I have no idea how to use a compressor, and I need to master my stuff......

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antispatula

antispatula

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Check out the songs in my link. Even though ANYTHING on myspace sounds like crap, you can tell they aren't mastered. I don't know how really and I think this is proabibly one of those things I should leave up to a pro? How much did it cost YOU to get your album mastered? Are there any good mastering houses I can ship my songs off to, get a good result and not pay many many hundreds of dollars? Thanks.
 
i expected a lot worse as i read your profile while i buffered
 
mastering is creating a "master" from which to make copies.

Often in the days of vinyl this meant changing the sound so that the audio fit onto the record.

I assume this is what you want, the sound altered?

Because mastering can be done without a compressor. The two are barely even related.

And if you are looking for someone to alter the sound for you, are you trying to optimize it for myspace? or CD's or vinyl or tapes or what?
 
I dont claim to be a ME so you'll take this FWIW.

Mastering is the very last stage in the process. It assumes everything else about the musical performance, the recording and mixdown, are sweet. Mastering isnt supposed to be a fixup for mistakes further back up the line.
A ME concentrates too on the overall balance and how the separate tracks fit in with each other on the CD

I listened to most of the first track and a bit of the second.

Do you want your music to remain as a simple guitar and vocal or to have other parts added? If the former I feel that since the guitar is the only instrumental backing and is therefore very exposed, it might present better if played a little smoother, with less string buzzes etc.

It sounds as if the whole take might have been recorded with just one mic. Either that or we're hearing it on the net as mono and so it's hard to tell.
Recording a singer/guitarist, mic'ing voice and guitar separately can have problems with bleed from one mic into the other so in one sense the one mic approach can be good as it avoids that problem, but on the down side gives you no mixing options later on.

The voice sounds a bit too far away from the mic in your sample but that may be the best compromise if you're only using the one mic.

I noticed no reverb on the first track but some on the second. Was that intentional?

It's not just the ME's prerogative to use compression. You should mix the track to sound as good as you can get it. That may or may not include some compression but normally I'd expect to use at least some compression so that neither guitar or voice drowns out the other and there's less wild volume changes. Again, if you've used just one mic, separate adjustments for each track are impossible.
For a top notch acoustic sound, pro's record the guitar and voice separately, at different times, so there's no bleed between tracks. Then you can mix, pan, eq, reverb, compress with total control over either track.
On the other hand many great live performances have been captured with both recorded at the same time and it's a more honest performance that way.
My 2 cent's worth.

Tim
 
I think I need to strip down my question

How do I make my song louder? :D

Thank you.
 
Waves L2?


I would contact Masteringhouse orMassiveMaster - both are on this site frequently, and do a good job for pretty cheap. Tom at Masteringhouse did one song for me at it was done very well......
 
antispatula said:
I think I need to strip down my question

How do I make my song louder? :D

Thank you.
Click to expand...

There you go, right to the point. Much better.

If you are talking about taking your final two track mix and making it louder, then the easiest way to do that is with a digital look-ahead brick wall limiter. Like the Waves L2 mentioned by NL5, although there are many other plugins that do the same thing.

You don't want to go too crazy with this though, because you can definitely strip all the dynamics out of your music.

If you are on a Mac I can make a few suggestions of plugins: Waves L1/2/3, WaveArts FinalPlug, PSP MasterComp, Roger Nichols Digital Finis, plus I think there are some decent freeware limiters out there like the George Yuong W1 (might have mispelled his name).
 
I think Digital FishPhones has some sort of freeware smasherizer...

But although the trend for volume certainly can't be ignored - and it is a "side process" of the mastering phase, let's not confuse "mastering" with "getting it loud."

And let's not think that all mixes will have the potential to *be* loud - Even with an experienced and proficient mastering engineer at the controls. The potential for sheer volume is determined a LONG time before it arrives at the M.E.'s place.
 
ozone has a thingy that makes it louder.

i forget what its called, but its part of the program.
 
is it me or didnt anybody pay attention to my last post on this thread?
 
sure didn't

also, in addition to smashing the crap out of your mix with a brickwall limiter, there's always the option of peak normalization for your mix, where your DAW will search for the loudest point in the song, and bring up the noise level of the entire mix until that loudest peak is just below the clipping point...so if your highest peak is at -7dbfs and you peak normalize the track to -.01dbfs, you'll be increasing the volume of the entire mix by 6.9db, and without killing off your dynamic range

however, note i specified PEAK normalizing, not RMS...and don't try to go all the way to 0dbfs - all that will do is introduce clipping/distortion
 
Ironklad Audio said:
sure didn't

also, in addition to smashing the crap out of your mix with a brickwall limiter, there's always the option of peak normalization for your mix, where your DAW will search for the loudest point in the song, and bring up the noise level of the entire mix until that loudest peak is just below the clipping point...so if your highest peak is at -7dbfs and you peak normalize the track to -.01dbfs, you'll be increasing the volume of the entire mix by 6.9db, and without killing off your dynamic range

however, note i specified PEAK normalizing, not RMS...and don't try to go all the way to 0dbfs - all that will do is introduce clipping/distortion
Click to expand...

