Fadeouts and mastering

DavidK

DavidK

New member
Is a song fades out and is going to be mastered by a pro, who fades it out?

A. You

B. Master Engineer


My guess is B?
 
Generally fade outs are part of the mastering. You merely write a note which songs to fade. Though, if you're sure about a certain fade, there is nothing wrong in doing it during the mixing.

It's the same thing with song order. If you're sure about it, make a track list. If you're not sure, let the ME decide.
 
As long as the fade is done correctly (you'd be absolutely shocked how many are not), it isn't really a big deal to fade them ahead of time.

One thing - You want to stay on the long side of wonderful - The ME is probably going to fade over that fade at some point (as it will almost undoubtedly be dynamically different than it was when it came in and he's going to have to attempt to make it match the original).
 
Leaving tracks up... Fading the 2-buss but leaving other elements active... Hearing elements cut out abruptly during the fade...

One of the greatest things about digital mixing is the ability to fade out individual elements individually... And some people seem to not want to crank up the volume to check them.
 
MCI2424 said:
A:Me. I am the only one who knows how my fade will be. Could be long, short or anywhere inbetween.
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yep. I wouldn't trust anyone else to make a decision like that. Minute details even in a fade out can make or break a song. (if I do a fadeout...which is almost never...I consider that a part of the composition)
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Hey John,

What would constitute an incorrectly-done fade?

G.
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one that is inappropriate for the song....the wrong "curve" maybe, too quick, too slow...or even as was said...with digital, getting REALLY anal with the fade out and controlling how every track fades out individually to really sculpt things (that's how I would do it... because it's always nice to fade things at different rates and curves)
 
I prefer to have the ME do it. That way, the compression and limiting done in the mastering process doesn't fall apart as the song fades and the music drops below the threshold of the compressors and limiters.
 
TerraMortim said:
one that is inappropriate for the song....the wrong "curve" maybe, too quick, too slow...
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As judged by who?

I asked John that question because, frankly, I have always dome my own fades and have never had a problem; the problems he describes frankly floor me that they even occur, let alone with the frequency he experiences as ME. I mean...wow.

I'm with you, Terra, in that individual fades are not only often a good idea creatively, but sometime they are absolutely necessary. I've gotten a lot of mixes - especially from solo artists making their own multi-instrument tracks, but it can be from full bands also - where there is no purposeful end to all the tracks at one time because they know in tracking that the song is just going to fade anyway, so they just stretch the song and extra few bars and just let themselves die out. The ends of each player's/instrument's part can differ by as much as a few seconds, but they know it's just going to be trimmed in post anyway.

But when it comes to judging "apporpriateness" in length or speed or shape of the fade, somebody's got to wear the producer hat there and make the decision. Yeah, you can leave it up to the ME - especially those who are unable to even make make their own fade properly (yeesh). But I often like to make my own fades, or define the fade specs to the ME, because sometimes it can make all the difference just which beat of which measure is the last thing the listener hears. Sometimes one wants to end on a wimpy beat, sometimes just squeezing in that last vocal scream or guitar mini-riff before silence puts a nice punctuation at the end.

That said, and I'd like to hear John's (and Tom V's., if he's listening in) take on this: I usually will do my own fades only if I am doing my own mastering. If I'm handing off to a ME, I'll leave the ends sloppy, but specify (to at least some degree) where I want the fade to happen and so forth so he can do it.

The reason is, IMHO FWTW (and these guys are welcome to edumacate me otherwise if I'm missing something), the fade out should be the very last thing done to the song. EQ, compression, limiting, etc. that may be done to the 2mix can change the character of the sound of the fade. What sounds like the perfect fade now can sound chunky and mismanaged after the fade has been run through the rack a few times. It's like throwing a compressor on a reverb tail, it just no longer sounds the way it should (Terra, I know you like to break that "rule" purposely to get that nasty sound, and that's cool. But that's not what we're talking about here, we're talking about keeping the natural fade curve intact.) EDIT: Shit, Farview beat me to that point (again). He is sneaky that way :D

G.
 
Massive Master said:
..One of the greatest things about digital mixing is the ability to fade out individual elements individually... And some people seem to not want to crank up the volume to check them.
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Custom per-track fades is a fairly cool creative element not to mention a good example of where it's simply the right thing to polish up' on held out end chords and such. Trimming guitars, basses fading off at different rates, falling into their noise levels..
 
