New term needed for "DIY Mastering" ?

[Bigus Dickus]

Since there seem to be endless arguments over whether you can "master at home," perhaps establishing a term specifically for DIY-ers that encapsulates the idea of "the best they can do themselves" in regards to final EQ'ing, compression, reverb, normalizing, and arranging tracks to form an album would be useful.

Suggestions that all come from synonyms of the root Master:

controlling
curbing
domesticating
dominating
finishing
governing
managing
quelling
subduing
supressing
regulating
taming

Of those, managing and finishing see like the most natural fits.

Yes, I'm bored tonight. There were NO women at the local watering holes. Oh well, maybe I'll grab me a church woman tomorrow.

[mixmkr]

I don't have a problem with "home mastering". It pretty much signifies what it is...eh?


and everyone else can call the expensive stuff, "pro mastering"...or just "mastering" for short!

[Blue Bear Sound]

"Mangling" gets my vote!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[HogansHiro]

I've been staring at his thread for 15 minutes trying to somehow work "Master-Bater" into a reasonable acronym but no luck.

(just wanted to share)

[dachay2tnr]

How 'bout

doing something to the track after you have finished mixing it, but before you send it out for mastering, so that you can listen to it in the interim and have it sound a little better and somewhat louder than before you did this and until you have all of your tracks done so that you can actually send them out to be professionally mastered.

On second thought, that might need an acronym. I'll work on it.

Do you like Premature Finalization better?

[ecs113]

Originally posted by dachay2tnr
How 'bout

doing something to the track after you have finished mixing it, but before you send it out for mastering, so that you can listen to it in the interim and have it sound a little better and somewhat louder than before you did this and until you have all of your tracks done so that you can actually send them out to be professionally mastered.

On second thought, that might need an acronym. I'll work on it.

Do you like Premature Finalization better?

Assuming everyone sends their stuff out.

[mixmkr]

Originally posted by dachay2tnr

Do you like Premature Finalization better?

no...I still like home mastering, because that is exactly what it is...whether people like the results or not. That is kinda not the issue. The 'premature finalization' sounds like blowing your wad before you want to.

[Blue Bear Sound]

How about "munging"????

[mixmkr]

I've always been leary of mungy jumping...

[dachay2tnr]

Originally posted by mixmkr
no...I still like home mastering, because that is exactly what it is...whether people like the results or not. That is kinda not the issue. The 'premature finalization' sounds like blowing your wad before you want to.

Well, if I had taken this thread seriously, and really thought that this needed a name besides mastering, I would probably agree with you.

[Bigus Dickus]

I kind of liked domesticating and dominating.

Maybe premature masterization would work?

[crosstudio]

i think master-bating fits best.

thats the true definition of "Do It Yourself"

as opposed to sending your mix to a whore house... i mean mastering house.

if you get to know your um... equipment you can make a quality CD from master-bating.

[Chris Shaeffer]

Home recording: Home mastering. Simple enough.

Just like all us master-baters out there- jus' doing the best we can with what's at hand even if we're the only ones who get a rise out of it

Take care,
Chris

[pipelineaudio]

Self Mutilation

[camn]

It is NOT home mastering.

Honestly... you can FINALIZE.. but a mastering job... even a shityy one.. has to be done by someone ELSE... ANYTHING that a mixing engineer does is really just an extension of MIXING..

So that final Limiting and eqing of your OWN material is FINALIZING (e.g. run it thru a FINALIZER)..

Whereas HOME MASTERING would by using Wavelab or OZONE in your BEDROOM to do a MASTERING job on something recorded by SOMEONE ELSE.. You would have a minimal hand in the MIXING of the project.

xox

[mixmkr]

Originally posted by camn
You would have a minimal hand in the MIXING of the project.

and at how many minutes would you guestimate that you would need to have mixed, to have MORE than "a minimal hand in the mixing of the project"

I've never heard that one....that someone else HAS TO master something...that you can't master it yourself....regardless of whether or not you do what others would deem a good job or not.

what happens if I have sonic solutions in my bedroom, and it is totally tuned and I've spent zillions on speakers and other "mastering" equipment? Is that still finalizing then? ....if it's my own stuff?... But if it's my brothers, it is mastering?? Is that right?...only if I just turned on the equipment and made ONLY one (maybe two) comments?

