In need of some advice for an upcoming recording session (mastering related)

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FattMusiek

FattMusiek

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Starting later this month I have a band coming into my home studio to record an 8 track CD. This will be the most serious recording session I've done to date; the band plans to use this CD to promote themselves. I'm confident in my skills as a recordist, but I still I recommended they get the album mastered by a professional after my work is complete. I need advice on how to prepare my mixes to be mastered. I've read that it's best not to use too much compression and things to that nature. Also, what is the best means to get the tracks to mastering houses? CDs with WAV files?

I appreciate your help!
 
Read the "MASTERING: Getting the Most out of Your Mixes" PDF on my site (linked from the home page)...

That covers a lot of the common stuff.
 
Thanks for the reply. I've actually skimmed your site for information in the past in searching for a mastering house. You may very well hear from me in the near future about a mastering project!
 
Leave the mastering engineer some headroom to work with...i.e. don't mix it so that the levels are slamming right up against 0db. That kind of goes along with not overcompressing.

Obviously do all the things you can do to make the mix the best it can be, but when you're done if you hear some things that you think would improve the overall mix, leave those for the mastering engineer. What I mean by this is: if the vocals are too sibilant, go ahead and de-ess them, because if you leave that until mastering, the ME will be working with a two-track stereo mix so any de-essing he does will affect the frequencies of the track as a whole. Stuff like that. But if you feel the tracks should be more present, more open, etc...make notes about those issues and leave it for the ME.

Give the ME a reference CD so he knows what you're going for.

Good luck.
 
1. Keep the material at the highest resolution possible, if the original was 24 bit 48K, try to keep the mixes at the same sample rate and bit depth, rather than create an audio CD at 44.1/16bit.

2. Leave a bit at the head and tail of the songs. It's better to fade during mastering so that noise can be removed more accurately by using a noise profile of any existing noise at the end, and for other reasons as well.

3. A reference tone is helpful even in the digital domain to check the balance and levels of your mix. Don't fudge it. For example I've gotten mixes that are consistently hotter on one side or the other. It's difficult to tell if this was intentional without a ref tone. Tone should be -18 or -14 dbFS and marked on the mix media.

4. Documentation - includes song order, notes on the songs, things to be fixed, song spacing, sample rate/bit depth, etc.

5. If not attending the session it's a good idea to supply a reference CD of other commercial releases to demonstrate the sound that you are attempting to achieve.

6. Use professional stock for media, not budget CDs or tape.

7. Do not process the overall mix, this includes normalization, EQ, compression, etc.

8. Listen to your mixes on a variety of systems and fix any track related issues such as sibilance in the vocals or cymbals, or basically anything that "sticks out" and makes the mix unbalanced in frequency or dynamics (unless of course it's intentional).

9. Documention

10. Documentation

Just a few tips that come to mind ....
 
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EleKtriKaz said:
Leave the mastering engineer some headroom to work with...i.e. don't mix it so that the levels are slamming right up against 0db. That kind of goes along with not overcompressing.
Click to expand...

Just dont slam a limiter on the master stereo out. Instead stick a limiter on the kik drum the snare drum and the toms. (just an example, works with rock/guitar bands). I would set my limiters to about -6dB threshold, but this might be too much/not enough for some mixes. Then i would boost the level so it is close to 0dB but never clipping. This way i get less loss of bits. The mastering engineer can work with a wave that is almost tickling 0dB as long as it hasnt been limited much at all or squashed.
 
The BEST thing you can do is to not worry about "loss of bits."

I get mixes in all the time that PEAK at -12, -14dBfs...

Which strangely enough, are usually the mixes that leave here sounding better (AND louder) than the mixes that were "tickling 0dBfs" all the time.

Probably because the engineer was concentrating on the sound and not the meters...

Headroom is good room. In 24-bit, you can leave a LOT of headroom before you're sacrificing much of anything.
 
Digital overs are measured by the number of measurements at full scale (0 dbFS). Most pro gear measures this as around 3 consecutive full scale measurements. Prosumer gear can be unreliable in it's measurement. As a result it's a good idea to leave a margin of safety and not "exercise all of the bits". Your more likely to run into distortion by doing it, rather than gaining anything from quantization issues or a better signal to noise ratio.
 
Good points masteringhouse and Massive Master.
Suppose there is less need to try and tickle the 0dB at 24bit.
 
Do you think it is really nescessary to be sitting right on 0 dbFS even at 16-bit? Some of my favourite sounding CDs never even peak at above -6dbFS.
 
I don't think so. It's arguably more important to pay more attention to gain from the start, but a good sounding recording is still going to sound good a few dB down.

There's a plus side to that also that a lot of people either don't understand or just plain forget about (which I'll 'splain just a bit of for those who need it) -

Amplifiers like to work at a certain level - Speakers also. They're more efficient and sound better when they're "in the zone" they want to be at.

With all this "louder, Louder LOUDER" stuff going on, people aren't turning the volume up as much - Herein lies the problem that's not understood / forgotten about...

When you turn up the volume, you're really not "turning it up." You're turning it less down. You're attenuating the signal (normally with horrible quality potentiometers in consumer and a lot of pro-sumer gear) from where it is. You're driving the amp harder at a lower level.

