DIY Mastering Clinic #1!!!!!

pingu said:
To me mastering mp3's is like stretching a lucky band that has been in the sun.



I would be glad to join in if youl have me but i can t stand processing mp3's


I cant beleive know one else feels the same.
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If you have info to share, I'd love to have you, myself. To me, and hopefully many others, this is simply a learning tool. This is one of those things, that will show as many ways to do something, as there are people who try. Lot's of different ideas, and hopefully, many different ways to approach, and work on something. Simply an excersize in fun, with some learning invloved. And hopefully, the end result is, we all learn.
 
Great idea this.

Is there any time scale? I'm busy on other stuff at the mo and it'll be next week before I can get to this.

andy
 
pingu said:
This is cool also .


Ill submit a 320 kbit mp3 of the master (320mp3's are high enough quality to evaluate but if you start tweaking them they get messy quick). and we can see the difference between masters, mastered at wave, and not mp3.
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I must admit that I too would prefer a WAV over a 320kbps MP3.

Correct me if I'm wrong but when you bring even the highest quality MP3 into say Sonar it converts it to a WAV on import. You then do your mastering magic and when finished you either export to WAV and convert to MP3 or export straight to MP3... this sounds like we'll be pushing it a bit doesn't it?

Or am I wide of the mark here?

Would it not be better to perhaps provide a shorter, two minute clip to work on, to keep the size down rather than a six minute high quality MP3?

andy
 
pingu said:
Good one man.


If someone is available to host the wave then its all good.


Then once done we upload a 320 kbit for evalutation.

Those who are serious enough will want to work with the wave and those who are learning might be more happy with the mp3.
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I agree w/ Pingu for the source track. It would be better to work from a wav file. For evals 320kb mp3s are fine. When Brad Blackwood hosted the WIMP contest we even used 256kb.

If you need to host the source file I would be glad to help. PM me and I'll setup an area for you.

BTW I'm very happy to see this happen. It's something that I had hoped for for a long time now. Hopefully we'll get some good feedback from other pros. I'll solicit help from some of the guys I know.
 
pingu said:
Mastering mp3's is useless.
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Sorry but for the level this clinic is intended, I don't agree. Yes, it is not anything I'd send to a replication plant, but that is not the point.

Essentially, we would be excluding those on dialup with a 60 meg file (which is the size of the .wav), so I don't want to create two classes of users. With the Public Mix Contests, they went on long enough to mail a CD to dialup users, but that's not my intention here.

Please have a listen to the .mp3 and play with it for a couple of minutes, I believe you will find it acceptable. At 320K, encoded in Wavelab at the highest quality settings, the source .mp3 has frequency response up to 20kHz. I have been A/Bing the files for fifteen minutes now, inverting phase, checking FFT, etc. It's a tiny tiny small difference.
 
It might be a joke to you.
But most of us are Home Recorders with untrained ears and this is better than nothing.
I would bet less than 15% of the members can tell the differance from a 320K mp3 and a WAV by listening to it and not looking at with software.
 
mshilarious said:
Dogman has the .wav on his host already, I don't wanna hurt his bandwidth so I'll PM you the link, and I'll leave it to you to select a lossless format. How about that?
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Cool.

If you like I can host all 3 varieties:

Original WAV (I usually like to zip these to ensure a good transfer, it doesn't affect the sound)
Lossless compressed
MP3
 
pingu said:
I thought Ms doesnt want classes.
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I respect Tom's opinion, and I also considered that if I truly believe after my morning's work that there is little difference, then there will not be any penalty for the .mp3 users.

I'm looking forward to hearing your master.
 
timboZ said:
It might be a joke to you.
But most of us are Home Recorders with untrained ears and this is better than nothing.
I would bet less than 15% of the members can tell the differance from a 320K mp3 and a WAV by listening to it and not looking at with software.
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i agree.


DIY mastering clinic with mp3 only.



This boat has sailed for me.

