I need mastering help!

S

scraggs

New member
Hi all, here's my dilemma: I have a few mixes that I'm happy with except for one thing-the bass is way too boomin' when I play the mixes over big speakers. By "big" I just mean my normal home stereo speakers. The mixes sound ok through my monitors (event 20/20) and through little bookshelf speakers. My question: Does anyone have any pointers for correcting this in mastering? I have all the Waves plug-ins, (comp, EQ, limiter). I know I can roll off the super-low frequencies, but I'm wondering about frequency-specific compression. The Waves manual describes this somewhat, but it always leaves me scratching my head in confusion. Does anyone have any specific settings to suggest for this? Or any ideas in general? Many many thanks.
 
I'm in the same boat. I'm wondering if there's a "standard" three of four frequency band "set" that is usually compressed. That is, what are the frequencies to compress/normalize for low, mid, high, and bright? Please note the entire band (say, 50Hz to 200Hz for low, etc.) as opposed to the main frequency for each band.

Thanks!
 
First of all check to see that your home speakers are not lying.
Home stereo boost Low's quite often. Check it out on other systems before you go and compress.

You dont need a multiband compressor. You can also use a EQ on a sidechain on a regular compressor.
Just use the Eq to turn down the Freq you want.
If you dont know this technique then I could explain but I think Somebody has posted this once before. Do a search.

You can also compress at the mixing stage using seperate sections by grouping them in your mixer and aplying compression on the group. Like Drums+Bass etc....

But of course the multiband is probably the easier way out.
A multiband splits you signal into 3 or more Freq bands.
Then they are compressed by separate compressors and then recombined.
This way, you can control the bass with out damaging the vocals. Only problem is now you have to set 3 compressors right instead of 1.

If you know hoe to use a compressor you should't have to much trouble with the multiband as long as you understand the concept.
 
I have a similar problem and this is what I have found.

You mentioned the plugins. Are you using tracks? Tracks really helps in mastering. You need this, bad. Also, are you using a lightpipe or other digital sound card? If so, I found that it kinda seems to lead you to the impression that the mix sounds cool when it is really a bit heavy on the bass side. What I do to compare is play the final mix in tracks on both my digital outs to my mixer as well as my analog out on my soundblaster. Each card gives me a different impression of the eq levels. I blen between them. The SB always shows a little bass heavy and the digital always sounds ok. I listen to both and pick in the middle. :) Hope this helps T-RACKS
 
Thanks Shailat, I'm pretty sure my home speakers aren't lying, they're actually pretty good and the bass extends really low. I keep the EQ on the stereo flat and compare to "real" records all the time, so I'm reasonably confident in their accuracy. As for the compression, yeah, I guess sidechain is what I meant more than multiband. You can do this with the Waves compressor, but for some reason, it just confuses me when I try to set it up, and I think I'm just making it worse rather than better. Do you have any suggestions as far as basic threshold/ratio settings? Should I be compressing the super-low (20-40Hz), or should I just dump that with EQ, and compress around 100-200? Thanks again.
 
Try mixing from outside the room!! I know it sounds funny but if you've got 20/20 (the best speakers since the NS10's) set up your mix and walk outside and listen - you will then remove the room effect and hear the true relationship between your lows and highs. Remember that you are aiming for a flat mix so that when joe bloggs puts it on their system with the loudness switch on or in the car with all the subs turned up it will still sound OK.
 
John Sayers is giving some good advice here. I always go to the back of my rig before I commit to a mix, or any mastering processing that I am doing. Further, I go outside the rig and listen. The extended low end the Events have take several feet to develope the physical sound waves. At the normal 3-4 feet away that near fields are normally set at, you cannot catch the "true" low end of the Events.

Also, start listening to as much music as you possibly can using the same D/A converters as your soundcard. This will entail getting professionally produced music as .wav files onto your hard drive so you can hear them through the same D/A converters. Even when I pop a CD into my Marantz stand alone burner, I run it's digital outs to the digital in's on my soundcard, then monitor the analog outs of my soundcard. This way, I am hearing ALL music through the same converters and monitors. This is important because to be effective at mixing and mastering, you REALLY need to know your monitors, and D/A converters on your playback system. Trust me, it has taken me 3 years to finally get a decent feel for my system. The more you engineer and compare your work against bigger production CD's on the same exact playback signal path, the more attuned your ears will become.

Good luck.

Ed
 
Thanks for the help everybody. I actually just went and remixed the damn things last weekend, it just seemed like a better way to go in the long run, rather than trying to correct things later. I totally agree with mixing from outside the room, I listen from down the hall to see how the balance is. And I ran a cable from the "studio" out to the living room stereo so I can listen to the mix in progress out there. Such a big help.
Thanks again.
 
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