if someone inexperienced, with amateur gear can compete with a pro with excellent gear, excellent monitoring, excellent room and above all, experience with his tools?

Seems like a no win situation. I seriously doubt any pros would even participate.

By all means master your own stuff, especially if you find it enjoyable. I'm sure you'll get better along the way.

But I believe if you're serious, sooner or later you'll be getting the better tools, just like the big boys use.
:D
 
We'll see. It's almost like a dare ... and the odds are seriously, seriously stacked against me. Maybe it's juvenile or maybe I have too much time on my hands.

But affirmation it will not provide. Humble pie I will most likely eat.
Yoda-featured1-1200x630-e1446682207788.jpg
 
It'a just interesting that there is a mixing clinic here .... but mastering is all "better get someone else to do it."

I know - excellent everything vs not. I like to break conventional wisdom though, so I'm happy to keep on keeping on. I can only use what I have to learn on, and hopefully gradually get "proper" gear for the job.
 
Yeah. Why not?

To me mastering is a subject that has always been shrouded in secrecy.

Yet it is a skill that just like any other can be learned and the tools of the trade can be aquired.

As little as 20 years ago home studios weren't common, and someone being a 'mixer' was unheard of. Now it's as common as fleas on a junkyard dog.

Over time the mastering mistigue will vanish as well.
 
RFR said:
As little as 20 years ago home studios weren't common, and someone being a 'mixer' was unheard of. Now it's as common as fleas on a junkyard dog.

Over time the mastering mistigue will vanish as well.
Click to expand...
I don't mean to wholeheartedly disagree, but I'm gonna.

Since recording started, there have been tracking engineers, mixing engineers, mastering engineers, editors, etc. It's always been like that. Sure, there were and still are plenty of crossovers (especially in the home studio world) -- But there were and still are gobs of specialists. I've known plenty of tracking engineers who excelled at capturing sounds who couldn't mix to save their lives. Great mixing engineers that barely knew which end of the microphone to sing into. Great mastering engineers that hardly ever did anything else.

Any mystique about any of them is the same as what I feel when I go to my mechanic and he knows what's wrong with my car just by starting it and sitting there for a moment.
 
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John what are you disagreeing with? That someone can learn mastering? Or that more home mastering will happen? I think its inevitable. Maybe not good mastering, but more of it.

Always gonna be specialists. But we have been entering an age for some time now where people wear multiple hats. Take here for example. In days gone by a musician could just be a musician. On this forum one is expected to be musician, programner, recording engineer, ect.

Multiple hats worn. Its gonna happen with mastering as well.

For me, while I'm willing to learn the skills needed, still love the specialization aspect. In other words, wouldn't master my own stuff.

Fresh ears, a good room, an objective veiw, skill, good equipment, etc, is priceless in my eyes.

However, we will see more "home mastering" as time goes on.

As to your mechanic? You could learn all that too......if you chose to do so.
:D
 
One song? Boring. How about a twelve song multi-artist multi-genre live performance compilation delivered as a DDP 2.0 file set?
 
A couple of days gives perspective.

John, true ... when you do recording, mixing and mastering using specialists, it's always going to be better ...
 
My point was more to -- how do I put this...

You *always* dealt with tracking engineers and mixing engineers and mastering engineers. *Especially* before the home studio revolution. The "unheard of" (being a mixing engineer) is just simply "phase inverted" (heh... That's an audio pun of sorts).
 
I just ran some stuff through mastering box to see what's up ... it's gotten better. I don't have the signal chain to compete with even that yet. I realized I am still horrible at judging bass with what I'm using. My masters sounded dull comparatively.

But i also knew exactly where to go to change that ... so mastering box can be useful as a tool to compare home mastering with something else for free.

Putting all the tools in everyone's hands can be a recipe for frustration. I've gone back to the drawing board a hundred times on this project, and every time it's the same result: save money, get a real ME.

With what I've learned about mastering this year and last, maybe I will be better able to mix with mastering in mind. Perhaps that's a good enough compromise considering I'm doing this in a house and not a studio, and with cheap gear to boot.

I've always admired mastering engineers, and it's an art/science I think I'll always be interested in. But for now, I guess it's one of those things. Got to accept my limitations and let it go.
 
RedStone said:
I've always admired mastering engineers, and it's an art/science I think I'll always be interested in. But for now, I guess it's one of those things. Got to accept my limitations and let it go.
Click to expand...

But aren't you advertising mastering as a service on your website....?
I'm just not clear on your intent here and what you are after with this contest/shoot-out...etc.
I mean...if you're selling mastering as a service, yet now you say it's something you have obvious limitations with and you should let it go...ahhh...???