This is for the kiddies.
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this isn't a competition. this isn't for money.
If it's for the kiddies, and you are such a mastering guru, I would assume you would welcome the challenge of trying to improve an MP3.
Or are you just spoutin' off excuses?
:rolleyes:
 
Even a 13MB MP3 is pushing it for dialup; that can still easily take an hour or more to d/l. And if one wants to hear the work of others, that's 13MB *per submision*. So I don't think the arguement that moving to WAV will exclude dialup is that strong; this is already a major chore for dialup users.

I agree with whoever said the whole song is not needed. One can post a 45 second clip as a pure stereo wav which will take up about 15MB; zip it and it can be knocked down to probably right around 13MB, the same as the full-song MP3.

That would (or at least should) make everybody happy. We'd be getting enough of the proper quality source material for the task without sacrificing any bandwidth in the content or on the server.

Be honest, folks: mastering a converted MP3 is like using your finest german carbon steel cutlery to make a fluffernutter sandwich.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Be honest, folks: mastering a converted MP3 is like using your finest german carbon steel cutlery to make a fluffernutter sandwich.
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yeah, but if you're gonna start using that analogy...then I'm gonna start complaining that people AREN'T using the finest german carbon steel cutlery. In other words, who here is going to be using all analog gear? I wanna make sure that if pingu is going to complain about not getting a WAV file, that he is using Manley EQs, Chandler limiters, etc.

This is just something for fun and experience that everyone is taking way too seriously already.
 
bennychico11 said:
yeah, but if you're gonna start using that analogy...then I'm gonna start complaining that people AREN'T using the finest german carbon steel cutlery. In other words, who here is going to be using all analog gear? I wanna make sure that if pingu is going to complain about not getting a WAV file, that he is using Manley EQs, Chandler limiters, etc.
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I'm not talking about the gear, I'm talking about the process. This is one of the biggest problems on this board with the whole concept of "mastering" ; people have no idea what it actually means. Mastering is as much about nuance as it is anything else. With a crunched MP3, that entire lesson is lost.

I'm also not going to complain whichever way you want to go. I made my point. I'm offering up a solution that is a win-win for everybody, IMHO. Let's not argue about it. Do what you wish. I'm not going to shoot it down.

G.
 
This thread is going to be long enough by the time we get all of the submissions.

Please keep the bickering on another thread.
 
pingu said:
What does that mean ms

Can we use the wave to process with and then upload 320 kbit for evaluation?
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If you like. Tom has the link, let's give him some time.

Thanks to Tom for offering to help.

I've been sitting here working on my entry, flipping between the .wav and the .mp3. The .mp3 is slightly grainier, but it doesn't cause me to change any settings.

Let's move on, wait for Tom's link if you want. This discussion is starting to degenerate.

Has anybody else listened to Dogman's master?
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I'm not talking about the gear, I'm talking about the process. This is one of the biggest problems on this board with the whole concept of "mastering" ; people have no idea what it actually means. Mastering is as much about nuance as it is anything else. With a crunched MP3, that entire lesson is lost.

I'm also not going to complain whichever way you want to go. I made my point. I'm offering up a solution that is a win-win for everybody, IMHO. Let's not argue about it. Do what you wish. I'm not going to shoot it down.

G.
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Glen, I totally understand what you mean and totally agree with you. It is a very important art that I personally won't even tackle unless I get some training from another engineer. But this relates to another thread that was posted about "when are mastering engineers going to start using only plugins?"
I'm just saying that if we agree it is such an art and that an MP3 is going to ruin things even for this little Homerecording.com free for all, shouldn't people be just as concerned about the digital plugins their using?
That's all.

pingu is just getting all riled up about something that mshilarious created for fun and perhaps even to get people to think outside of the "mixing" box they usually think. And perhaps at the end of all this people will realize "wow, mastering really is hard...and everyone's take on it is so different."
and last I heard, pingu...this site wasn't about equality and trying to be accomodating to everyone so that you don't feel "excluded". No one HAS to give you a WAV file. Move on if this doesn't interest you.
Next we're going to be complaing about the sample rate and bit depth of the WAV file
;) :D :rolleyes:
 
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