A BIG Difference

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Track Rat said:
That's when it was born. Taped music had to be mastered for vinyl so the records would track. If not, the over dynamic material on vinyl would spit the needle out of the grooves.
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And sometimes a transient would blow your stylus. That didn't sound right but you know what I mean. I think its equally important in mastering cd's because a transient will cause a drop out, if its over 0 dbfs it can distort or drop. Which is about as useful as a blown stylus. Oh, stylus is the cutter on the the lathe, not to be confused with stylus on a record player. I wish I was a stylus.

SoMm
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
Mastering came about because special handling was required to transfer a mix over onto vinyl.

Mastering engineers had to work the cutting lathe and make any level adjustments that could cause grooves to be cut incorrectly (which is also the historic reason for high-energy tracks such as bass and kick being placed in the center)
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Which is all the more reason that mastering engineers will eventually become obsolete. Digital file transfers have eliminated that last step that used to be required in the manufacturing process.

I will never discount the value of having another set of experienced ears and a great monitoring environment as a final check but it really isn't necessary anymore from a technical standpoint. Of course if fixes are needed than they will usually have better tools to do it but I think most pro's just do it out of habit.

Mastering developed as a specialized field because it took specialized equipment and experience. Now my grandma can actually create a mass produceable media master.

I think ME's are just confused as to what their role is. Now they can receive files that all they may have to do is listen to them and say, "works for me". Then hand it back to you. But who is going to pay $100/min for that? I probably would but I'd think of it as a chance to rent the ears of a more experienced engineer.

If you don't want a mastering engineer to screw up your sound then don't get it mastered. We are the fuckin engineers and we don't NEED a mastering engineer anymore just to make an album.

Sorry for the rant but after seing the 1000th thread about crappy mastering jobs I feel it had to be said :D
 
But not all mastering engineers do bad things (by choice) on the projects they work on. I have MANY happy customers, and usually, they let ME decide how to master their product. When a customer wants it louder, and I point out to them that it is starting to sound like crap, and they don't care they just want it louder, well, I STILL have a happy customer too!

It is about taking pride in your work. I know people that do, and people that don't take pride in producing clean sounding product. I don't cheese when I master, even if the music is cheesy. If I don't feel I can do anything worth money to the mixes, I ask them to either remix, or to have more "capable" hands take a try at it.

Ed
 
OK, I've got three versions of one of our songs uploaded. Its called Captain So Do I. I picked this one because I think it shows the differences the best out of the 13 songs we had mastered for our demo album. Just in case you're interested, I played bass, did the guitar solo and sang back up vox. This was recorded at a friends studio pretty much for free and I mixed it.

As mixed:


First mastered version:


Second mastered version:




If you like what you hear there are a few other songs on that page as well. :)


Oh, BTW we're called the Crucials.
 
Its funny to me, but everything sounds better when you turn it up a little bit. With most of these loud CD's if you turn them back down to the normal level they don't sound any better than the quieter CD's--and maybe worse.

Hell, what I mean is that when you crank your mix up it sounds kick ass. Turn it back down and it its not quite so kick ass. :D In other words, making the CD louder does not make it sound BETTER, it just seems that way because you are listening at a higher db level.

So making it louder is not a bad thing until you begin to add artifacts of limiting and compression--like some mentioned--things like distortion. At that point, the damage is getting done.

Question--why would an artist spend a small fortune recording an album and then another good sum on mastering, just to have all the hard work and sonic excellence squeezed right out of the recordings? Seems rather self defeating.

"Ah! But these go to ELEVEN!"
 
TexRoadkill said:


Which is all the more reason that mastering engineers will eventually become obsolete. Digital file transfers have eliminated that last step that used to be required in the manufacturing process.

I will never discount the value of having another set of experienced ears and a great monitoring environment as a final check but it really isn't necessary anymore from a technical standpoint. Of course if fixes are needed than they will usually have better tools to do it but I think most pro's just do it out of habit.

Mastering developed as a specialized field because it took specialized equipment and experience. Now my grandma can actually create a mass produceable media master.

I think ME's are just confused as to what their role is. Now they can receive files that all they may have to do is listen to them and say, "works for me". Then hand it back to you. But who is going to pay $100/min for that? I probably would but I'd think of it as a chance to rent the ears of a more experienced engineer.

If you don't want a mastering engineer to screw up your sound then don't get it mastered. We are the fuckin engineers and we don't NEED a mastering engineer anymore just to make an album.

Sorry for the rant but after seing the 1000th thread about crappy mastering jobs I feel it had to be said :D
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Sorry Tex... how much do I disagree with your post? Let me count the ways...

•I would NEVER master a project i had mixed. I'll burn it to a CD if the client can't afford mastering, but I won't make any claim that it has really been mastered.

•The last thing I want to do is worry about matching volume levels of songs that I've mixed 6 months apart on a project. There's enough to worry about just making the mix sound good - let the mastering engineer make it sound the same level as all the other songs.

•I don't have the room acoustics (to say nothing of the gear and ears) to do a professional job.

•No mastering engineer I have ever dealt with VOLUNTARILY wants to squeeze the crap out of a mix. They play the "loudest" game reluctantly only if the client forces them to do so.

•Since everything I've ever had mastered came back sounding better than my "best mix" that I sent in, how could I tell a client with a straight face that I am capable of doing a decent mastering job?

•$100/hr is a very reasonable rate for mastering (...by a pro. My clients generally pay $80-$120/hr). At that rate you would probably pay around $600 for an entire CD. Not even Bob Ludwig charges $100/minute. (Although he's edging closer to $20/minute. But the big companies are footing those bills.)

