mastering question

Nola

Well-known member
i didn't see this in the diy guide, but when mastering at home do you have to master each track individually, or do you load them all into a piece of software and adjust the volume of each one, or a mixture of both? i have 10 songs done and i need to make the volumes match. they're like -6db peaks at the mix stage but kind of soft (-20 or so rms). i guess my goal is like -14 or so. i don't like things louder than that really. anyway, the big question is above. i'd guess you do each one individually. but how do you know the next one will match it in terms of volume, eq, etc if you're not listening to them next to one another with both mastered?

thanks!
 
If you want to think of them as a collection, an album, master them as a group. It's much easier to get them all working together if you can jump around and compare. I load them all in one project, each song on its own track. I put a mastering limiter on the master bus and eqs on tracks as a starting point then go from there. The project will be a diagonal spread from the first song at the top-left to the last song at the bottom-right.

Step one is to get the basic levels sorted. At this point you're still working in -18dBFS average level mode so keep the limiter inactive. Use clip gain to get them all sounding pretty close to the right levels relative to each other. Step two is to make the tones work together using eq, readjusting clip gain as you go when needed. At about this point I'll start dealing with timing and head/tail fades, then any volume rides needed. Somewhere in here, if I think it's needed, I may do some subtle compression. Now it's a matter of refining these various steps in whatever order the project drives me.

Once things settle in I'll put the mastering limiter on and see what happens when I push it. Rarely, I'll put a mastering limiter at the end of a track's chain if that song needs something the main limiter isn't doing right. I don't put normal compression on the main bus because that needs to be tuned to each track. Pushing into the limiter may reveal things that send me back to the tracks to address things.

Beyond that I've got a couple of proprietary tricks with saturation and parallel compression that I may try, but I avoid that kind of thing until need drives me to it, doing as much as possible with track eq and bus limiting. And don't take the -18dBFS thing too literally, just get it in the ballpark and do the work by ear. Take frequent breaks and go outside. Listen to traffic, wind in the trees, kids playing in a park, anything real to keep your perspective. Same with references. I don't use them as specific targets so much as general bass/low-mid/mid/high-mid/high balance reminders.
 
Thanks, Boulder, that's exactly what I was looking for. What software do you use to load them all into it like that?

Is a head/tail fade the space between songs and how they start or end? Is 1 second between songs standard? Do you think like -14 or -15 rms is loud enough yet still "competitive"? I feel the mix (dynamics yes but mainly frequencies changing) will get destroyed if I limit into that -12 area like most modern mixes. Do you shoot for a rms figure for every song and get them all there?
 
I do much the same as Boulder.

I load all the tracks into Soundforge, then use a limiter to bring them up in volume and to get the songs sounding consistent with each other. I flip from one song to the next to judge this. "Topping and tailing" is what I call the process of making sure the beginnings and endings of songs are well-behaved, i.e. no funny noises, no long silences, before the song starts and ends.

The timing between tracks I leave to the burning program, where you can set a gap. The 'acceptable' gap between songs seems to have varied a bit over time. On vinyl, gaps seemed to be around 6 to 7 seconds. I understood the gap on CDs to be about 4. But in recent times it is about 2 seconds. But there is a huge amount of variability. However, I've been recently making the gap bigger . . . to allow the listener a bit of breathing space to digest the previous song before the next starts.

Generally I shoot for RMS around -14 or -15. It makes me feel very uncomfortable if I squish them higher than that.
 
If you want to think of them as a collection, an album, master them as a group. It's much easier to get them all working together if you can jump around and compare. I load them all in one project, each song on its own track. I put a mastering limiter on the master bus and eqs on tracks as a starting point then go from there. The project will be a diagonal spread from the first song at the top-left to the last song at the bottom-right.

Step one is to get the basic levels sorted. At this point you're still working in -18dBFS average level mode so keep the limiter inactive. Use clip gain to get them all sounding pretty close to the right levels relative to each other. Step two is to make the tones work together using eq, readjusting clip gain as you go when needed. At about this point I'll start dealing with timing and head/tail fades, then any volume rides needed. Somewhere in here, if I think it's needed, I may do some subtle compression. Now it's a matter of refining these various steps in whatever order the project drives me.

Once things settle in I'll put the mastering limiter on and see what happens when I push it. Rarely, I'll put a mastering limiter at the end of a track's chain if that song needs something the main limiter isn't doing right. I don't put normal compression on the main bus because that needs to be tuned to each track. Pushing into the limiter may reveal things that send me back to the tracks to address things.

Beyond that I've got a couple of proprietary tricks with saturation and parallel compression that I may try, but I avoid that kind of thing until need drives me to it, doing as much as possible with track eq and bus limiting. And don't take the -18dBFS thing too literally, just get it in the ballpark and do the work by ear. Take frequent breaks and go outside. Listen to traffic, wind in the trees, kids playing in a park, anything real to keep your perspective. Same with references. I don't use them as specific targets so much as general bass/low-mid/mid/high-mid/high balance reminders.

