Mastering fiasco

C

Canobliss

New member
I do not claim to anybody, including clients, that i am good at mastering. But for those people on a tight budget i tell them that I can at least space the songs out, get levels even and bump the tracks a little louder.

My process in protools
1-Import all tracks into new session (keeping at 24bit)
2-Level out tracks by soloing back and forth and adjusting volumes.
3-Use an L1 on the master track and squash the tracks a few dB.

Normally i dont have a problem, but this last time, the mixes sounded good but after "mastering" everything came out very bass heavy in the end.

Anybody have any explanations for this, or alternate ways for mastering in Pro-tools with limited tools?
 
chessrock said:
I'm going to go way out on a limb here and suggest you attenuate some of the bass.

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Click to expand...

The thing is that the low end was fine in the mixes. only after using the limiter, set to about 5db of peak attenuation, did the bass become an issue. The limiter really only had to work when the dumbek (hand drum) and bass hit at the same time.
My first thought was simply that i hit the tracks too hard it was just pumping that was making it muddy, but i compared the pre-limited track to the limited track at the same playback level and eveything sounded fine except that the bass was relatively and significantly louder.
 
That shouldn't happen. Weird.

Oh well; life goes on. I would just make sure to monitor the final mix post limiter, then, and adjust from there.

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it might be possible that the peaks that the limiter is squashing down lie in the mid-to-high end of the spectrum, therefore causing the low end to take up more of the mix

at least that's my best guess
 
That's also what I was thinking, but he did mention he was only limiting by a few db's, and I don't think a few db's would be nearly enough to have that kind of effect.

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Ironklad Audio said:
it might be possible that the peaks that the limiter is squashing down lie in the mid-to-high end of the spectrum, therefore causing the low end to take up more of the mix

at least that's my best guess
Click to expand...
That's probably exactly what's happening.

Many people don't get that when they compress or limit peaks that exist mostiny within a limited frequency range, and then use makeup gain to gring the overall level back up again, that it often has the effect of boosting the relative level of those frequencies that flew in under the threshold.

This is a major reason for applying "fix EQ" before compression; this EQ is used to premptively knock down or remove unwanted frequiencies before bey get boosted by the compression/makeup step. It's often much cleaner and easier to do it then than it is to try and repair it after the damage is done.

The lower frequencies are especially notorious for this for two reasons:

First, peaks most often exceeding threhold are more often the attacks of high frequency components, much of the LF stuff rides right through the compression. Second, the ear is less sensitive to low frequencies at lower volume; low frequency stuff may be buried in the mix and you just can't hear it so well until it's volume relative to the rest of the mix is boosted.

You may need to do the "fix EQ" thing described above. Or you may possibly even need to apply some high-passing to some of our individual tracks before mixdown to knock out LF buildup, if that's the actual cause.

G.
 
Do the tracks *have* to be squashed? It may be possible that they don't need to be limited. If they do, then limit only up to the point that you hear the bass effect happen, and not to an arbitrary number like -5dB. Limit only 2-3 dB, for example.

It just sounds like you are over limiting the tracks. Then you get into fixing what you broke, and that opens a whole other can of worms. You start with tracks that sound good, then process them so the bass is too high, then process some more to get rid of the bass being too high, the who knows what you'll have to compensate for after that.

Just do minimal processing, and first and foremost: do no damage.
 
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