Why can't you master in a home studio?

[Backspacez]

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? For example to quote an article from AudioFanZine

"A writer’s words are not complete until the editor approves them. A painter’s work is not complete until it has been matted and framed. A musician’s work requires the same treatment. Audio production should not be rushed, finished haphazardly or completed “just to get it out there”. A finished product should reflect all of the work of the artist, producers and engineers that carry that vision forward. Even a “perfect” mix needs mastering to a degree. In this case, you want the mastering to be as transparent as possible so that the original sound is maintained while preparing it for the final media."

Isn't mastering kind of just getting it loud and stuff? Are they just saying that because they're engineers and they kind of overestimate the role of mastering? Or is there something about mastering that makes stuff better?

 

[jimmys69]

IMO, it has more to do with having a trained pair of ears, that are not involved in the mixing process.

One personal example; I was mixing an record once that had a cello part in it. I had heard it so many times, that I still heard the cello in my head-even though the track had been muted.

In addition to that, a good ME will have an ideal listening (treated) environment, and gear that can bring out the best of a mix. Even with testing mix translation on multiple sources, we can have a tough time hearing with truly unprejudiced ears.

I master almost everything I record myself, but not really by choice. More of a budget thing for the clients. If it were my baby, I would send it to an independent set of educated ears. And then flog them if they screwed it up. lol

 

[Backspacez]

IMO, it has more to do with having a trained pair of ears, that are not involved in the mixing process.

One personal example; I was mixing an record once that had a cello part in it. I had heard it so many times, that I still heard the cello in my head-even though the track had been muted.

In addition to that, a good ME will have an ideal listening (treated) environment, and gear that can bring out the best of a mix. Even with testing mix translation on multiple sources, we can have a tough time hearing with truly unprejudiced ears.

I master almost everything I record myself, but not really by choice. More of a budget thing for the clients. If it were my baby, I would send it to an independent set of educated ears. And then flog them if they screwed it up. lol

Cool. That makes more sense and clears up some Qs I've had about mastering.

 

[cyanbeat]

No you don't need to send your stuff to a studio for mastering IMO. First, you could master everything on headphone monitors on your computer using any DAW software and come up with beautiful tight music if it was mixed and clean to begin with. Second, I don't think the issue of sound reflections in your room is an issue with speakers unless you blast the music. You want to save money as much as possible, and home recording technology is so advanced and cheap these days that for many pro studios are becoming a thing of the past. Research compression and equing for mastering.

In a nutshell: good mix + good ears + decent monitors = nicely master track

 

[Massive Master]

Second, I don't think the issue of sound reflections in your room is an issue with speakers unless you blast the music.

Uhhhhh --- No.

You want to save money as much as possible, and home recording technology is so advanced and cheap these days that for many pro studios are becoming a thing of the past. Research compression and equing for mastering.

You can research and do your own home dentistry too.

Isn't mastering kind of just getting it loud and stuff? Are they just saying that because they're engineers and they kind of overestimate the role of mastering? Or is there something about mastering that makes stuff better?

I don't mix an awful lot anymore - but I don't underestimate the role of the mastering engineer (and keep in mind that it literally makes front-page industry news when the "traditional" mastering phase is circumvented).

That said - My bias might be more obvious than some....

 

[jimmys69]

No you don't need to send your stuff to a studio for mastering IMO. First, you could master everything on headphone monitors on your computer using any DAW software and come up with beautiful tight music if it was mixed and clean to begin with. Second, I don't think the issue of sound reflections in your room is an issue with speakers unless you blast the music. You want to save money as much as possible, and home recording technology is so advanced and cheap these days that for many pro studios are becoming a thing of the past. Research compression and equing for mastering.

In a nutshell: good mix + good ears + decent monitors = nicely master track

Sorry cyanbeat, but you made a completely incorrect statement, right after you said 'First'. You have completely missed the point of what mastering is.

After you said 'Second', you gave the absolute wrong information.

You really need to gain some experience, before giving advice here. We try to keep this place honest. Bad advice, is not only not cool, but will be cut down quickly.


Sorry man, you are not giving any good advice here...

 

[cakewalkKaKed]

first off a great engineer has to have a great set of ears and a hell of a lot of experience ... if you cant hear it how the hell can you fix it? .. they know the tools they use inside out,know what tool to reach for,they collected hardware over the years for a reason,not cos it looked good or was cheap on ebay ... same with pluggins,some are bloody great innovative pieces of brilliance while others are the same code licensed out,others are made by noobs using other software (gotta say there's some great freeware plugs)...

mastering is fixing the errors missed in tracking,makes everything gell together and adds the final polish n sheen that is bloody hard to get unless you really know what your doing,sadly with the arse falling out of the music biz true engineers are competing against complete noobs with crappy gear spreading untruths about their work,sure there are those few that work in there bedrooms/home studios that have skill but there is no way that they can compete at the same level .... (there's shit studios too,listen to their work and find out)

all of this means nothing if the song sucks and is performed badly,shit will still sound shit,only better sounding shit after mastering ... a great song will still be a great song even with noob mistakes ...

 

[rayc]

Oh dear, we've uncovered another one.
There are a very few Home Recorders who master well enough to call it mastering.
I think of what most do with a few plug ins etc as "finalizing" or "goodenoughing".
Those few, the very lucky few, have GREAT EARS and enough experience to do what their ears tell them to do.
Almost every thing cyanbeat has offered will barely get you to "goodenoughing" and demonstrates not a lack of talent but a lack of experience &/or of good ears.
His summary of "In a nutshell: good mix + good ears + decent monitors = nicely master track" is pretty accurate but his understanding of the parts in the sum seem less than stellar.

