A/B Comparison: Mix and Master

killthepixelnow

killthepixelnow

Do it right or dont do it
Hey guys, I finished mixing the tracks for my band's new album. I'd like to hear some impression on the master of one particular song:

Mix




Master




What do you think about it? Do you think it's too loud? Too much rumble on the bass frequencies?

Thanks in advance.
 
I'm the last person you want to ask for this style of music, but I noticed that the waveforms on both look virtually identical. I know you shouldn't visually mix, but at the same time, if the second one is just louder, and the dynamics are virtually unchanged, then why not?
 
There is *so* much "space-monkey" MP3 artifacts in there that I have no idea what's going on in the top end. The lows (on "master") sound very disjointed from the rest of the mix and the upper mids are a pretty whacky.

IMO, "mix" sounds leagues better than "master" -- Still swarming with space-monkeys, but otherwise, not even a fair fight.

I'm sure that's not what you wanted to hear, but I'd bring it back to the drawing board. And if it's possible, find out why the artifacts are so unusually bad -- I've heard plenty of SoundCloud streams that didn't sound anywhere near as nasty as these - That said, I don't use it, so I don't know why. Are you uploading low-fi MP3's to Soundcloud where you could otherwise be uploading PCM data...?
 
Massive Master said:
There is *so* much "space-monkey" MP3 artifacts in there that I have no idea what's going on in the top end. The lows (on "master") sound very disjointed from the rest of the mix and the upper mids are a pretty whacky.
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Really weird, because I uploaded a 320kbps [.mp3] to SoundCloud. Excuse me but I don't hear any artifacts, so perhaps it's the bass. I have two bass tracks there, one clean and other with distortion to add some bite.

I really appreciate your feedback so, would you hearing the MIX again, and telling me if it's effectively the bass that is creating that weird sound? If not, problem is on the Pro Tools bouncing.

Clean bass / Distorted bass / Combined bass


Thanks!
 
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killthepixelnow said:
Really weird, because I uploaded a 320kbps [.mp3] to SoundCloud.
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Which means it gets re-encoded for Soundcloud. Multiple encodings cause much worse degradation than a single encoding. Just upload wave files so the audio is encoded only once, by Soundcloud.

killthepixelnow said:
Excuse me but I don't hear any artifacts, so perhaps it's the bass. I have two bass tracks there, one clean and other with distortion to add some bite.
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I hear it. It's not the bass. It's noticeable in the cymbals, sibilant parts of the vocals etc.
 
Just to add a +1, I'm hearing severe MP3 compression artefacts--probably a classic case of concatenation of MP3 codings if you uploaded 320 kbps then they recoded it to a lower rate.
 
That makes sense. I would like to make a quick test. I'm uploading uncompressed [.aif] excerpts of the songs to SoundClound. Do you still hear artifacts on those track? If so, SoundCloud is definitively doing something wrong:

MIX


MASTER


Thanks in advance!
 
Much less space-monkey in these. OF COURSE SoundCloud is doing something "wrong" -- It's converting to MP3. That's what happens when you convert to MP3. MP3 is a terribly lossy, "bottom of the barrel" delivery CODEC. There are some converters that do a rather stellar job - but it's still only a fraction of the data that made up the original recording. And converting a terribly lossy version to a terribly lossy version (again) leads to space-monkeys-squared.

That out of the way -- "Mix" still sounds far better again than "Master" -- Once again, it's not even in the same ballpark.
 
Massive Master said:
That out of the way -- "Mix" still sounds far better again than "Master" -- Once again, it's not even in the same ballpark.
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Thanks for the input! Although the "mastered" (note the quotation marks) version sounds louder, in comparison with the final mix, it sounds thinner and has lost some of the bottom end. Today I noticed that so I'm going to start from scratch.

Some guys have told me that Studio One is a good choice to start with, what do you think?
 
What are you using to 'master' the song? It is obviously grabbing the harsh frequencies and making it hard to listen to.

What DAW are you using to record this? I would get the mix right and send it to someone else if you 'just' noticed the difference. Actually, I would suggest that anyway.
 
Well there you go. Use only the tools you need from Ozone. It is a package that gives options. Too many needless ones actually.

Don't do that!

