ghetto mastering

[travelin travis]

I skipped work today and spent the day playing with my neglected recording gear. I managed to get some scratch tracks recorded for a song idea but as usual, it's not finished. I got about a minutes worth recorded.

I exported a test mix of my minutes worth to the best my ears could do. I suck big at mixing. I figured hell, I got some tracks recorded and mixed, might as well try some mastering.

I popped the mix into ol' cool edit and had some fun but ended up with a boomy mess that was probably worse than before I messed with it. I figured that my ears suck at mixing, let's see what happens if I use my eyes. So I used the frequency analysis in cool edit along with the 31 band graphic eq to try and get my mix flatter, all by eye. When I had it as flat as I could get it, it sounded thin and kind of harsh.

My "ear mix" sounded bassy and muffled and my "eye mix" sounded thin and harsh. Then I got the idea to mix the two. I moved both mixes to the multitrack view in cool edit and adjusted the levels by ear. The result came out pretty damn good compared to the unmastered mix, the mix by ear, and the mix by eye. I'm gonna try this same approach in the future and see what happens.

Just wanted to share some experimenting ideas and any comments are welcome. The mixes are on my soundclick page. Four versions: unmastered, mastered by ear, mastered by eye, and mastered by ear/eye combined. My soundlick page:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=303881

I learned a couple of things. My mic placement sucks, I tend to mix bassy when not using a reference, and I need to skip work more often to work out some tunes.









Disclaimer: I won't be held responsible for any ill side effects that may result from listening to the emotionless singing, nonsense lyrics, pseudo bass, machine like drums, and sloppy guitars used in these mixes.

 

[travelin travis]

Gave my ears a little rest and listened back. They all sound like shit!

 

[appleyardrules]

i actually like it what equipm,ent do you use

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I can probably explain what happened on the "mixing by eye" side; if when you say you EQ'd to make the response curve "flat" you mean you wanted to make the line as horizontal as possible, it will most certainly come out harsh sounding every time.

There is a general rule of audiology that the lower the frequency, the intrinsically louder it has to be (the more energy it has to have) for the human ear to hear it at the same perceived volume as a higher frequency. In other words, "flat" to the human ear will actually appear in you analyzer as a wiggly curve with it's highest points somewhere in the bass frequencies. If you actually "flattened out" the bass by eye to make it "look" about the same volume as the midrange and treble, you were actually sucking out waaay too much bass from the mix, making it sound harsh because of the disproportionate amount of treble and high end.

For some great informatin, including a chart of equal loudness curves and an actual (if quite unofficial) hearing test, check out this page.

G.

 

[ecktronic]

I would say that the original is the best sounding. And then the mixed by ear coming in second, then the mix of both then the one by eye.

A little muddy and boomy your ear mix was.

Eck