 

[Lt. Bob]

let us not forget that a mastering engineer is capable of doing a bad job just like any profession. A friend recently did a CD and, personally, I much oprefer his own mix/mastering because the M.E. put in all this sub-aimed lowend and also made it pretty damned bright on top.
So merely because a guy is a mastering engineer doesn't automatically make what he does right.

 

[Waltz Mastering]

merely because a guy is a mastering engineer doesn't automatically make what he does right.

I can definitely see this being true because there are charletons and quacks in every profession known to man and women. Just because someone hangs a sign on there door doesn't mean they are good.

If you trust your own ears, expertise and system to master, there's no reason you can't do things at home with convincing results, ..although being subjective of your own mixes can be difficult sometimes. Some people at the end of mixing want to get a second opinion or there ears are burnt and they just want to hand it off to someone else. If you go that route get some recommendations. ..or free previews seem to be the rage so you can do that and then compare it with your self master to see which you prefer.

 

[Waltz Mastering]

Isn't mastering kind of just getting it loud and stuff?

Level is a small part of it.. and probably the easiest.. .Continuity and translation from song to song and system to system and over all having good sound is a bigger part of it ..and also the technicalities of assembling the master for replication, distribution and broadcast.

 

[Lt. Bob]

I can definitely see this being true because there are charletons and quacks in every profession known to man and women. Just because someone hangs a sign on there door doesn't mean they are good.

If you trust your own ears, expertise and system to master, there's no reason you can't do things at home with convincing results, ..although being subjective of your own mixes can be difficult sometimes. Some people at the end of mixing want to get a second opinion or there ears are burnt and they just want to hand it off to someone else. If you go that route get some recommendations. ..or free previews seem to be the rage so you can do that and then compare it with your self master to see which you prefer.

when I do a CD this next year I'm definitely sending it to someone to master it because of that being too close to my own mix thing.
However ..... I will want to hear examples of the M.E's work before I choose one and I want to be able to reject it if the end result isn't good to my ears.
I imagine with quality M.E.s those two things are standard practice.

 

[Berndtwhite]

The above written piece is true to every word...nowadays everyone is in rush but to achieve the best quality you have to give a quality time...and the real studio is the best thing to do that..

 

[Raymeous]

You can.

Here's the thing though, and I'll use microphones as an analogy, a microphone is like a set of ears without a brain connected to it. It will hear anything you put in front of it, but it can't pick out a single voice at a crowded ball game like you can. You can focus on paying attention to that particular sound, sort of filtering out all the stuff you don't want to pay attention to (like an angry wife), but it's still there. So even though a mic may be billed as a Kick Drum mic, it will still be able to record vocals. Will it sound good? Maybe, maybe not (probably not). My piont is that there are more than one way of tackling a problem. Mastering at home is one way, while mastering at a pro facility is another way of doing it. They will both work, but one has a better chance at a satisfactory end result.

The thing is that home studios are at different levels. Some home studios consist of little more than a porta studio and a $20 mic from Radio Shack. Then there are people like me, somewhere in the middle, using a spare bedroom, with a lot more gear and a bit of room treatments. After that, there are people who have a purpose built facility, with floating floors, isolation booths and so on, on their own property and have tens of thousands of dollars invested in amazing gear. These are ALL home studios, from the $200 studio to the $200,000 studio. Because of that, they would have different capabilities and be able to produce different levels of "pro sounds".

Considering all of that, why wouldn't you be able to master your tracks at home? While an actual mastering facility will probably produce a better product, you could without a doubt master your material at home. No questions about it.

So in answer to your basic question, YES you can master in your home studio.


Here's a clip on Mastering with Studio One from Graham Cochrane, the founder of "The Recording Revolution.com" :
http://therecordingrevolution.com/2012/12/19/mastering-in-presonus-studio-one-video/

 

[DM60]

First, .... (just kidding)

What I have been doing as a "crude" type of mastering is to bring my mix into an analysis tool (I use Audacity, Plot Spectrum, Back-Harris function) to see if it fits within a frequency of acceptable standards



(From what I gather, there is a standard for releasing music to make sure it play over a wide range of devices).

I export the plot values, put into a spreadsheet that has these values and it plots my mix where it is within a tolerance range. Once I get it into the spectrum within the tolerance range, I then use another tool to get the RMS into a specified range, once again looking for a constant. That way, all of my songs are close to "a standard" spectrum range and a standard dB range.

While this isn't mastering in the true sense, it is one of the process I would assume is a part of the final output done for mastering.

I am not sure if this makes any sense as I left out many of the steps I do, but didn't want to go into boring details that might not be relevant.

 

[LeadPaint]

That seems like a very clinical way to treat your music.

 

[DM60]

That seems like a very clinical way to treat your music.

If you don't know what you're doing, you have to start somewhere

 

[Seafroggys]

Mastering would be semi-clinical though, at the very least

 

[DM60]

Mastering would be semi-clinical though, at the very least

I kind of thought the same thing. If music is sent to a radio station, there has to be some standard so that the stations are not having to make adjustments for each song or get a set of instructions on how it should be EQ'd.

Don't know, didn't seem to be that bad when I do it. I was still mixing and hearing what I wanted the song to sound like, just helped to make it more consistent while I was learning.

 

[RAMI]

No offense, but I don't buy any of that. If it works for you, then cool, I'm not putting it down. But mixing and mastering should be done with your ears. Period. There are no "standard" frequency ranges. What if your graphic tells your eyes that your song "looks" right", but it sounds better when you get it sounding good to your ears, even though the graphic tells you it's "wrong" (which it isn't)?

I would bet all my equipment that a "real" mastering engineer doesn't use any kind of visual graph, unless they're trying to pin-point a problem that they HEAR first, but can't quite locate.