Commercial volume question for the mastering gurus...

[Massive Master]

I mean seriously WTF? All it needs to my ears is to be mastered. I was just kinda hoping I could get some TWEAKING advice on how to bring up the levels through comp, limiting, EQ, and such to get it to sound more on the level of commercial releases. The feedback that someone said that the bass guitar can't be heard on the one song is exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for.

I know I'm new, and I hope I don't come across as sounding brash, but jesus people, your criticism has to make sense.

I think what you're misunderstanding is that you're way off of "commercial sounding" - It's not a little tweaking - It's a rebuild from the foundation.

I'm again NOT trying to sound harsh - This is what my ears tell me. The drums sound like a fairly low-tech drum machine, the guitars sound direct, and by admission, there is NO bass guitar.

You said yourself that you're trying to get it to sound "commercial" - Like this, it will not. Period. The raw quality of the raw tone just isn't there.

If the panning on the drums was brought into reality and a bass guitar track was added, it'll at least have the ability to be sonically balanced.

A well-mixed track is enhanced by mastering - not fixed.

OF COURSE - If it sounds just the way you want it to, it's perfect. That's the beauty of "art" in the first place. Just don't expect a rainbow when you only have two colors to mix together.

 

[mshilarious]

Man, that was just downright rude.

Again I'm sorry. But pay attention! All of your problems are fixable, and relatively easily so. All you have to do is move some faders, tweak some effects, dynamics, etc. . . . it's an evening's work. It's not like you need another three years of practice on guitar.

Except that vocal. Recut that. Make it sound like the vocalist cares. It needs some bite.

Also now that I am home and listening on better speakers, I'll partially retract my comment on guitars. It's just the lead guitar(s) that has the problem, and again it's the reverb being too wet, and a rhythm/lead guitar balance problem in a few places. For example the lead should smoothly take over the cello intro without being drowned out by the rhythm guitars.

 

[In Tune Audio]

Okay guitarslinger, (this is going to sound harsh), be prepared to fail and fail miserably. And I'm not saying this because of your tracks, I'm saying this because of your attitude.

You came on the forum, and asked how you could make your mixes sound more like commercial releases. You mentioned that you thought that it needed some mastering work.

You were fortunate enough to have several talented, experienced, and profesional audio engineers listen to your mix. When these guys told you how you could improve your mix, instead of listening, you told them that their responses were "asinine". My first suggestion, is don;t ask friends, family, or your girlfriend what they think about your mixes, they don't have a clue.

You argued with the very constructive critism you received, and told them they were wrong, the mastering needed to be changed. But come on, wake up, Massive Master and Blue Bear are professional Mastering Engineers. When they tell you its not the mastering, shut up and listen. They (along with others) gave you very practical feedback, and first steps to take, and you said they made no sense.

Its like a little child showing their teacher their math homework. 2+2= 5. And getting angry when the teacher tries to help them fix the answer.

 

[HangDawg]

Massive Master and Blue Bear are professional Mastering Engineers.

Well, Blue Bear is not a mastering engineer. But Massive is. I'm pretty sure, however, both will tell you that there are alot of things that need work with your mix. If you send it off to be mastered the way it is, my guess is it will be a rescue job at best. And I don't think that is what you want, especially if you've tracked it yourself. Other than your time, there's no reason not to go back and re-track some parts.

I say all of this because I'm a guitar player myself (24 years) I like the same stuff you do. We actually have alot in common. And if you really listen to some of the guitar work from some of the bands you've mentioned as your influences, I'm sure you'll notice you guitar sound is nowhere close to theirs. And even if you're trying to blaze your own trail, it just doesn't sound good. It's mushy and overprocessed. Get over it. Alot of people make the same mistake. That's why the come here. To learn.

You also never answered my question as to whether the guitars were tracked direct or if you put a mic on that boogie cab.




P.S. I used to know a guy (bass player) from Tempe. His name was Steve Zellers.

 

[Cloneboy Studio]

Oh, I know that Especially when doing a niche-market album like instrumental rock. It's just that some of the comments on here today just sound asinine and not worthy of a response. Like saying it doesn't sound clear, or you can't hear the guitars, or the bass drum is to one side (no it isn't) or one guy saying the guitars don't even sound like guitars.

I said that the bass drum sounds slightly more to the left. Maybe when you compressed something in stereo you forgot to link the sides... that's what I'm guessing. Your pan pot may say 'centered' but an unlinked compressor across a stereo signal can create havok in your stereo spectrum.

I stand by my comments. If you want to be spoonfed, that's fine--a lot of people will oblige you. But you don't seem to want just that, you want your hand held and your d*ck sucked too. Sorry, but that department is down the halls a way....

I would very carefully listen to the stereo panorama your mix has created. It's not good.

Remember, it's the music business... not the music personal. Stop taking things so personally. Only one person tried to bash you personally and you can easily ignore that.

 

[In Tune Audio]

I was an ass. The first paragraph of my post was inappropriate, and the type of thing I usually try to steer clear from. I apologize and take it back.