Do some CD players clip at -.02Db?
 
Some older models do, don't know about newer ones.

It's really taking a risk to master everything up to 0dB. There is no margin for error on the playback side. I frequently here home studio tracks that are mastered up to 0dB and are distorting like crazy. Unlistenable and unusable, essentially broken tracks.

Best to leave a little space for the playback player to have some rrom to breath. It doesn't need to be much. I always leave the top peak at no more than -.3dB.
 
SonicAlbert said:
Best to leave a little space for the playback player to have some rrom to breath. It doesn't need to be much. I always leave the top peak at no more than -.3dB.
Click to expand...

Where do you run into trouble with hitting 0dBFS?
I've seen it where there isn't a noticeable
problem (such as distortion) when hitting
0FS when working in my computer editing
program. Does this issue mostly have to
do with putting the 0FS song through a DAC?
 
I can't reply to the "clipping before 0dBFS" issue, but I will say that Al's description of "home studio tracks that are mastered up to 0dB and are distorting like crazy" hits home, but it's not always because of clipping.

I'm not saying that there may not be clipping errors on playback for whatever reason; I'm not disagreeing with Al. But I am saying that there are a LOT of home mixes that are just pushed too hard and distorting from being smashed flat as a pancake against a brick wall, even if that wall is well below 0dBFS.

It's all up to the quality of the production up until that point. The better the tracking quality and the better the mix construction, the harder a mix can be pushed before it starts "breaking up". The irony is that at the same time, the better the tracking and mix, the less one should want or need to push the dynamics.

G.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
I can't reply to the "clipping before 0dBFS" issue, but I will say that Al's description of "home studio tracks that are mastered up to 0dB and are distorting like crazy" hits home, but it's not always because of clipping.
Click to expand...

Some older, I mean like more than 10 years ago, consumer CDs players apparently didn't like 0dBFS, so -0.3dBFS became a rule of thumb. Heck, I have some late '80s classical CDs that don't hit -3dBFS. However those generally have other issues, it's almost like they let the intern remaster those old analog recordings in the toddler days of CDs :confused:

However in home mastering, -0.3dBFS won't save you from crushing your mix to death with a limiter. Distortion at -0.3dBFS is still distortion.

OP, your mix has a fair amount of the crunchy stuff goin' on in that ol' 4kHz range. Also, the vocal is inappropriately dynamic in places. Finally, it's essentially mono. Fix those issues, and you are a long way towards being ready for the limiter :eek: ;)

However, I wouldn't recommend compressing and boosting the high end to the point of ear bleed. Yeah, it's loud, but good luck lasting through an album like that . . .
 
mshilarious said:
However in home mastering, -0.3dBFS won't save you from crushing your mix to death with a limiter. Distortion at -0.3dBFS is still distortion.
Click to expand...

Yes, exactly. I was speaking only to the CD player distorting aspect of hitting 0db.

You can distort very soft tracks by setting up the gain structure incorrectly. If you have your playback monitor system set very low it is a natural thing to turn everything else up to compensate.

One thing that I think tricks some people is the function of the volume control ove the final playback level. When tracks are playing back at 0dB the master volume is acting as an attenuator. In other words, it is only turning the volume down. When you turn the volume knob up you are in reality only turning it less down.

0dB is *incredibly* loud. I would suggest you calibrate your system so that the 0dB you see on your computer screen is the same 0dB that you are actually hearing. I would suggest that, but I won't because I don't want you to blow out your speakers and your ears.
 
SonicAlbert said:
0dB is *incredibly* loud. I would suggest you calibrate your system so that the 0dB you see on your computer screen is the same 0dB that you are actually hearing. I would suggest that, but I won't because I don't want you to blow out your speakers and your ears.
Click to expand...

I do that! And then I test mics with full-scale 1kHz sine waves (which are thus -3dBRMS). Handily, that puts 94dBSPL on the capsule.

I wear earmuffs a lot :o
 
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