A mastering question for someone that knows something....

  • Thread starter Thread starter Greg_L
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I"m pretty new and green at all this mixing/mastering stuff.

But I've stayed at a bunch of Holiday In Express hotels.

Greg, your stuff sounds good. Very entertaining, and enjoyable to listen to. If the cost of making it louder is deviating from the way you want it to sound, just don't make it so loud. The whole "volume wars" thing is basically a crock of shit, we end up getting dB at the expense of dynamics, and personally I don't like it. I have a volume knob, and have spent decades lerning how to turn it up.
 
I appreciate the kind words. You guys are totally right. Fuck it. It does sound better less squashed, so less squashed it will be.

The reason I'm asking this is that I'm putting together my band's album/demo. It started as a demo, but now has grown to an albums worth of songs, so we're gonna make it an album. I'm gonna have to explain this loudness shit to them.
 
Might be just me, but while I'm against having the mix constantly squashed to 0dBFS, and -3dBFS for the "quiet parts", I quite like pushing one of my mixes into a brickwall limiter until it starts sounding like crap.

It's not so that I don't have to adjust the volume. But despite matching an un-limited mix versus a limited one with a volume knob, the limited one feels louder, and let's face it, we all like to listen to our music loud :)

Note: I'm not talking about loud squashed masters, I'm just talking about loud music.

When I mix for myself, I get the mix sounding as good as I can, then when I'm bouncing it out I'll throw it through a limiter so that the loudest peaks get about 3, maybe 4dB of gain reduction. It just seems to gel a bit better.
 
Greg_L said:
It seems that the process of mashing it through a series of limiters is bringing out more snare body at the expense of definition.
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Depending on a "series of limiters" or just one limiter, for most of your level is what's causing all your transients to get lost. This is where a decent analog chain/converters and use of proper gain staging can make a difference.

I would recommend to a/b with your original mix even a hair louder than your master. Your master should sound at least as good at matched levels when you switch between them, Actually, it should sound better.
 
Greg_L said:
I appreciate the kind words. You guys are totally right. Fuck it. It does sound better less squashed, so less squashed it will be.

The reason I'm asking this is that I'm putting together my band's album/demo. It started as a demo, but now has grown to an albums worth of songs, so we're gonna make it an album. I'm gonna have to explain this loudness shit to them.
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Give them a squashed one, if they prefer it. Keep the unsquashed for yourself and anybody else you may be sending it to.
 
philbagg said:
It's not so that I don't have to adjust the volume. But despite matching an un-limited mix versus a limited one with a volume knob, the limited one feels louder, and let's face it, we all like to listen to our music loud :)
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There is a reason for this. Our ears have a natural mechanical compression mechanism that loosens and tightens the eardrum itself, and an additional signal processing compression mechanism that works on the electrical impulses before they hit the brain. When things get loud, we naturally hear compression. A lot of it. So at lower volumes, something squashed has tonal qualities we associate with "loud". The problem is once you turn it up and make it loud for real, our natural compression kicks in on top of the mastering compression and it all falls apart.

So we give up the possibility of actual "loud" for the benefit of a simulated "loud" at lower volume. Not a trade-off I like to make.


Volume match squashed Vs unsquashed at ass-kicking levels. You'll see.


There is a balancing act to this. This is why all Rock n' Roll since the beginning of time uses compression. But once you get past mixing and artistic 2-buss compression and venture into limiting for pure RMS, you've overshot the sweet spot by a mile.
 
Greg_L said:
I've tried that with some quick tests, and it seems to do the trick fairly well. Actually what I did was compress the snare track to a really tight crack, and then once I squashed it, it got to a point closer to what I want to hear. I guess that's the trick. It just seemed like a janky way to get it done.
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Not really. You always have to plan for processing down the line. No matter what you do, the sound is going to change with further processing. the trick is knowing what it needs to sound like initially in order to get the results you want later.

You aren't finished until you are done.
 
Farview said:
Not really. You always have to plan for processing down the line. No matter what you do, the sound is going to change with further processing. the trick is knowing what it needs to sound like initially in order to get the results you want later.

You aren't finished until you are done.
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Yeah.

So if I were to use a pro, what kind of mix would they want? Generally speaking.
 
