(Again, mastering is in quotes so as not to offend the purists... )
I finally got around to playing with "remastering" a bunch of my tracks I have recorded over the past forever-and-a-half. I had been putting it off until I got my new system, and then felt a little unsure about where to start.
I picked up Ozone and the tutorial seemed to help me quite a bit. I started to understand a bit about how mastering compressors, EQ, etc. work. So, I've been working on some of my mixes, but was looking for some outside feedback, and you guys are my guys, so... All of this was done in Ozone, BTW, for those of you wanting to hear it without 20 second fade-outs.
Previously my "mastering" consisted of a bit of randomly applied EQ and compression, without a very good sense of what it was doing to the mix. Because I didn't do too much, I couldn't screw it up too much, but it didn't necessarily push it to the "next level" either.
I put 2 versions of my latest tune up here - one is the original, undoctored "rough mix," and the other is my "mastered mix." I'm pretty happy with it, except I think I may be a little too bass happy. I like low end, but when I played the mix in my car, I had to turn off the EQ I put on all my commercial cds, and then it sounded the same (with the same bass boost as the EQ'd cds). It doesn't sound too bassy on other systems though, including my monitors.
Anyway... check them out - one is titled "Believe rough mix," ad the other is "Hard to Believe," which is the mastered version.
http://www.shadyneighbor.com/music/
Oh - and a warning - THIS SONG HAS A LOT OF CURSING (even though it's fairly mellow)!!! Ok, there. Oh - another warning - these are encoded at 160 bitrate, so they're about 4.4mb each.
So - is it an improvement? What could be better? What do you think I did wrong? I'm sincerely interested in "mastering" feedback, which is why I posted this here and not in the Clinic. And please, be brutally honest here, as I am sincerely trying to improve.
I finally got around to playing with "remastering" a bunch of my tracks I have recorded over the past forever-and-a-half. I had been putting it off until I got my new system, and then felt a little unsure about where to start.
I picked up Ozone and the tutorial seemed to help me quite a bit. I started to understand a bit about how mastering compressors, EQ, etc. work. So, I've been working on some of my mixes, but was looking for some outside feedback, and you guys are my guys, so... All of this was done in Ozone, BTW, for those of you wanting to hear it without 20 second fade-outs.
Previously my "mastering" consisted of a bit of randomly applied EQ and compression, without a very good sense of what it was doing to the mix. Because I didn't do too much, I couldn't screw it up too much, but it didn't necessarily push it to the "next level" either.
I put 2 versions of my latest tune up here - one is the original, undoctored "rough mix," and the other is my "mastered mix." I'm pretty happy with it, except I think I may be a little too bass happy. I like low end, but when I played the mix in my car, I had to turn off the EQ I put on all my commercial cds, and then it sounded the same (with the same bass boost as the EQ'd cds). It doesn't sound too bassy on other systems though, including my monitors.
Anyway... check them out - one is titled "Believe rough mix," ad the other is "Hard to Believe," which is the mastered version.
http://www.shadyneighbor.com/music/
Oh - and a warning - THIS SONG HAS A LOT OF CURSING (even though it's fairly mellow)!!! Ok, there. Oh - another warning - these are encoded at 160 bitrate, so they're about 4.4mb each.
So - is it an improvement? What could be better? What do you think I did wrong? I'm sincerely interested in "mastering" feedback, which is why I posted this here and not in the Clinic. And please, be brutally honest here, as I am sincerely trying to improve.