Hey, that was a pretty good explanation!
Being relatively new to digital recording, l would not have thought of that approach.
 
If you want to think of them as a collection, an album, master them as a group. It's much easier to get them all working together if you can jump around and compare. I load them all in one project, each song on its own track. I put a mastering limiter on the master bus and eqs on tracks as a starting point then go from there. The project will be a diagonal spread from the first song at the top-left to the last song at the bottom-right.

Step one is to get the basic levels sorted. At this point you're still working in -18dBFS average level mode so keep the limiter inactive. Use clip gain to get them all sounding pretty close to the right levels relative to each other. Step two is to make the tones work together using eq, readjusting clip gain as you go when needed. At about this point I'll start dealing with timing and head/tail fades, then any volume rides needed. Somewhere in here, if I think it's needed, I may do some subtle compression. Now it's a matter of refining these various steps in whatever order the project drives me.

Once things settle in I'll put the mastering limiter on and see what happens when I push it. Rarely, I'll put a mastering limiter at the end of a track's chain if that song needs something the main limiter isn't doing right. I don't put normal compression on the main bus because that needs to be tuned to each track. Pushing into the limiter may reveal things that send me back to the tracks to address things.

Beyond that I've got a couple of proprietary tricks with saturation and parallel compression that I may try, but I avoid that kind of thing until need drives me to it, doing as much as possible with track eq and bus limiting. And don't take the -18dBFS thing too literally, just get it in the ballpark and do the work by ear. Take frequent breaks and go outside. Listen to traffic, wind in the trees, kids playing in a park, anything real to keep your perspective. Same with references. I don't use them as specific targets so much as general bass/low-mid/mid/high-mid/high balance reminders.

Awesome solution!! I used to try to jump around from track to track in my DAW........listening for things to correct / adjust to make the album work as a collection. Never thought to just load the wavs onto tracks in a single project. Much easier....much faster....and far more accurate results.
 
I put my tunes into Wavelab Essentials (or is it Elements.... the cheap version). I'll put Ozone on the master bus and use the limiter. I'll adjust clip gain on each song to match and apply EQ individually to each song to get them to sound more coherent.

I will usually choose one song that I feel is the closest to what I want the album to sound like and use that as the golden track. I will then try to match all the other songs to that one. Seeing that it is just me singing and playing, it's not that difficult. I will compare loud parts to loud parts across the album, then soft parts to soft parts.

The hardest part is matching up an acoustical song with a hard driving song. I usually try to get the lead vocal on all songs to the same perceived loudness, but that isn't that easy with extremely different dynamic songs like that.

I'll edit beginnings and ends and set spacing, then burn a CD with WLE. I can use that CD with Kunaki.com for reproduction.
 
You load them all into a session. Sound forge, Wavelab, samplitude, etc... are the daws used most, because they allow you to set track markers, add processing to everything as well as process each song individually.

As far as the gap between songs, it's a feel thing. The program default will probably be two seconds, but you have to listen to the transition between the songs to determine if it is too long or short.

What I normally do is process each song individually, to make them all sound like they belong together. If one is too bright and another too dark, I work to get them in the same ballpark. If I can't get them all the same, I will at least try to make the songs between the dark and the bright one gradually get brighter, (song to song, not brightening within a song) so the transition is smooth.

Then, I adjust the volumes of the songs, so they are the same (ish). After that I add a limiter to get the overall volume of the album.
 
my regular Party Tapes can have the main element at the same level - Like I want the vocals to hit the ear the same
 
Then, I adjust the volumes of the songs, so they are the same (ish). After that I add a limiter to get the overall volume of the album.

Thanks everyone.
So you adjust the volume of each song individually by using gain knobs? And then after that the limiter is on each track or is it on your master bus?
Do you guys take things like crest factor into consideration and try to make it the same on each mix before going to the master stage? I'm wondering if my mixed versions (-20db rms/-6 peak) have too large a crest ratio.
 
Thanks everyone.

Do you guys take things like crest factor into consideration and try to make it the same on each mix before going to the master stage? I'm wondering if my mixed versions (-20db rms/-6 peak) have too large a crest ratio.

If you want all your songs to have the same perception of average loudness...but then you also destroy the dynamics.
I guess it depends on the music style and what you want...but vocal with acoustic guitar accompaniment will naturally have wider dynamic range and peak to greater crest factor than say EDM...etc....so I wouldn't get too hung up on numbers and making it all the same..

Just listen to your songs in transition and see how they feel...if one is too soft or too loud adjust as needed.
 
Yeah, I usually try to keep the vocals about the same, or at least with natural variation and let the rest fall around that. Sometimes the drums will be the baseline, but it all depends. But if it's supposed to play as an album, then it's much more important that they flow properly from one song to another than that they actually match down to the db. There is no rule here, it's all up to you.