Farview said:
I prefer to have the ME do it.
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I'm with Jay.

There are functions like noise reduction that work better when the material isn't faded. You can get a clean noise profile for one thing. If you attend the session it's no big deal to tell the ME what you want.

If you do fade it's a good idea to go a bit longer so the ME can remove any part of noise floor that gets brought up as a result of raising level.

OTOH John is right about fading/muting individual tracks. Especially to remove noisy tracks, drummers dropping their sticks, etc. This is different than the overall fade though since you won't have access at this level in a stereo mix.
 
Farview said:
I prefer to have the ME do it. That way, the compression and limiting done in the mastering process doesn't fall apart as the song fades and the music drops below the threshold of the compressors and limiters.
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Limiters are not a problem, as they do nothing in quite sections to begin with. I agree that compression can be a problem, though. Sometimes, I undid a fade, applied all dynamic processing necessary and finally exactly remade the fade in every respect the song had in the beginning.
SouthSIDE Glen said:
because sometimes it can make all the difference just which beat of which measure is the last thing the listener hears. Sometimes one wants to end on a wimpy beat, sometimes just squeezing in that last vocal scream or guitar mini-riff before silence puts a nice punctuation at the end.
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The big problem on this is that it depends very much on the listening environment. In one situation, a listener could not make anything lower than -30 dB while in another situation -70 dB might be still clearly audible. Thus counting on that is pretty much futile.
 
LogicDeLuxe said:
The big problem on this is that it depends very much on the listening environment. In one situation, a listener could not make anything lower than -30 dB while in another situation -70 dB might be still clearly audible. Thus counting on that is pretty much futile.
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True enough. But just because the guy in the car with his windows open can't hear it doesn't mean that one should take that as license to phone it in for the rest. Sure it's not going to make or break a song or a mix, it's a relatively minor detail in the grand scheme of things; but I will never argue against that kind of attention to detail.

You've never heard a re-master with a different fade at the end than the original that just left you wanting? One example that burned into my conscious way back when I was a teen was the song "Melancholy Man" from the Moody Blues. I forget now which album that song was originally on ("Days of Future Past", maybe?), but the original pressing had the song fading on the lead vocal wailing in a way that sounded just perfect. Then on their Best Of 2-album set, they faded a half-measure to a measure early - perhaps to make room on the album side, I don't know - and it was like kissing your sister compared to the original.

G.
 
Thanks for the responses guys.:cool:

I think I will do it myself, and of course have a non-faded version in case that would be prefered. I do agree that fading it myself would be the most musical version.
 
This thread is a direct example of why I still hang out here. I never once considered the idea of fading out individual tracks as part of the greater fadeout and had never heard of this technique before. Gonna try it now.
 
Farview said:
Since I do a lot of metal, the limiter is part of the sound. If the song comes out of the limiter, it will fall apart.
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I wasn't thinking of a limiter used during mixing, but then again, if it's already on the track, it doesn't matter if the fade is done right after that or at the mastering.
Of course, I apply a mastering limiter after all edits, including fades.
 
LogicDeLuxe said:
if it's already on the track
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This is the key, IMHO, and the reason why I say that the fades should be the last thing (or close to it) on the list.

I I almost never apply fades on a track with real-time effects. Any EQ, compression, reverb, or other fuzzy ear candy gets rendered first, with final fades applied only to the otherwise finished tracks.

This is also why I say that if I'm sending my 2mix to an ME to finish, I'll have him do the final fade, because he'll surely have more processing to do first. If I want to do individual fades (track fades), I'll send stems along. But, if I am having the ME do it,I'll send along instructions as to how/where I'd like the fade(s) to happen.

G.
 
LogicDeLuxe said:
I wasn't thinking of a limiter used during mixing, but then again, if it's already on the track, it doesn't matter if the fade is done right after that or at the mastering.
Of course, I apply a mastering limiter after all edits, including fades.
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I think that's Jay's point. If you are limiting/compressing during mastering (in addition to possibly limiting/compressing slightly during mixing) the limiter will not react evenly across a fade.

It's similar with any dynamics-based effect. Noise reduction can also use a threshold, if the relative noise level changes due to the fade you may have to automate the thresh in response to this.

It can be fixed, it's just more work to automate the threshold(s), and likely not as clean.
 
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