This is one of the reasons that lower volume / more dynamic mixes sound SO much better than their overcompressed counterparts when you crank them up - Not only does it generally sound less irritating by nature, but your gear is working much more efficiently - There's less "in the way" of the signal when it's not being over-attenuated with a cheesy volume control.

Just another "headroom is good room" bit.
 
Massive Master said:
I don't think so. It's arguably more important to pay more attention to gain from the start, but a good sounding recording is still going to sound good a few dB down.

There's a plus side to that also that a lot of people either don't understand or just plain forget about (which I'll 'splain just a bit of for those who need it) -

Amplifiers like to work at a certain level - Speakers also. They're more efficient and sound better when they're "in the zone" they want to be at.

With all this "louder, Louder LOUDER" stuff going on, people aren't turning the volume up as much - Herein lies the problem that's not understood / forgotten about...

When you turn up the volume, you're really not "turning it up." You're turning it less down. You're attenuating the signal (normally with horrible quality potentiometers in consumer and a lot of pro-sumer gear) from where it is. You're driving the amp harder at a lower level.

This is one of the reasons that lower volume / more dynamic mixes sound SO much better than their overcompressed counterparts when you crank them up - Not only does it generally sound less irritating by nature, but your gear is working much more efficiently - There's less "in the way" of the signal when it's not being over-attenuated with a cheesy volume control.

Just another "headroom is good room" bit.
Click to expand...

Awesome. Great explanation.
 
Massive Master said:
I don't think so. It's arguably more important to pay more attention to gain from the start, but a good sounding recording is still going to sound good a few dB down.

There's a plus side to that also that a lot of people either don't understand or just plain forget about (which I'll 'splain just a bit of for those who need it) -

Amplifiers like to work at a certain level - Speakers also. They're more efficient and sound better when they're "in the zone" they want to be at.

With all this "louder, Louder LOUDER" stuff going on, people aren't turning the volume up as much - Herein lies the problem that's not understood / forgotten about...

When you turn up the volume, you're really not "turning it up." You're turning it less down. You're attenuating the signal (normally with horrible quality potentiometers in consumer and a lot of pro-sumer gear) from where it is. You're driving the amp harder at a lower level.

This is one of the reasons that lower volume / more dynamic mixes sound SO much better than their overcompressed counterparts when you crank them up - Not only does it generally sound less irritating by nature, but your gear is working much more efficiently - There's less "in the way" of the signal when it's not being over-attenuated with a cheesy volume control.

Just another "headroom is good room" bit.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation about amplification. I guess that's probably why a lot of older CDs were mastered in such a way that they don't even peak at 0? I'd always wondered why they actually did that.
 
Massive Master said:
When you turn up the volume, you're really not "turning it up." You're turning it less down. You're attenuating the signal (normally with horrible quality potentiometers in consumer and a lot of pro-sumer gear) from where it is. You're driving the amp harder at a lower level.

This is one of the reasons that lower volume / more dynamic mixes sound SO much better than their overcompressed counterparts when you crank them up - Not only does it generally sound less irritating by nature, but your gear is working much more efficiently - There's less "in the way" of the signal when it's not being over-attenuated with a cheesy volume control.

Just another "headroom is good room" bit.
Click to expand...

John -

Could you explain this further?

Are you not still going through the same cheesy volume control (not to mention ICs) no matter where the volume is set?

Also when the input source is louder, attenuation is going to bring the voltage back down to the nominal level before it hits the amplifier section, so the voltage will be the same. The only difference is that there will not be as much voltage fluctuation in heavily compressed material (which is where the real benefit is).

I think what you're getting at is that the preamplifier section isn't driven as hard? Or maybe you were simplifying ...
 
Maybe I went a little overboard - I suppose I could simply call it a gain-staging issue... Most gear has a spot where it's most efficient at (unity gain on a fader, etc.). Pushing a signal that's 12dB hotter than what it's supposed to be is going to require more of a reduction to get it to "listening level" than a non-squished signal. On a digital recording, it starts with D-A reconstructive distortion and goes from there - The imaging suffers, the muddies come up. And I'm sure we've all had a stereo system that sounded "squelched" at low levels, but sounded wonderful when it was letting loose a bit.

Take a live board for instance - If you set the faders at unity and run a stereo signal into it, using the preamp gain to get it to a certain level, it sounds different ("better" - "more open" - etc.) than the same signal with the gain up 20dB and the fader down 20dB.
 
Me likes this explanation more. :)

With speakers, the more a signal is compressed the less excursion the speaker will undergo and the less air will be pushed. As a result highly compessed material is less "punchy" than it's less compressed counterpart at the same volume. Another reason why hypercompressed audio sounds like crap.
 
Yeah, I suppose I didn't even get to the "speaker" part in all that... :o
 
Massive Master said:
Yeah, I suppose I didn't even get to the "speaker" part in all that... :o
Click to expand...

Oh yeah, realize that just bringing up another point.

There is also the issue with how human hearing relates to compression, loud volumes and muscle fatigue in the ear. But I'll leave that explanation to an ENT doctor.
 
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