I love it loud

[misterDX]

Thanks for the feedback Axel.

I've heard so many engeneer et music freaks keep repeating that doing a master of a song is 'too boldly go where no one has gone before'!

In general they are right, musicians, even a top dog, will never be qualified enough to do it.

On my side, I see myself closer to a studio geek than a pot head.

I needed to find that plug in, L1 or 2, whatever (done by Timeworks) to have exactly what i needed. I don't listen to a song for days and days, and then I master it for like 2 days. I send you a sample if you want boyz.

Right between the eyes.

 

[Digidude824]

If this is a serious project you don't understand why I would risk trying to master it myelf Scottboyher?

Because it's actually fun!

Peace.

Having a professional, or simply another person to critique the work themselves will improve your mix. Its just one of those facts of life I guess.

 

[moley]

if it's for general release I would send it to a proper mastering house....

Don't say things like that j/k

they have the proper facilities to hear any deficiencies in the sound quality, as well as the experience to know what to touch and what to leave alone.

DIY mastering on the same setup that a project was tracked and mixed in is asking for trouble. Impartial ears to analyze your mixes are a virtual necessity for good results.

I hear you on that one. I'd be interested to know, though - what your views are on classical vs "pop" (I mean pop in the general sense of popular music - not as in Britney et al) - as far as mastering goes.

Do you think that pop requires more attention to detail, or more trained/experienced ears? Or is classical more demanding in that respect? I'm not sure - I could see arguments for both.

 

[Skysaw]

Same advice from anecdotal perspective...

I am in the midst of releasing my first professionally mastered and pressed CD. I have been making music in one form or another for 25 years, and have a very trained ear. I worked damn hard recording and mixing twelve songs, and read everything I could about mastering to get it to sound even better.

But I did take someone's advice to heart, and took it in to be finished by an expert anyway. It sounded pretty damn good before I took it in, but you know what? Now it really rocks! It has a professional touch to it that I don't think I ever could have reached.

The short of it is that it takes NEW EARS to give your music the attention it deserves. It's precisely BECAUSE you are close to and familiar with your music that you need to let someone else touch it. Don't worry... they aren't there to ruin it, or change your vision. They are there to make your music sound the best it can.

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

I hear you on that one. I'd be interested to know, though - what your views are on classical vs "pop" (I mean pop in the general sense of popular music - not as in Britney et al) - as far as mastering goes.

Do you think that pop requires more attention to detail, or more trained/experienced ears? Or is classical more demanding in that respect? I'm not sure - I could see arguments for both.

I haven't done classical recording myself... BUT - if ever there were an engineer who follows the ethic of "capture the sound source accurately and without coloration", it would be an SE doing classical recording!

This being the case, I suspect there's a tendency for much less tweaking and fucking around with the sound throughout the production process from tracking to mastering, when classical music is involved - as compared to popular music.

Like I said though, this is just a guess since I have no direct experience with that particular style.

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

The short of it is that it takes NEW EARS to give your music the attention it deserves. It's precisely BECAUSE you are close to and familiar with your music that you need to let someone else touch it.

THAT ALONE... is probably the number one reason to use an ME!

I don't care how good you think your gear/studio/ears are relative to a Mastering Engineer's ears and facilities -- if it's your project you're not objective enough to analyze it properly. Period.

 

[moley]

I guess that's the thing, isn't it? You need an objective view, however good you are at mastering other people's material.

This is one of the many reasons I'm glad my Dad is a professional audio engineer

 

[malcolm123]

THAT ALONE... is probably the number one reason to use an ME!

I don't care how good you think your gear/studio/ears are relative to a Mastering Engineer's ears and facilities -- if it's your project you're not objective enough to analyze it properly. Period.

I agree Bruce in regards to fresh ears for mastering.
Whats your take in regards to mixing, say if the same person laid the tracks then mixed them? Is there a objective curve for the two? I know that someone else should mix and master your projects,, but which of the 2 do you feel has the most disadvantage?

Malcolm

 

[Blue Bear Sound]

I think the tracking/mixing go hand-in-hand, so it's much less of an issue to have the same person mix as who tracked... but having someone else mix it can also give you a different spin on it....

Also, the process of mixing involves a subjective component, while mastering doesn't....

Mastering is the last piece of the puzzle, and objective analysis of the sound quality is absolutely critical. The ME's ears, the gear, the room, are all designed to take subjective analysis OUT of the equation.

This difference is what makes mastering a whole separate beast from mixing.

