Help me pick a place to get my cd mastered

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atomlow

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Hello,

I'm finishing up my recording project with my band and it has 11 songs on it. The project was recorded on the Tascam 788 portastudio 24bit 44.1 Khz.

I've talked to two places to get my recordings mastered:
one is The Mastering House Inc. which isn't local to me
and a local recording studio that will master.

Here is the difference between the two:

The Mastering House Inc. charges a flat fee of $350 for mastering and here is the eqiupement they use: this is what he wrote me:

I’m using the new Pro Tools HD 192K system for editing, and use digital outboard gear for the majority of my work. Outboard gear includes a Weiss DS1 for compression and limiting, a Weiss EQ1 for EQ, t.c. electronic finalizer for multi-band compression (if needed). Monitoring is done through dynaudio acoustic BM-15A monitors. I also have a Crane Song STC 8 analog compressor and Urei LA-22 that I use for de-essing on rare occasions. Generally I feel that if a mix is digital, it should stay that way. Too much conversion back and forth between digital and analog starts to make things sound “grainy” and lose clarity and separation.

I will use plug-ins for Eqs (Focusrite) to balance out songs that have drastic EQ differences, and I like to use the “vintage” Bomb Factory compressors (LA-2A or 1176) when a project was recorded and mixed digitally to give it a slight analog quality if it sounds “too digital”, while still keeping it in the digital domain. Depending on the situation I may also go through a bit of analog gear (like the Crane Song) to achieve this result. Also use a plug-in for dithering on the end (POW-r).


Ok this is what the local recording studio has or what they told me:

They monitor on Event 20/20 bas and also have Tannoy SRM-15X
Auratone 5C Super Cubes.
For editing software they have Pro Tools not sure what version or
what kind. The software plug-ins they use for mastering are Waves and I don't think they use any outboard gear, just plug-ins. They charge a flat rate of $300. They are a recording studio that will master recordings as well.

If you would like to see these places go to:
http://www.catamountrecording.com/
and
http://www.masteringhouse.com/

My big question is would it be better to just go locally so I can
visit them instead of e-mailing and sending cd's back and forth?

Your opinion would be very appreciated,
Thank You,
Adam Lowe
 
$300 for 11 songs? I don't know anything about either of those places, so I can't comment on their quality. Let me just say that with bargain mastering jobs, the best option may be no mastering at all. If careful attention isn't paid to each song, the chances are very good that harm will be done to the sound.

At about $50/hour, that seems like six hours of work or so to master 11 songs. When I mix, I spend hours on just one song. And mixing goes beyond just sitting at the desk moving faders. The mix isn't done untill it has passed a trip to the quickie mart in my car and a listen on a couple of hi-fi's and boom boxes. In the end, it could very well take me more than 1 day to mix a single song. I don't want that sound that I agonized over to get compleatly changed by someone else who's putting less than an hour of thought into it. He better be taking it out to his car, returning to the studio, starting over, etc. as well. I just don't think that kind of time can be put in by a mastering house for only $300.
 
Last edited:
I will not comment more on the above advice than to say that I don't agree with all of it for a number of reasons.

http://www.nettleinghamaudio.com/

Here is a guy that mastered the last project I mixed, and he did a very nice job. At $50 an hour, he did a MUCH better job than another local mastering house does that charges $110 an hour! He blew away two other local mastering houses that charge over $100 an hour too. The engineer/owner is sensitive to the genre, and tries not to overdo the compression/limiting unless the client insists on it. I highly recommend the guy. If you decide to go with him, tell him Ed Rei sent you.

Good luck.

Ed
 
sonusman said:
I will not comment more on the above advice than to say that I don't agree with all of it for a number of reasons.

Ed
Click to expand...
Hmmmm.... I actually don't know a thing about mastering and was just making assumtions off of my mixing experiance. I have no idea how long it takes to properly master something.
 
Most mastering projects I have worked either directly on (as engineer) or sat in on took about 6-8 hours for that many songs. I have had sessions last 3-4 hours that turned out well enough. Maybe more to the point, you might not be too aware or just WHAT can and cannot be done in mastering. An experienced mastering engineer will know in a hurry the potential of any given project and will not work on something any longer than need be if the extra work will have diminishing returns for the time spent. I have spent a lot of time doing "spot eq" on whole mixes for stuff that was very important that it sounded top notch. But the client could afford it, and the songs benefitted from the extra work. But usually, one would not go to such great extreme's in mastering, and certainly wouldn't need to if the mixes were pretty close to sounding "finished".