This is one of my biggest complaints with volume leveling algorithms on playback. It almost makes sense when you're shuffling between completely different songs on iTunes or Spotify, or on a radio broadcast or YouTube playlist or whatever, but when it comes to playing through full albums, the difference in crest factor and overall loudness is an important part of the way the whole thing comes across, and any algorithm that undoes that is working against the artistic vision of the creator.

For gaps, I do that by "feel" also. I usually do it in terms of "beats". I like to have about a beat or two at the start - so you click play and it's like "beat - Bang". At the end it's more like a full measure, sometimes "finish the measure" if like it stops on the one or something. But then what comes before or after makes a difference too. A fast song into a slow song might want just another beat or two to breathe before in between them, or sometimes you want it to just jump into the next song without too much time to think in between. And that's not getting into crossfades and where to actually split two songs when there isn't any silence between them. Again, there's pretty much no rules here, and it's all about feel and flow. The CD spec does actually have rules about tracks starting and ending on the boundaries between "chunks" or whatever they're called, but unless you're actually shooting for the real RedBook standards, it's not that big of a deal, and it's usually a difference of a few samples so not enough to mess the timing up much.
 
Very few artists write the same songs 10 times for an album, so styles will vary song to song. Each style has its own mixing characters (heavy metal/rock tends to be bass heavy, folk more mids/highs, etc). So each mix and mastering of that mix is individual to the song. Use your ears to match over loudness from track to track to keep consistency, I use RMS and peak values as a rough gauge, but always rely on how loud the tracks actually are on playback to determine if they're in the ballpark. Like others have indicated, you don't want the vocals to be far too far off from song to song. Listener should not need to adjust their volume to hear the singer between songs.
 
Thanks everyone.
So you adjust the volume of each song individually by using gain knobs? And then after that the limiter is on each track or is it on your master bus?
Do you guys take things like crest factor into consideration and try to make it the same on each mix before going to the master stage? I'm wondering if my mixed versions (-20db rms/-6 peak) have too large a crest ratio.

Adding another penny or two....

You can adjust the gain of each individual part by adjusting the clip gain. Most DAWs will have an "envelope" or volume control right on the track in the timeline. It is usually a square box at the top of the track waveform in the exact middle. Pulling that up or down adjusts volume of just that one part. (In this case, the whole song.) You can also find other parts of the clip gain or envelope at either end of the part; they are the fade in and fade out controls. Sorry, don't have screenshots readily available to show you.

You would put a limiter on the master bus. If needed, you can add a compressor on each individual song, but if that was necessary, it should have been done during mixdown.

I don't know what crest factor is.... I guess everyone else does.... :o

Another trick I use. Since it is only me, my instruments, my playing, my mixing, I like to use templates and channel settings. Once I get a cd full of songs recorded and mixed, I like to go back and pick the one song I think came out best. I'll save all the channels settings for each channel in that song, then apply them to all the same channels in all rest of the songs. I'll remix all the other songs and make minor tweaks. The last CD i did came out pretty good as far as the songs matching one another.

Then I'll load them up on the timeline in WLE and compare. Sometimes something might jump out at me I didn't hear before and I might go back to the mixdown and remix it or make a small adjustment.
 
Here's what one of my mastering sessions looks like. I put this together to test mixes I'm working on for how they stand up to mastering, so I didn't bother with timing, fades or track markers. It's just level, eq and dynamics. Problems in those areas suggest things I can do in the mix to make the end product better. I'm using Vegas 6, which is ancient, but it has most of the function of CD Architect and can burn a duplication-ready master. There are some very specific things that need to be done to make a proper CD master which I have not covered in this thread.

mastering_session_example.JPG
 
RMS Measurement Tip

A quick note about RMS measurement. There are two standards that will give numbers 3dB apart. The 0dB reference may be either a square wave or a sine wave. The RMS number of a wave measured against a square wave reference will be 3dB higher than the same wave measured against a sine wave reference. Here's an example of the same file measured with Sound Forge 6 (even older than Vegas 6) and the TT DR Meter. The Sound Forge tool uses a square wave reference while the TT DR Meter uses a sine wave reference. Not knowing which you're using can lead to confusion and miscommunication.

RMS_measurement_difference.jpg
 
I don't know what crest factor is.... I guess everyone else does.... :o

It's also called peak to average ratio, the difference in dB between the average level and the highest peak. It's just another way to measure dynamics. I think pink noise has a crest factor of 6dB but I could be wrong. It could be 12dB. Sine waves have a crest factor of 3dB while square waves have a crest factor of 0dB.
 
Wow, yeah I have heard about the 3db between sine and square but figured there was a standard. Is there a list somewhere of which audio software uses which calibration method?

What do you think of LUFS, Boulder?
 
Wow, yeah I have heard about the 3db between sine and square but figured there was a standard. Is there a list somewhere of which audio software uses which calibration method?

I don't know, maybe get the TT DR Meter and compare whatever you're using to that.

What do you think of LUFS, Boulder?

If you're serious you have to go with LUFS. I use the others only as approximations, general indications of level.
 
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