[dobro]

Well, if you want to invent a word to describe a homer mastering stuff, then I guess you have to invent words to describe a homer recording stuff. Let's call it 'capturing'. And then you have to have a new word for homers mixing their own stuff. Let's call it 'coordinating'. And we can call homer mastering 'finalizing'. Shit, why stop there. I don't use mics or cable, I use
'audiophones' and 'e-cord'. I don't have a mixer, I have a 'channeler'. I don't pan, I 'range', I don't EQ, I 'tone', and I don't compress - I 'narrow'.

Welcome to homecapturing.com

[esactun]

How about "turd-polishing"?

I do it quite frequently.

[camn]

Originally posted by mixmkr
what happens if I have sonic solutions in my bedroom, and it is totally tuned and I've spent zillions on speakers and other "mastering" equipment? Is that still finalizing then? ....if it's my own stuff?... But if it's my brothers, it is mastering?? Is that right?...only if I just turned on the equipment and made ONLY one (maybe two) comments?

Well.. if you are mixing something... and plan to see it through all the way to replication yourself....

when does the Mixing end and the Mastering Begin??

At mixdown?
what about right before my main buss?

I say nowhere. I say if you are the mixing engineer... everything you do to the track after tracking is part of mixing... and you will never have the OBJECTIVITY to master a track you mixed..... Unless maybe you wait a few years and totally clear your pallette. Its not about gear, or experience... but about psychoacoustics.

Your girlfriend would do a better job mastering your track than you.... cuz she has the fresh ears. She can listen to that hella-complex segment you slaved over and say..... "that sounds like mud" Or she can listen to your perfect guitar lines and say... "I cant hear the bassline." You can never hear that stuff.... cuz your brain is playing tricks on you. Which is why you cant master your own shit.

xoxo

[Hard2Hear]

exactly

[XerXes]

Originally posted by crosstudio
i think master-bating fits best.

if you get to know your um... equipment you can make a quality CD from master-bating.

LOL - i tried that all day yesterday and my cd still sounds the same!

[Bigus Dickus]

I would have thought mixing was the process of whatever you do in going from multiple tracks to a single stereo track.

I would have thought mastering was anything done to the stereo track after the mixdown. Reverb, compression, EQ, whatever.

I would have thought that without fresh ears and objectivity you just wouldn't do as good of a job of mastering.

But hell... what do I know? Not much. That's why I started this thread... mostly in fun, but also out of curiosity.

[chessrock]

Proper terminology would be Post-mixing.

Used in context:

"I was playing around with some Postmixes on T-Rax the other night."

"Damn, that Chessrock sure is slick with the postmixes, you'd almost think they'd pass off as real masters."

If the project never actually gets sent to a mastering facility, you could even give yourself post-mixing credits:

Produced, Engineered, mixed and postmixed by ______

Postmixing: Mastering for the financially challenged.

OR

The Postmixer: Not your father's mastering engineer.


The Postmixer only rings twice.

[Andrew123]

I think local mastering sounds more professional than home mastering. If you master something yourself, it doesn't necessarily mean your doing it at home (...he says while posting on the HOMErecording.com bbs). . Thats my take on it anyway.

[Robert D]

While I appreciate that you really shouldn't master your own mix, if only for lack of objectivety let alone lack of experience, proper room acoustics, and equipment, the hard fact is that *real* mastering costs a lot of money, more than a lot of folks can afford. A big part of mastering is arranging the song order and spacing, as well as matching up perceived levels. These functions surely can be done by the mix engineer just as well as a mastering engineer. I also think that a mix engineer, given time away from the mix, and a change of mindset, can hear that there's a radical change in the low freq content from track 7 to track 8, a difference that would easily be missed when mixing each track seperately, and can EQ things to give a more consistant tonality to the project. These things, I think, are legitimate mastering processes that are within the home recordist's grasp. The more advanced can also do a commendable job with a C4 and an L1.
I think when things go wrong with home mastering is when someone starts doing stuff just because they think they should do something, anything, to say they mastered it. That happens all the time. Just send it through T-Racks using a preset, and it's "mastered". There's the Shite factor.
Finally, I believe the correct term for anything we can do at home is "premastering", as actual mastering involves the creation of a glass master, yes? So my vote is for "premastering".
Cheers, RD