Peace.

Ed
 
Does anybody know enough about mastering equipment to tell
me if the equipment they are using is good.
I don't agree that $300 mastering is worse than not.
For one thing even if the guy mastering the project is just a studio
guy(I hope not) he will know a lot more about what to look out for or for what to hear for i guess.

Please, I need some advice between these two places thanks

Adam
 
Neither place sounds that attractive to me. But especially the local one - Event 20/20's are hardly mastering-quality speakers (unless he was planning on using the auratones!) And it doesn't sound like his equipment in general is mastering-oriented.

In my opinion, Pro Tools is not really all that great for mastering, especially compared to Sonic Solutions or some other mastering-specific workstations. Among other things, in Sonic Solutions it's easier to compare levels of different songs and set up spacing, and there are better noise reduction, fade, and interpolation algorhythms.

There are a lot of advantages to using a local places so you can participate in the mastering session and help with some of the artistic decisions (like song spacing).

Maybe if you were willing to tell us where you lived, someone could give you a good recommendation. I imagine, like many, you must live in constant fear that we will show up at your door uninvited (which explains why so few people identify where they live), but i can assure you, we don't do that anymore.
 
I live in Iowa....the studio is in Cedar Falls, Iowa
actually if you came to my door you could help me mix. :)

Where do you think I should get my project mastered then?

Thanks,
Adam Lowe
 
While I will not argue that Sonic Solutions is a better interface for mastering, you are going to find it hard to find a place that is affordable that uses it! There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with using PT for mastering. Period. I have done great sounding work using Wavelab, and it is usually not considered on par with PT either.

atomlow, you have to decide on which place to have your mastering done based upon what you have heard about and/or from any certain facility. I gave you a professional recommendation. I can mix the pants off of most on this bbs and I don't trust my mixes to just anybody to master. The guy I suggested is one of those I would trust. Is he Bob Ludwig, Bernie Grundman, or Bob Katz? Hell no, but he also doesn't charge $500 an hour either!

It is easy to get a bunch of snobby answers from people about who equipment list in their opinion is worthy of your money, but let me share a little experience I had with that.

A member of this site contacted me a couple years ago about doing some mastering for his bands upcoming release. He had already had it mastered by a guy in his area that had BIG TIME credits and an equipment list that you would sell your mom for! The end result sounded list crap! No other way to say it. It sounded horrible. Overcompressed, distorted, tonally upbalanced, varied RMS levels from song to song.

So, he starts asking me what I would be using to master his stuff. I replied "What the hell does it matter? You will either like what I do to it or you will not pay me. What I use is my business as long as I make you happy." Well, he couldn't really argue with that at all really because he went to a place that had the stellar gear and it turned out like crap, and he was out about $400 already! So he sends me the tapes and I get to work.

Now, things didn't go as smoothly as any of us would have liked. He needed to remix almost the whole CD. Blah blah blah. But, in the end, with me using stuff that was could never be confused with "big time" mastering gear, I managed to get him a master that made him VERY happy, and for a bit cheaper than the other guy. This disc was louder, had better tonal balance, and NO distortion anywhere on it.

Now, you wanna know how I mastered that freakin' CD? I will tell you. This guy doesn't even know what I did. :)

I ran the DAT tapes out of my Fostex DAT player to my Soundcraft Ghost console and used the EQ on two channel strips. The master output of the Ghost ran to a Behringer Composer (old style), and that ran to an ART Dual Levelar. That went into my Lynx one card. I monitored that input with EVENT 20/20's in a bad sounding acoustically untreated room! From there, I used a little QMetric EQ and the L1 Ultramaximizer in Wavelab. Did the SRC with the native SRC in Wavelab and dithered with the L1. I burned the master on a Sony IDE 4X internal burner using Wavelab.

Now how is all that for "mastering" gear eh? With the exception of the Lynx, who's converters on pretty much on par with Apogee's, nothing in that list is considered "mastering gear" at all! Yet! I managed to get a much better sounding master using that gear than a big named guy with REAL mastering gear got on the same material.

