Why can't you master in a home studio?

Lt. Bob said:
IF the main thing that M.E.'s bring to the table is their ears ..... then just like anything else to do with ears they're gonna be all over the place.
It's not like every M.E. has a template that makes every recording sound a specific way.
Plus an M.E. that's mastering for hip-hop is gonna have a very different product than one who tends to do mostly acoustic work.
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Exactly!
I just got back my 2nd CD song files from Max @ Spendour Mastering. He asked me for a sample of 'pro' music similar in sound to what I was looking for. Of course the example I sent him was only really relevant to about 2/3 of my songs (I have a lot of different styles!)
But using that sample and the songs it was relevant to, he was able to really tighten up the overall sounds, balance the tone and volume of the songs (including the disparent ones) and fix some underlying bass issues. Proper room/ears was the key, I believe.
 
mj...Sounds like you had a good experience.

the most recent mastering ..or whatever it is in HR, maybe its just tweaking? I dont know anymore....

but the idea to toss a professional song into the DAW in a track and compare tones and volume is interesting (and depressing..hah)..

trying to do it all is probably more amatuer-hobbyist stuff, a few people seem to be able to make it work in the house...RAMI stuff comes to mind. ... I tend to lose interest after tracking, and by mixing am burnt out, and mastering consists of increasing the volume a lot but the balance isnt there , and it sounds HR.
 
"the idea to toss a professional song into the DAW in a track and compare tones and volume" is something I got from this site when mixing. It works - to an extent - based on your mixing room sound, of course.
In my case, I took a pro CD from a performer that plays acoustic and has a band with electric guitar, bass and full drum kit behind him - songs similar to my sound (for some songs anyway).

Max offers a 'first CD mastered free' for others, too - he wants to increase his background for rock and folk stuff. He posted that here, that's where I found him last year. Others should make use of his offer at http://www.spendourmastering.com
 
First post, so don't be too hard on me...:cursing:

Done both sides of this mastering thing, and IF I have the cash, I will send it out, no questions. The guy I wound up working with on my last CD (Vince @ Screech Grind Media, out of Pittsburgh) suggested a couple tweaks to my mixes, then went ahead and got it done-everything levelled out and balanced (did a decent job to begin with, but you know about toasted ears!), encoded all the song codes, etc. and got pretty much a perfect master done. Well worth the money, the CD did crack the national blues charts for 3 months, and I don't think it would have turned out as well with me behind the board, no matter how far my skills have progressed (and they're a lot better than 5 years ago-still have a ways to go though!!!)

I also whole-heartedly agree on the new set of ears approach, I get too close to the music after awhile to make a good judgement sometimes... just like trying your mixes on different systems...

OK, enough rambling...:p

Franc Robert (aka backalleyblues)
 
backalleyblues,, that was great post and real 1st hand perspective shared...congrats on the tracks and with a good ME...and on the charts too!
 
Backspacez said:
I always hear people talking about how you need to master in a real studio and this and that. Why? What is so important about mastering?
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THE MORE CORRECT QUESTION SHOULD BE:

why can't I master in my home studio?


maybe you can, and maybe you don't have the chops or the gear.
it's that simple.
 
when you get a song mastered in a studio you are paying for a trained set of ears. We "ghetto" master out of our homestudios though using mastering plugins.. CHEEEEEEEAAAPPPPP lol
 
If you are releasing a physical CD or digital distribution for sale, for profit and believe you can re-coup the costs, then have it professionally mastered. I certainly wouldn't master stuff just to drive around listening to it in my car :-)
 
Bristol Posse said:
Well since many of us home recordists forgo the Good Material; Good tracking spaces; Good mic technique; Good performances, Good editing; Good mixing spaces, Good monitors and Good mixing technique that the pros have........

It seems kinda silly to worry about good mastering at the end of the process. Why not just stick a make it loud preset on there.

Kind of like building a chair out of the cheapest particle board you can find, the legs are uneven, the back isn't straight, it was painted with some watercolors from a Barbie coloring book but now I think I should send it to Japan for a master of Lacquering to put the final coat of Lacquer on it and make it look "Pro"

Just sayin' and yes I'm feeling feisty today

YMMV
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lol, amazing. Yea and theres still people that think you send a song to mastering and it will suddenly sound incredible depending on how much you pay.



Like there is some 10 thousand dollar rack gear the pros use to magically turn horribly configured amplitube and EZdrummer into commercial quality guitar and drums.
 
True that.
I only had professional mastering done once, and while I know my mixes are a far cry from any commercial standard, I didn't want them to be audibly changed.
I didn't want them to sound better or shinier or whatever; I just wanted to have a bit of confidence that they would translate well to radio.
I did some stuff myself in the past that just crumbled under broadcast limiting.