Along the lines of parallel compression, but different, try using a separate stem for the snare. Compress/limit the stereo mix to taste then sum the dry snare stem with the "mastered" track. You will likely have to lower the overall sum a bit, but you will be able to control the relative amounts. You get the benefit of the snare with more "body" along with re-adding transients that are being lost.

It's similar to overcompensating in the mix but gives you more control after the mix has been completed.

As far as mixes I prefer, mixes that are as close as possible to what you want in the final product but with a enough wiggle room to mold a cohesive album.
 
masteringhouse said:
Along the lines of parallel compression, but different, try using a separate stem for the snare. Compress/limit the stereo mix to taste then sum the dry snare stem with the "mastered" track. You will likely have to lower the overall sum a bit, but you will be able to control the relative amounts. You get the benefit of the snare with more "body" along with re-adding transients that are being lost.

It's similar to overcompensating in the mix but gives you more control after the mix has been completed.
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This is what I meant to say :o

Greg_L said:
WTF is a stem?
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You can have stems of lets say drums for example, when it comes to mastering. So you bounce out your drums to 2 tracks, you can do the same with guitars, vocals, so on so forth. IOW: Sub-mixes.
 
philbagg; said:
You can have stems of lets say drums for example, when it comes to mastering. So you bounce out your drums to 2 tracks, you can do the same with guitars, vocals, so on so forth. IOW: Sub-mixes.
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Exactamundo. Bounce the snare with the same processing that you applied in the mix. Also make sure that it lines up perfectly with the mix when doing the trick mentioned earlier.
 
So...while mastering, I blend the stereo track and a snare-only track? :confused:
 
I believe the answer lies in compressing the snare track before mastering. I mean only the snare track.

One day I spent time playing around with compression on a snare track. (I was seeking the same results as you.) I learned that by changing the attack and release times, I could make the snare sound several different ways.

The high end crack is contained in the transient peak. The body (or fatness) comes from the decaying tail after the transient. When I used a short attack and short release it chopped down the transient peak but left the body unchanged which caused it to sound fatter. As I lengthened the release time, it reduced more body making it sound thinner again. (I had to zoom in on a single snare hit to actually see what was changing.)

I was able to find a happy medium which mostly leveled the snare peaks but still had adequate crack. Then once I got the entire mix to mastering, it didn't need near as much leveling.

I have also blended my snares with poppy sounding samples to get those results.
 
Greg_L said:
So...while mastering, I blend the stereo track and a snare-only track? :confused:
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Basically you would blend the processed stereo track (limited, compressed, overall EQ, etc.) with a snare only track either not processed at all or possibly with a bit of EQ if you felt that it was needed. Again all of this has to be lined-up at the point where you are summing both or phase issues will result. If you are mastering totally in the box and your DAW has good latency compensation then it shouldn't be a problem.

If that last sentence didn't make sense, try it and just listen for how the dry snare matches with the stereo mix.
 
RawDepth said:
I believe the answer lies in compressing the snare track before mastering. I mean only the snare track.

One day I spent time playing around with compression on a snare track. (I was seeking the same results as you.) I learned that by changing the attack and release times, I could make the snare sound several different ways.

The high end crack is contained in the transient peak. The body (or fatness) comes from the decaying tail after the transient. When I used a short attack and short release it chopped down the transient peak but left the body unchanged which caused it to sound fatter. As I lengthened the release time, it reduced more body making it sound thinner again.

I was able to find a happy medium which mostly leveled the snare peaks but still had adequate crack. Then once I got the entire mix to mastering, it didn't need near as much leveling.
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Well I do that already. I don't use much compression on the snare, but it's there. In my experimentation today, I found that I could get away with a lot more and get closer to the mastered result I'm looking for.

Also, simply not squashing the master so much gave me good results. :o
 
masteringhouse said:
Basically you would blend the processed stereo track (limited, compressed, overall EQ, etc.) with a snare only track either not processed at all or possibly with a bit of EQ if you felt that it was needed. Again all of this has to be lined-up at the point where you are summing both or phase issues will result. If you are mastering totally in the box and your DAW has good latency compensation then it shouldn't be a problem.

If that last sentence didn't make sense, try it and just listen for how the dry snare matches with the stereo mix.
Click to expand...

Okay I'll give it a shot. Thanks.

and thanks to everyone else for the comments.
 
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