 

[Son of Mixerman]

Ive mastered classical. Because the dynamic range is typically greater, the music is less tolerant of limiting and compression. Pop music, you can squash it more and get away with it because you can play with the attack and release such the pumping and breathing isn't as obvious. Metal is probably the easiest to crush without knowing it. Because of the large amounts of distortion usually used by guitars, a good chunk of the artifacts created by excessive compression and limiting is masked. Well, almost masked until the radio processors get ahold of it. Then its pretty obvious. You ever notice that your favorite metal station never really comes in as well as you like? It because of all the distortion from compressing and limiting of hypercompressed material.
See how many times you can smash your thumb with a hammer before it doesn't look like a thumb anymore.

Ive been tracking more nowdays, I have been cheating and feeding my mains to my dads old ME monitors he had made when I was a boy. I love inheriting audio stuff. My room is such that the mixing area is off out of the way from the mains and so I can turn off the nearfields and listen to my mix sorta how I would if I was mastering...then I go back to the nearfields. Most people can't believe how different the two types of monitors really are. I have 2 type of headphones on top of it. One pair of Fostex T20's and A pair of Sony MDR V600's.. percursors to the MDR 7509's. One pair is for click and pop duty and the other is for hiss or damaged converters.

I rarely master my own stuff. I hate my own stuff because Im usually too used to it and angry at it because of things never turning out the way my head hears it. Why punish myself by trying to master it. I did have to master a 4 song demo I tracked. If she wasn't my mother in law it would have never happened. But I needed the work.

I like having my peaks in the -3 to -9 range. Usually a tune that stays in the range will have more dynamics and sound much more open. If you want it loud...use that knob that goes to 11. IMO
But if it heavy metal..the NU kind...squash the crap out of it!

SoMm

 

[moley]

Ive mastered classical. Because the dynamic range is typically greater, the music is less tolerant of limiting and compression. Pop music, you can squash it more and get away with it

And unfortunately, they squash it too much, nowadays

because you can play with the attack and release such the pumping and breathing isn't as obvious. Metal is probably the easiest to crush without knowing it. Because of the large amounts of distortion usually used by guitars, a good chunk of the artifacts created by excessive compression and limiting is masked. Well, almost masked until the radio processors get ahold of it. Then its pretty obvious. You ever notice that your favorite metal station never really comes in as well as you like?

I don't listen to Metal

It because of all the distortion from compressing and limiting of hypercompressed material.


I can believe it.

See how many times you can smash your thumb with a hammer before it doesn't look like a thumb anymore.

No thanks

Ive been tracking more nowdays, I have been cheating and
I like having my peaks in the -3 to -9 range. Usually a tune that stays in the range will have more dynamics and sound much more open. If you want it loud...use that knob that goes to 11. IMO
But if it heavy metal..the NU kind...squash the crap out of it!

If it's Nu-Metal, just shoot yourself in the head, and save everyone some hassle

Seriously though, I don't like way they squash the living crap out of modern pop music - and what the radio stations to do it just makes it worse.

I really do think that you can get the music as loud as is desirable, without squashing the hell out of it.

 

[misterDX]

Having a professional, or simply another person to critique the work themselves will improve your mix. Its just one of those facts of life I guess.

That's why I have other people listening to my stuff, I'm not all alone, few friends studies in music technology as well (like I terribly needs to justify myself!).

Music keeps us awake boyz

 

[misterDX]

But I did take someone's advice to heart, and took it in to be finished by an expert anyway. It sounded pretty damn good before I took it in, but you know what? Now it really rocks!


You gave them like a pre-master, with lots of processing?

 

[fenix]

as requested ... just a hint
Its called professional mastering

just a hint...this is homerecording.com

 

[sjoko2]

just a hint...this is homerecording.com

eehhhhhhhh - yes it is. are you sure?? not homemastering.com???

And by the way, has anyone used Waveburner Pro? Its a stand-alone program from Steinberg which is only a couple of hunderd bucks and comes complete with good mastering plug-ins. I have played with it and it really works very well. Especially the CD burning part of it behaves faultlessly.

 

[fenix]

the waves mastering bundle is all you need.

 

[Myx62]

I will admit that it really is a lot of fun mastering your own stuff. It does get hard to be objective after the 400th listen. Ive scrapped a lot of songs cause I grew to hate them. However for a serious project it is best to have a pro do it although its hard to find a pro these days that masters like one. It does seem as though they like the Db wars......
Myx