In my opinion, that's a good example of when/why to use a professional mastering outfit.

I think depending on your goals, you can master in a home studio.
My goal was good radio translation, and through getting pro mastering done once, I was able to learn a lot from it.

I did a bit of educated compare/contrast with the next release and it sounded fine on the radio. :)
 
In the past month I had the rare experience of hearing one of my mix/master jobs on the radio. It was a mono FM station that's news/talk most of the time but they have a local music show for an hour some evenings. When I finally realized I was hearing my work on the radio I had a slight panic hoping it wouldn't suck, but fortunately it sounded fine. And it goes to show you that mono compatibility matters.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
In the past month I had the rare experience of hearing one of my mix/master jobs on the radio. It was a mono FM station that's news/talk most of the time but they have a local music show for an hour some evenings. When I finally realized I was hearing my work on the radio I had a slight panic hoping it wouldn't suck, but fortunately it sounded fine. And it goes to show you that mono compatibility matters.
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I started reading mono compatibility when I first started doing this home recording. This is a subject that is really needs to be heeded/checked. Even for the EDM guys, you never know what system you are going to get and in a bar/club (as stated before, the sweet spot is very small) most clubs will use mono systems. If you are ready, you don't have to fear "The Mono". (Sound, not the disease, you still have to fear that)
 
After lots of practicing, some self-studies and mid-priced hardware upgrades (converter/compressor that didnt cost me a fortune) I started to achieve great results in mastering. After all, not every mastering-engineer that calls himself mastering-engineer plays in the upper league. I guess that a lot of "living room project studios" have achieved vast experience due to the info on the internet. And mastering software such as izotope has opened totally new possibilities to a lot of hobbyist out there. The mastering engineers that I'd like to handover a project are anyhow out of my league and I dont see much advantage of having my projects mixed by semi-pros.
 
I did 3 albums.
*First one mixed by a pro - I wasn't so happy about the result because this changed the sound but not in the direction I wanted.
*So I decided to master the second one myself after carefully following several tutorials and reading a few books. I mastered them using my Yamaha NS10-M. It worked. But I had issues with bass frequencies and it was exhausting as these speakers are not comfortable :-/
*For the third one, I bought new speakers Adam A7X. Mixing and mastering was much easier, but I still had difficulties with bass frequencies.
... in the end I am still more satisfied with my mastering than the one done by a pro - but I must confess I must have spent way much more time on my mastering than the pro does...
 
So I have a question that sort of goes along with the theme of this thread.

I record on Reaper and whenever i mix stuff down i have to put a compressor and a limiter on the master track to make it an audible volume. I'd rather not spend money at all on mastering. So I had the idea of importing the final mixes back into reaper onto a stereo track and doing a similar thing with consistent eq and compression/limiter on the master for all the songs. this is something that i won't have to do for a little while yet. I still have to record 4 more songs.

I'm not really looking for anything that sounds "perfect" or hi-fi or conventional. really just looking for consistency in eq and volume from song to song. is this an alright idea? really just looking for passable here haha...
 
cormac said:
So I have a question that sort of goes along with the theme of this thread.

I record on Reaper and whenever i mix stuff down i have to put a compressor and a limiter on the master track to make it an audible volume. I'd rather not spend money at all on mastering. So I had the idea of importing the final mixes back into reaper onto a stereo track and doing a similar thing with consistent eq and compression/limiter on the master for all the songs. this is something that i won't have to do for a little while yet. I still have to record 4 more songs.

I'm not really looking for anything that sounds "perfect" or hi-fi or conventional. really just looking for consistency in eq and volume from song to song. is this an alright idea? really just looking for passable here haha...
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Yup, that's what most of us home-recorders do. Get a good mix without worrying about the volume (well, worry about it not getting anywhere near clipping). Then, render that, bring it into a new project and "shmaster" it. :D
 
I bought Ozone and learned how to use it. It can be a dangerous tool at first, given the extremity of its features (I almost NEVER use the harmonic exciter).

I recently engineered an album for a band, but they sent it off to a $$$$ guy in Nashville to have it mixed, and he sent it off to a $$$$ mastering company. Part of my deal with the band was that I would mix and master their bonus track.

They ended up liking my bonus track better than any of the stuff they got back from $$$$ and $$$$.

That said, I will probably only ever be able to get to 95% of true commercial sound on my own...if I'm lucky. There's nothing like a dedicated mastering house/engineer. Still, there's nothing mysterious about mastering; it's EQ, compression, and stereo imaging.
 
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