What was the difference? Well, I don't know. I know that I cared about what I was doing. I know what sounds good. I know noise when I hear it. I know ringing converters when I hear it. I hear compression and limiting and eq when applied. I AM A ENGINEER AND TAKE PRIDE IN MY WORK!!! NO client is too much of a peeon for me to not give my best with what I have for them.

Now, you can go around thinking that an impressive gear list is the secret to mastering. But I can assure you that like good mixing engineers, good mastering engineers will do wonders with just about ANYTHING they use. It is in the ears, the knowledge of what their gear can and cannot do, and having some vision of what the final product should sound like that makes the difference, NOT the gear list as much. Hell yes, give me the real shit and I can do a better job than with the crappy gear, but I will still improve ANY recording sent to me for mastering no matter what I use.

Listen to peoples work, and if people who's ears you respect suggest something, you might go with that. You may not have heard any of my work, so you might think I am full of crap. But ask around the bbs if my ears aren't at least better than average. I will get endorsement after endorsement and basically, you can usually trust anything I say, unless it has to do with what me and my woman do when alone! :D ;)

Peace.

Ed
 
So Ed.......are you offering your services? Im not sure if thats what Im reading ;)

My 2 cents... Ed has an above novice(=professional) set of ears. He has done magic with "crappy" circumstances. Why? Because of the ears and experience in between the ears. Experienced ears are the 1st and foremost thing to look for in a Mastering Engineer. Equipment is only important if the ears are on par. $300 bucks is a good deal, if the mastering is good. $300 on the otherhand like Ed commented on is a waste of money. Always get a reference disc, and its also helpful to send(or take) the ME a CD that has sort of what you would like to have. OK so I only gave you 1 cents worth of opinion.

SoMm
 
Hi Ed,

I didn't know Wavelab has L1 Ultramaximizer. (I have Wavelab 4.0) Or is it known by any other name?

Thanks.
 
Sonusman only reproves the point that skill and ears are always more important than gear. I stand chagrined.

So let me reconsider my recommendation: I was quick to judge the local mastering studio in the above example as "non-professional" quality after looking at the gear list. (Like Event 20/20's). That's because i am spoiled by being able to pay only $80 an hour for both skilled engineers and high end gear here in Boston. (Rates are typically $80-$120/hr here for fully-equipped mastering studios with tuned rooms, Sonic Solutions, top of the line outboard, converters, monitors, amps, etc.) Gateway/Bob Ludwig is obviously not included in this list.

So the most practical solution in your case would be to get a client list from your local engineer, and check out a few of the CD's he's mastered. That will at least give you some idea if he is competent. Your engineer may, in fact, turn out to be Ed's twin brother, in which case I wouldn't worry about the equipment at all. The sad fact, though, is there's a lot of self-proclaimed mastering engineers out there who aren't related to Ed at all... and sometimes it's the total inappropriateness of their gear which can give you a hint that maybe you should look around some more.;)
 
4ever said:
Hi Ed,

I didn't know Wavelab has L1 Ultramaximizer. (I have Wavelab 4.0) Or is it known by any other name?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

You're confusing Waves with Wavelab - two different companies.
 
Sorry to butt in here, but I agree totally with the gentleman who had said that experience is the key. I've heard amazing work done with less than optimal equipment and terrible work done on SSLs, Sonic Solution systems, etc.

Experience and taste are the real keys to mastering/mixing and the proper way to evaluate is to listen to one's work, not at their list of equipment, location, or how much they charge. If anyone is interested, see:

http://shopping.yahoo.com/shop?d=product&id=1927236579&clink=dmmu.artist&a=a

for a partial listing of the projects I've worked on. Additionally I have helped engineer hundreds of radio shows for the King Biscuit Flower Hour that have included bands like The Who, The Kinks, David Bowie, and many others.

I don't mean to sound like a salesman here, I just wanted to give some perspective.

As far as prices are concerned, there are alot of factors that go into this other than talent. One is location of the studio. A mastering House in a major metropolitan area is going to cost more than one in a rural district. The overhead for the studio is another issue. Another factor is how much an engineer can demand due to the market he may be in and successful records he has help create.

When shopping for a mastering engineer ask if it would be possible to get an evaluation of your material, and if possible a rough master to help you evaluate.

As in mixing, listen with an objective ear, not with your eyes.
 
welcome aboard, m.h.

it's always great to have more top pros weighing in. here's hoping you'll stick around.
 
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