However I stand by the rest of my post. You don't ask a bunch of experts a for help, and then tell them they're wrong and make no sense. It's not worth their time and energy to respond to be told they're wrong. Eventually, they could stop posting, becuase they feel no one listens anyway.

 

[fluxburn]

Wow, I need to post up a song and ask for advice. Yeah I would back the opinion of Blue Bear and Massive, they obviously know what they are talking about.

I would say after listening to the instrumental eqing is your primary concern, the compression next. You mixed the levels pretty well and it sounds alright. The guitars or bass whatever here are obviously fighting for signal here, a eq job could make them less fight to be both heard.

You can use a limiter on the final bus like waves L2 and boost up the level really good. To me personally it sounds LOUD enough as in compression of overall track but needs better EQing as well as better compression on certain individual tracks.

The 2nd track with the vocal you can tell there is no eq on the vocal right? At least that is what I am hearing, a straight through mic, a little compression. You might make use of a desser as well(like when you say Song) it removes the SSSS as it sounds unprofessional.

I would say boost the drums in both songs.

Good luck on getting the cd to commercial quality, I have been working on that for a couple years now.

 

[mixandmaster]

After hearing your clip it became clear why -- the sound quality is NOT as great as you think... it's not an insult, you just need to work on your mixing skills a bit further, OR maybe your monitoring chain has problems that are causing you to create poorly balanced mixes.

I had a mastering client who kept having trouble mixing at his home studio. I happened to be in his neighborhood one day, and stopped by to schmooze a little. When he showed me his setup and played me some stuff, I was like...something is VERY wrong here!

It turned out that he running the outputs of his CD recorder back through his mixer...not a good thing. Once I rerouted everything properly, he got WAY better mixes right away. Not that that exact thing your problem, but sometimes things get out of control in even the best studios.

 

[dantell]

hey guitarslinger

just for shits and grins I downloaded the instrumental mp3 and processed it back to a wave file then examined it. Since this song is heavy, you are probably looking to remove more of the dynamics and flatten it out to bring up the volume. What kind of system or program are you using to master with? I went ahead and ran your song through my system and I was able to bring the volume way up and I did raise the bass freq just a hair with the eq. It came out pretty good. The stereo seemed a little wide on the cymbals so I brought it in a little..............Not bad........Sounds like a raw instrumental rocker!! I may have done the mix a little different but it sounds good now. I can't hear the bass though, but it sounded okay without one. Not bad GS

 

[LRosario]

Some notes from what I heard,


Definitely need to ease up on the compression. A song should be able to "breathe" properly to get the best of your dynamic range. It's excellent music, it just needs better mixing.

Balance wise:

Just need to bring out some more low end from the bass. I can't give a detailed critque since I'm not listening through professional speakers

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

Not bad GS

Compared to what? For a DIY home-recording, sure - not bad... but compared to commercial releases, quite a ways to go.......

YMMV.....

 

[dantell]

I was referring to the song itself

since I'm a guitar player I enjoy guitar driven music. yes maybe a little adjustment on the mix levels would help b4 mastering, but turn it up loud, its sounds cool.

 

[kylen]

I like guitar driven songs too - very cool guitslinger...

Here's what you can do though if you're not sure which way to go with the EQ, dynamic, and stereo balance...

Find the best songs of that genre from your music collection - best meaning the most listenableand whose sonic balance you like the best, then find a couple more like that from a different pop genre. Burn all of those songs, maybe 12-15 tunes, on a CD and put your song smack dab in the middle. Pop it in your car, drive around town for a couple of days and get a feel for how yours is different or how it is just as good. Give a copy of the CD to someone else too and have them do the same thing...then get some feedback.

Try to get some non-technical people and descriptions cooking - boomy, punchy, bright, harsh, boxy, warm, dull, etc. Once you get a notion of where the sound needs to be then you can get more technical details & repairs happening.

Off the top of my head I would agree with Cloneboy about tightening up the stereo field on the hi-hat & cymbols that's a huge spread you've got there. But it does create a type of movement and interest - I think it takes away from whatever lead instrument or melody or rhythm guitar you may have happening though, so I'd call it a distraction that the other instruments creating the interesting part of a particular movement should be the focus of.
Maybe what I'm saying is the mix 'arrangement' should be reviewed - you know that thing you worked so hard on already !

For example:
0:16 the lead guitar intro sounds like side of pick scraping winding of bass strings - distracting for me cause I'm wondering why you're not hitting the string square on. Minor detail non-guitarists probably don't care.

16:32 rhythm guitars come in & all hell breaks loose - cool ! cymbols are split in the stereo field but I don't really care cause of the hell thing has my attention.

33:1.05 lead guitar comes in and takes me into some other place but the cymbols spread from hell is still there - quit it I'm thinking ! I want to focus on the solo guitar - give me my attention back and quit robbing it with the cymbols...you get the idea Also give me that focus on the guitar melody by making it breath more - larger than the crushed rhythm guitars - more open - more depth.

Stuff like that for the arrangement.

For the balance I pulled you instrumental into an app and looked at it with GlissEQ2 to see what was buggin me about the bass.

