I was involved in a mastering session with a reputable
engineer whom I have worked with on many occasions He is a 20 year pro and has done a lot of good work.
The tracks involved were 2 electric guitars, blues harp and vocals. Nice bluesy kind of material.
We used Pro Tools with all the plug ins inclucing Waves L2
Monitored mostly on Yamaha NS 10's but had Genelecs,
and boom box speakers for reference. He likes the NS 10's
because he feels they transfer best, and is also used to them. We monitored the session at about 80-85 db for the most part. At times he would use the phones briefly .
One of the 2 guitars was carrying the bottom, whether it be low chords with single note bass runs, or upright bass type walking lines. Very deep and dark.
Everything sounded fantastic in the mastering suite, but when I got in my car to drive home...with a Burn of the session, I noticed that as I increased the gain , it started to distort...in fact when I cranked my car system up fairly
but not overly loud, it was really distorting. We never really cranked it up in the mastering suite. The music is such that the listener would probably not push the volume too much, but none the less , the desire to have it sound clean at all levels is the ultimate goal.
I checked out the waveforms in Cool Edit pro and they were on the hot side, but not clipping anywhere. Does anyone have any thoughts as to how or why this situation occurred.
He used a multi band compressor to clean up some of the lower frequencies, but the original tracks were already nice and warm. the compression used was very gentle...the original tracks did not really need too much work. The EQ used was very subtle.
As it ends up I have a mastered product that sounds good at below 90 -95 db , but above that , it starts getting harsh and distorted. Any thoughts on how this happened would be greatly appreciated
Dr Shock
engineer whom I have worked with on many occasions He is a 20 year pro and has done a lot of good work.
The tracks involved were 2 electric guitars, blues harp and vocals. Nice bluesy kind of material.
We used Pro Tools with all the plug ins inclucing Waves L2
Monitored mostly on Yamaha NS 10's but had Genelecs,
and boom box speakers for reference. He likes the NS 10's
because he feels they transfer best, and is also used to them. We monitored the session at about 80-85 db for the most part. At times he would use the phones briefly .
One of the 2 guitars was carrying the bottom, whether it be low chords with single note bass runs, or upright bass type walking lines. Very deep and dark.
Everything sounded fantastic in the mastering suite, but when I got in my car to drive home...with a Burn of the session, I noticed that as I increased the gain , it started to distort...in fact when I cranked my car system up fairly
but not overly loud, it was really distorting. We never really cranked it up in the mastering suite. The music is such that the listener would probably not push the volume too much, but none the less , the desire to have it sound clean at all levels is the ultimate goal.
I checked out the waveforms in Cool Edit pro and they were on the hot side, but not clipping anywhere. Does anyone have any thoughts as to how or why this situation occurred.
He used a multi band compressor to clean up some of the lower frequencies, but the original tracks were already nice and warm. the compression used was very gentle...the original tracks did not really need too much work. The EQ used was very subtle.
As it ends up I have a mastered product that sounds good at below 90 -95 db , but above that , it starts getting harsh and distorted. Any thoughts on how this happened would be greatly appreciated
Dr Shock
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