•How much does your grandma charge? But more important, can we hear samples of her work? And that would be the key to anyone looking for a mastering engineer. AUDITION THEM BEFORE YOU SIGN ON! If still in doubt, negotiate having them do a quickie job on just one song before committing to a whole project.

•Sorry you've had such bad experience with mastering engineers, or at least a bad experience reading about mastering engineers. Maybe it's the part of the country I'm in. Anyway, I'd just like to throw one vote into the positive column to slightly offset your thousands of negatives.
 
sure...mastering usually is the way to go for the best product ..

But, my preference (if possible?) would be to track/mix so that step could be avoided. You don't think there are instances where the mastering engineer says..."I don't need to touch this." ??

With the "perfect" mix.... mastering could be bypassed. I think it is assumed [now that we are kinda passed the vinyl days] that the mastering engineer will ALWAYS improve the product.

ah....."perfect world" thinking;)
 
Well, I asked Bob Ludwig once if he ever got a mix that didn't "need" any mastering. He said there were maybe a couple of things Bob Clearmountain sent him that hardly needed anything.

Since I'm not in that class, I'll assume my stuff can use the help. (Of course, no way of knowing if mxmkr is an alias of Mr. Clearmountain)

Plus you could have a CD with 10 perfect mixes, but the volumes relative to eachother might still need adjusting.
 
littledog said:

Plus you could have a CD with 10 perfect mixes, but the volumes relative to eachother might still need adjusting.
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Well...listening to my stuff, it becomes quite apparent I am not even worthy of being in the same sentence as. Bob Clearmountain.

However, I do feel that if all that was needed was relative volume adjusting between songs, I wouldn't send them out for mastering. (providing it was apparent the loudest song of the group was as loud as necessary). I don't feel I need meters or fancy equipment on that one. Just a pair of ears and some days [weeks?] of disassociation with the music to be able to listen to it with a "fresh" approach. I gotta take issue with just manipulating volumes ONLY by a mastering engineer. I at least trust my ears on that one.
 
Fine. As soon as I'm sure that the only thing my mixes need is relative volume adjustments, I'll hire you to do them for me. Until then, I'll do like every other mix engineer with 10 times my talent and 10 times my experience and get my stuff mastered.

What you do with your own stuff, of course, is up to you. But it may not be fair to your paying clients to represent your output as a "finished mastered product" just based on your theoretical views about the "redundancy" of mastering.
 
ebeam: I listened to your tracks... hmmmmmmmm... nothing against the song BUT: the mix sounds awful to me - I get headache because of the guitars - they kind of move around (phase issues?)... and the mastered ones are just louder, right?
 
littledog said:
Fine. As soon as I'm sure that the only thing my mixes need is relative volume adjustments, I'll hire you to do them for me. Until then, I'll do like every other mix engineer with 10 times my talent and 10 times my experience and get my stuff mastered.

What you do with your own stuff, of course, is up to you. But it may not be fair to your paying clients to represent your output as a "finished mastered product" just based on your theoretical views about the "redundancy" of mastering.
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being fair to my clients is a completely different subject. Did you want to go there?

I regard your knowledge very highly, littledog, as you've shown some great input in previous threads. I am a little supprised at some of your interpretations of theads sometimes however. Assuming something is "mastered", when indeed it never was, is kinda ludicrous, isn't it?

hopefully, someday you'll post some mp3's of some of your work in the future. I would be interested in hearing your pno chops especially.
 
mixmkr said:




being fair to my clients is a completely different subject. Did you want to go there?

I regard your knowledge very highly, littledog, as you've shown some great input in previous threads. I am a little supprised at some of your interpretations of theads sometimes however. Assuming something is "mastered", when indeed it never was, is kinda ludicrous, isn't it?

hopefully, someday you'll post some mp3's of some of your work in the future. I would be interested in hearing your pno chops especially.
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Sorry mixmkr, perhaps it's just a failure to communicate. Apparently we seem to be responding to points that neither of us were trying to make. Even now, I don't quite understand your latest response. In my situation it's all about the clients and their satisfaction. If I were to take a stand that in this wondrous age of home technology, mastering is no longer necessary, (which I THOUGHT was your original premise - maybe i should go back and reread this thing from the start...), then personal experience shows that I would be giving my clients advice which, as you aptly stated, would be "kinda ludicrous". So now I'm totally confused as to which of us is saying what...

But, hey, it won't be the first time a couple of people grab onto the least important point that eachother is saying and create a silly argument while ignoring the meat of eachother's positions. Seems to happen here a lot, so apparently we're not excceptional in this regard.

I guess I'm just not a revolutionary at heart. If 99.9% of the top pros tend to do something (like having their stuff mastered), I will, on occasion, assume there is some merit in what they're doing. Especially when it makes sense to me on both a cognitive and instinctive level. Dangerous and lazy, I suppose, but it's been a while since I've had either the energy or inclination to run around challenging EVERY axiom in the book. Probably my flaw, not yours. So, if you have a vision about how to go about producing unmastered mixes that rival what the rest of the world is doing through traditional means, I wish you the best of luck. The world can always use more visionaries! Hey, if it works, you'll have your 15 minutes and then some. Me, I'm just trying to make a buck without killing myself.

I'm not sure I'll ever go the mp3 route. I'm not comfortable excerpting clients material, and don't feel any particular driving urge to beg for their permission. As for my personal playing, I can assure you, you aren't missing all that much. Like my engineering skills, I'm a competent pro when it comes to playing, - but I'm not a visionary.
 
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