Sending your digital 8 track out for mastering?

[psongman]

Hi, I am seeking all the wisdom I can about making my first Cd. I have quite a few songs recorded on my Fostex VF08, with about 12 tracks for each song, 4 virtual. Now, I have been contacting a lot of places that master and only a few want the unit to make a mix with, then mastered, pressed, etc. Most of them want the final stereo mix on tracks 7-8, to work with, which I can provide....but, always a but. How could this be better than letting them send the tracks either to a computer or a more powerful machine routing them the way that would accomplish a better mix, so they could master more easily in their format of preference.

Those that want the stereo files, say it would be hard or they would charge a lot to mix, then master. Why? You just turn the Fostex on, hit Song select, scene comes up, then you can send it out the spdif or the analog outs to their setups, maybe even exchanging virtual tracks and resending. Seems simple as I have done it numerous times. I realize that the need to keep the recording chain intact, however, I am positive they could work on the tracks as they are being sent, using EQ, compression, limiting etc. Anyway, if there might be a better way to accomplish this please inform me...or if you know a person, or a place that does it this way, please direct me, thanks for listening to my long inquiry, Psongman

[Stealthtech]

Keep in mind, your asking for mastering not mixing.
Mixing is an engineer's job.

Now transfering your mix to there system is doable if your final mixed recording is insufficiant.

[Cloneboy Studio]

Find a good mixer. Without a good mix that's set up for the type of mastering you want it won't sound good.

In my opinion an album depends on this (from a pure sound point of view--not counting performances or talent):

60% recorded track quality
40% mix quality
10% mastering quality

A *LOT* of people skimp on the recording part, spend months on the mixing part (trying to make iffy tracks sound good) and then a lot of money on the master (attempting to make the mediocre mix sound good... end result is always a polished turd an little more).

Before you spend the time and money to get something done right you should ask yourself if the recorded material DESERVES all this star attention. If it does then get someone that is an experienced mixer to hook you up--make sure to tell them what you want the end result to be like, especially from the volume level of the different instruments point of view... and only when your mix is perfect should you get it mastered.

That's just my point of view. I've done a fair amount of mixing for songs I didn't record and it can be a pain when the engineer laid it down sloppy, or didn't bother to make the band correct obvious mistakes. If you think the mixer has it rough to cover these mistakes the mastering engineer is SCREWED with a mere 2 track stereo version to work with.

[starch]

psongman, to clarify, 'mixing' is taking all of your individual tracks and placing them in a stereo track using volume, panning, dynamic controllers (ie. compression), fx (ie. reverb, delay) etc. Once the songs are 'mixed' to stereo tracks, they are 'mastered' to make all of the stereo tracks sound appropriate together. This is for any final touches (not to fix problems as much as to make the songs sonically cohesive) along with level maximization, fade-in, fade-out, pq editing, etc.

So, as the others said, you need to look primarily for a good mixing engineer, then to finalize the project, send to a mastering engineer to put the project together.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

[psongman]

Hi, got back to my message today and read your comments. Yes, I know all those things mentioned in the grateful to me posts. What I was trying to understand is, it seems that a mastering engineer would love to be able to treat the tracks before they are muddled up by most, as they could affect or accent them while they rough mix them, then make a stereo track, as mentioned, then do some mastering and prepare for CD making. Keep up the assisting, Psongman

[gordone]

I think the ME would love the song to be mixed pretty well to begin with

Originally Posted by psongman

Hi, got back to my message today and read your comments. Yes, I know all those things mentioned in the grateful to me posts. What I was trying to understand is, it seems that a mastering engineer would love to be able to treat the tracks before they are muddled up by most, as they could affect or accent them while they rough mix them, then make a stereo track, as mentioned, then do some mastering and prepare for CD making. Keep up the assisting, Psongman

[masteringhouse]

Originally Posted by psongman

Hi, got back to my message today and read your comments. Yes, I know all those things mentioned in the grateful to me posts. What I was trying to understand is, it seems that a mastering engineer would love to be able to treat the tracks before they are muddled up by most, as they could affect or accent them while they rough mix them, then make a stereo track, as mentioned, then do some mastering and prepare for CD making. Keep up the assisting, Psongman

Mastering from stems (or submixes) is becoming more popular. The submixes might include something like the following:

drums(2 tracks)
bass (1 track)
lead vocal w/double (1 or 2 tracks depending on effects used)
background vox (2 tracks)
other instrumentation (2 tracks)

This allows an ME to create a master with vocals up or down, allow better adjustment of transient material (drums) via compressing these differently than other parts of the mix, create better bass separation by having bass on a separate track and compressing or EQing this outside of the other parameters of the mix, as well as EQ or process all of the elements separately if they need individual treatments.

It is partly mixing, but at a higher level. The submixes should include any effects and the 2 track submixes should be mixed with the idea that the mastering stage should just be adjustments in levels, EQ and compression between the submixes, although things like delay and reverb could be added to the vocals as well.

[malcolm123]

The band I work with and do sound for has one of those little Fostex VF16s. I play around with it at practice sessions but never get too deep into it. We use it to record pratice sessions when we have a completed song. I had to let them borrow another little mixer I had cause the Fostex was limited with phantom powers for some overhead/vocal condensors we use. But basically we mic the drums and vocal mics up. DI the bass,keyboard, and mic the cabs for the guitars. We record flat once we get decent mic placements. Once the recording is done we take the Fostex to my studio and run the spdif out to my digital console on stereo channels. WE mix on the fostex then send the final mix from my digital console to the computer ( Wavelab ) via some adat stereo channels. Then tweak to taste in the puter and burn the cd for all the members.

But, I was reading the manual on the Fostex one day during practiced and saw were it can use smpte or one of those timecode formats to sync it up with some mutlchannel recording software. So I guess you could pull the tracks off seperately then mix them on a better console. I think you can also burn the tracks to cd and pull them in with another Fostex unit. Not sure though. But it's possible with the V16 model.

Malcolm