Like I said earlier...if you want to compare your mastering skills to that of pros, the best thing you could do is send out some music to a few pros, pay for their mastering...and then compare yours to theirs and see what limitations you need to work on.

IMHO...while there's a lot of great "mastering" software that is fairly inexpensive....there's a lot more to it than that, and like Massive said, there have *always* been tracking engineers and mixing engineers and mastering engineers...it's only with the home rec explosion that many newcomers have convinced themselves that they can successfully wear all three hats, in their bedroom studios, and still stand toe-to-toe with the pro tracking engineers and mixing engineers and mastering engineers.
 
I do offer mastering. It's an attempt to compete with the automated services. Similar pricing, but trying to offer something that could hopefully be better. Turns out that's harder that I thought. I say on the site that I am not trying to compete with pro studios. In fact, I can't compete. But I am quickly learning that it's even hard to compete with these automated services in terms of balancing the eq curve and getting compression right.

Limiting is another thing - and is maybe the one part of the mastering chain I can make work the way I want.

The technical aspects like making proper DDPs is like learning word. You just have to know what to do, and then do it. The hardest part is making things sound right because you can know what to do, but there is a strong possibility of doing it wrong thinking it's right.
 
I get excited about things and go for them ... this is what I did with the mastering service thing. Maybe it was naive, and I'm not above admitting when I've made a mistake. And I can still mix!
 
In order to be a good mastering engineer, I think you need a strong sense of what things should sound like. Then, of course the tools to take what you are given and get them as close to what they should be as possible.

That is the reason I'm a mix engineer and always recommend that my clients go to an actual mastering facility. My thing is to react to what I'm given and let that shape the outcome, which I see as the opposite of what a mastering engineer does.
 
The strange part about all of this is that
It seems I switch from having mixing ears to more general mastering type listening.

I decided to take a step back. I listened to masters I had made myself and compared them with mastering box. I initially liked what mastering box had done ... really crispy top end and pounding bass that felt big without being too overwhelming. But then I compared that against some pro masters that I was attempting to emulate, and then I liked mine better overal. But I realized mine were slightly duller and had less deep bass than the pro masters and the mastering box masters. My midrange was more or less acceptable.

Perhaps this is why artists can't self master. I'm waffling back and forth on this thing. Welcome to the insecure world of this artist/engineer.

Perhaps the comment on looking for affirmation was more spot on than I realized. Maybe I did this thinking I could get some affirmation that my results are not so bad. And perhaps this is the wrong place to do that. Haha.what I got was a good old fashioned Internet spanking :P
 
Adding to Farview -- and one of the reasons that you'll very rarely find (at the professional level) a mixing engineer that will master his/her own mixes is the "let go" factor. There's a huge advantage to objectivism. I'll only partially - disagree isn't even the right word - Let's just say that when I first listen to a project (and I only get that "first listen" once) I react to it and let it shape the outcome also. There's certainly a "well, it should fit these particular parameters" thing going on also of course -- But 90% of what I'm doing is what the mixes are telling me to do -- just as elements in the mixes are telling Farview what to do.

Detachment from the source via specialists is how the vast (VAST) majority of commercial recordings are made. Exponentially more the higher you go -- Songwriter -> arranger -> producer -> artist / band -> tracking engineer at tracking studio -> mixing engineer at mixing studio -> mastering engineer at mastering studio -> artwork, etc., etc., etc., all the steps in between, marketing, on and on and on.

And it's a rare occasion that the songwriter's original thought for that song is the one that hits #1 on Billboard.

It goes back further than the mastering phase --

For those who didn't know, Farview and I used to work at the same studio back in the day. We were in the same band for some time also.

Blah, blah, blah, I wrote most of the material in one band in particular. I had a particular tune in my head and it was my job to relay that to the band. Because I was a studio rat, I usually took it upon myself to record and mix as well. And how many times did the song that was in my head wind up being the released version...? Probably never. I was always trying to push it towards being the song in my head when - for whatever reason - it wasn't going to be have that exact sound I had in my head.

On one particular EP, I was running myself in circles for days trying to get these 3 lousy mixes to work. Jay was in one day when I zeroed out the board and said "Take a crack at these, will ya?" or something along those lines.

An hour or so later, I'm listening to his mixes -- TOTALLY not where I would've taken them. But WAY cooler than anything I would've done with them. They were awesome. Squashed my vocals with a bizarre compression scheme I never considered for my own vocals, treated the drums in a way that ----- well, let's just say that he took the mixes in an entirely different direction and I don't think I ever worked on my own mixes again.

NOW LET'S BE CLEAR that I'm not telling people to not work on your own mixes. I'm just saying that sometimes it's advantageous to detach and let the talents of others add to your own.
 
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