If you must 'home' master, just put a limiter on it. Maybe. The mix sounded much better before the Izotope rape.
 
jimmys69 said:
(...)The mix sounded much better before the Izotope rape.
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Izotope rape! :laughings:

But that's true. I will start from scratch, and will try to be respectful to the mix. Sometimes I get excited with the bells and whistles. Thanks for the advice and listeing to the track, I know not many people like to hear death metal music on this forum.
 
killthepixelnow said:
Izotope rape! :laughings:

But that's true. I will start from scratch, and will try to be respectful to the mix. Sometimes I get excited with the bells and whistles. Thanks for the advice and listeing to the track, I know not many people like to hear death metal music on this forum.
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I'm cool with the death metal man. Ozone toyz did rape you tho. Stick to just the limiter. The stereo enhance and other shit is just killing your mix.
 
killthepixelnow said:
I used Izotope Ozone.
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If you know *EXACTLY* what you want to do and precisely how to do it using the tools supplied by Ozone, go nuts. Otherwise, I've found it to be the absolute fastest way to completely screw up an otherwise perfectly decent mix to the point of it being totally unlistenable. **

What exactly is a "space monkey"?
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Don't remember where I first heard it (or if I even did hear it), but it's that crazy swishy goofiness in the top end on MP3's.

** And I always try to make it clear, especially as an "Izotope Pro User" or whatever they call it, that I'm not "bashing" Ozone -- It's not completely evil in and of itself -- It's only as nasty and horrible as the user makes it. But wow -- It's got a weird, really weird, set of "mastering" tools... And I say "mastering" (in quotes and all) as it's made up of a bunch of stuff that mastering engineers almost never use in the first place. Maul-the-band compression...? Multiband saturation...? Multiband Haas filtering? (FFS?!?).

Let me tell you how many times I've ever - EVER, in 30-some years, even thought to consider using a Haas filter on the low end content of a mix -- (none - just wanted to make that clear). Yet Ozone seems to suggest that it's - well, normal enough to (A) have it in there and (B) actually use it in presets!!!

"Mastering" REVERB...? :facepalm:

I'm not saying that it's not an "interesting" and freakishly unusual set of tools to be sure. But as far as its use for mastering, I don't even know any engineers that use anything more than maybe the limiter and I know a few guys who are partial to the dithering (still can't see why, but hey, it's dithering).

Sorry - WTH were we talking about?

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Massive Master said:
If you know *EXACTLY* what you want to do and precisely how to do it using the tools supplied by Ozone, go nuts. Otherwise, I've found it to be the absolute fastest way to completely screw up an otherwise perfectly decent mix to the point of it being totally unlistenable. **


Don't remember where I first heard it (or if I even did hear it), but it's that crazy swishy goofiness in the top end on MP3's.

** And I always try to make it clear, especially as an "Izotope Pro User" or whatever they call it, that I'm not "bashing" Ozone -- It's not completely evil in and of itself -- It's only as nasty and horrible as the user makes it. But wow -- It's got a weird, really weird, set of "mastering" tools... And I say "mastering" (in quotes and all) as it's made up of a bunch of stuff that mastering engineers almost never use in the first place. Maul-the-band compression...? Multiband saturation...? Multiband Haas filtering? (FFS?!?).

Let me tell you how many times I've ever - EVER, in 30-some years, even thought to consider using a Haas filter on the low end content of a mix -- (none - just wanted to make that clear). Yet Ozone seems to suggest that it's - well, normal enough to (A) have it in there and (B) actually use it in presets!!!

"Mastering" REVERB...? :facepalm:

I'm not saying that it's not an "interesting" and freakishly unusual set of tools to be sure. But as far as its use for mastering, I don't even know any engineers that use anything more than maybe the limiter and I know a few guys who are partial to the dithering (still can't see why, but hey, it's dithering).

Sorry - WTH were we talking about?

View attachment 84096
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I'm just going to go with 'I told you so'. lol

It is amazing how easy it is to destroy a mix with a software claiming to be the tool to use. Problem is, no one tool/use of all of them is what is actually needed. Subtle use of any one may or may not be needed. That is why you hire a mastering engineer. Someone that has a realistic perspective in a well treated room/monitors with a skill to find what is needed.

Or at the least don't think you need to use every tool to make it better.

Mastering is about finesse of making a compilation of recordings work together. Not about throwing a bunch of plugins at it.
 
killthepixelnow said:
Lesson learned. I'll be working on that this week. Hope to come up with something good!
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Just keep in mind that it is your mix that determines what will happen in mastering. You should never expect to 'fix' anything in mastering. You may get some consistency and a bit of taming/sweetening of the sound, but it is up to you to deliver something viable before you even attempt to send or try to masturbate a song yourself.

I think spell check just made me say that... lol!
 
jimmys69 said:
Well there you go. Use only the tools you need from Ozone. It is a package that gives options. Too many needless ones actually.

Don't do that!

If you must 'home' master, just put a limiter on it. Maybe. The mix sounded much better before the Izotope rape.
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Ozone is a great tool but one I could spend years learning how to use properly.

To join in the heresy, I'm with Jimmy69. In lieu of real "mastering" if I'm doing it myself I'll generally get the mix how I want it then bung it into a limiter (after some careful thought about how much limiter) to get things to a standard "commercial" level and make sure the dynamic range is suitable for where I'm going to be playing stuff back.
 
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