It looks like for most of the duration of the song there are some bass resonances that just stay put mostly for the entire song - the kick has a pretty huge resonance at about 50Hz - that would be ok but it doesn't breath - it just stays peaked out the whole time, same with some other major resonances at about 23Hz and 31Hz no breathing - just solid here's your bass handed to you on a platter. The drum machine (model# ?) needs to have some humanizing in there, I guess you could high-pass-filter it to roll some bass off but the real way is to make it breath more. I'll bet even takin a side-chain off the master buss and feedin it back to a kick compressor would even introduce a little variation on the kick.

Then about 1:29 a variation on the rhythm guitars comes in, very nice musically, except sonically there's a resonance at about 151Hz that just feels funny - tubby sortof...

So anyway - my 2cents - I'm not a pro like some of these other guys, the ones who have had the good suggestions I mean - but I can hear. So can your friends - take a poll - do blind tests like I suggested earlier - get some feedback - in other words do exactly what you're doing !

 

[AdrianFly]

Okay, I have a pretty good sounding album right now. When I crank it on stereos everywhere, it sounds fantastic, and through a spectral analyzer it looks nearly identical to most commercial releases. Now just this last week, I purchased a portable MP3 player. I set my new songs in rotation with others on there, and found that my songs sound much lower volume and less crisp than the modern commercial releases.

I am completely baffled. I've been messing around with everything I can think of, and I just can't get the songs to sound louder or crisper and I'm at the 0.0 db cap. I've tried limiting, compressing, and EQing like crazy and just can't get these songs up to commercial loudness. It always winds up sounding too brittle, or too narrow, or too wide. Never the full-bodied spectrum you get from a commercial label release. I've been comparing with the music from these bands: Drowning Pool, Disturbed, Dream Theater, Sevendust, Metallica, & Joe Satriani.

My options now are #1) Release the album as is, because it's still pretty damn good, or #2) Pay a mastering house to re-master this recording for me.

I've been a long time lurker here, and this is my first time posting, and I'm really hoping I can get some good advice from some people on here as to what to do. Any EQ, comp, limiting settings I can get from you guys would be fantastic!

Here's two clips, the music on the disc is mostly instrumental, but I do sing on a few songs:

an instrumental song:

a vocal song:

Thanks in advance to everyone for any and all advice, I really appreciate it!!

~Vince

Hey Vince, your song needs more cowbell you wanker

 

[Massive Master]

Did someone say...

MORE COWBELL?

 

[dantell]

Cowbell............

SNL and this thread talked me into buying a cowbell for my son's drumset. It takes a lot of talent to play the cowbell.............hell, it's harder than Mastering.

 

[fluxburn]

SNL and this thread talked me into buying a cowbell for my son's drumset. It takes a lot of talent to play the cowbell.............hell, it's harder than Mastering.

Man I played precussion in 8th grade man, playing the gong was always the hardest, yet most inspiration sound of the whole orchestra.

 

[dantell]

But......

I used to sneak in my Grandfather's metal shop and weld gongs together with trash can lids. Later on I invented the C band Satelite Dish out of the same gongs when I noticed I could hear "You Light up my Life" by Debbie Boone through the Amature Radio Station I put together with my erector set and a case of duct tape. Bingo................I was so close to being great. Missed it by $25,000 when some guy who started a video store bought it out from under me and shrunk it to a little dish and sold it to RCA for a couple Million.
Now I'm a loser who likes to write songs, record, mix and master and I've decided no matter how good I get, I ain't ever gonna get on the internet and talk on bulletin boards about mixin and mastering and stuff.
Just leave me alone.......pleeeeeze

 

[Rock Star 87]

alright, i have a few thoughts on the instrumental, streaming the vocal as we speak. the first 8 measures sound dainty, like u didn't wanna hurt ur fingers, and the last beat of the 4th bar cut part of a string off. then the bass drum kicked in, i don't if i'd say kicked in, OK, it came inflat and intensityless. it didn't hype me up like it should have. i'm in guitar class now, so i don't know that much about it, but if it was mixed and mastered right, it would kick ass. another case where it looks better on paper than on presentation. the best music can suck if u present it wrong. im listening to the vocal song now, and the reberb is too much. it's too wet, simply dry it up a bit. i need sleep, and im just reaffirming what most people have already said, so remember, music will keep u happy, presentation will get u noticed.

 

[kylen]

Oh well fancy this - looks like I'm a hippocrite...

I've moved my room and nearfield monitors around again and was listening to my reference material and discovered...one of my favorite reference songs for balance of EQ, dynamics & depth (Blue Hawaiians - High Life) has the percussion spread very widely and there is hi-hat and ride cymbol spread further than you can imagine - and it sounds very good.

There's 3 reasons for that I think:
1. Most of the interesting stuff (solo elements) are happening in the middle of the stereo field.
2. There is a pretty big stereo tom spread too supporting the basic spread idea for your ears.
3. The percussion hardware balance during the lead solo is such that it is a little more promonent on one side and quite a bit softer than the solo element in the center field...

Hope this helps - it seems like I do like the great divide after all, hehe