That's a tough question because every song or album requires a different approach. Of course, the perfect mix requires no mastering other than possibly bringing it up to whatever RMS/loudness you desire.
Allow me to digress a little on the subject of loudness of commercial material before I get into what I personally do.
The company I work for organises the largest pro audio/lighting/AV expo on the African continent called Mediatech. Part of the expo is a demonstration called the 'Outdoor Live Sound Demos'. All the local distributors of major brands like Alcons, L-Acoustics, DAS, JBL, Nexo, Martin Audio, etc put up their line array systems and we have a shoot out. These are all really high quality systems that you would find in any major music concert for thousands of people. Well, to cut a long story short, I was responsible for putting together the sample material for the shootouts. Basically I took three songs of different genres, loudness normalised them and then faded them into a 1 minute clip. I chose ACDC's Back in Black, a Michael Buble song (which I have always considered to be masterfully produced), and a David Guetta dance track (Titanium, I think). You can only guess which recording sounded the best on all of the systems. Yup, ACDC. I was actually appalled at how smashed even Michael Buble was. I made another montage with Snow Patrol and it was entirely unlistenable at the levels we were shooting for outdoors. Terrible. They really know how to ruin otherwise good sounding recordings with heavy handed mastering for loudness these days and it really showed.
ANYhoo. Just thought I would share that. It's easy to think that the top guys know what they're doing but when you hear a master recording of modern material on eleven or twelve superbly set up line arrays, it's easy to hear which ones are good and which ones fall apart. Most modern music fell apart.
In terms of my approach, I tend to first mix for the sound and the crest factor I'm looking for. To me, this is important. If I reach a comfortable crest factor for the material, i.e. a properly managed dynamic range, I find myself not having to limit the hell out of it in the mastering phase to reach the RMS values I'm looking for. This sounds like tricky business because a lot of guys on here, including myself, may tell me not to worry about that and just mix til it sounds good. I agree with that and that's fine but IMO a lot of what makes modern rock music (the music I generally record) pop is creative use of saturation and effect-driven compression. If you tier your dynamics processing in the mixing phase (and possibly the recording phase) by implementing multiple steps of gentle saturation and compression, you'll find that crest factor starts to come down without the macro dynamics of the track suffering.
Once my mix is done I'll use Wavelab to master. I actually can't claim to properly master because my room and monitoring system isn't transparent enough despite having a very high quality signal path. This is why I send serious work to a dedicated ME that I've worked with for a while. However, generally if I'm forced to self-master I'll use a BAX EQ and the Waves L2. I don't mess around with anything too complicated because all I want is bring the mix up in volume and adjust the top and low ends. I generally leave the midrange alone because I like to get it correct in the mix before it is ready to be mastered.
YMMV. Everyone has their own process and what works for them so take my words with a grain of salt.
Cheers
This makes sense to me. My only question I am wondering about. With fader riding or clip envelope editing, could it not be possible to remove more compression by "reducing the peaks" and provide better dynamics and fuller sound? I ask this as there was a video where the guy was showing how he firsts reduced peaks manually.
It would seem, by doing this, your mix would stand up to just about any system thrown at it (given it sounded good to start with) as it would be less dependent on compression even after you threw it in for the final mix (I didn't say master).
This makes sense to me. My only question I am wondering about. With fader riding or clip envelope editing, could it not be possible to remove more compression by "reducing the peaks" and provide better dynamics and fuller sound? I ask this as there was a video where the guy was showing how he firsts reduced peaks manually.
Right, and to the point I am taking away from your comments, compression to add to the music, not just squish it for the "loud factor" which many of us newbies do, misuse compression.Manual alteration is a powerful tool, but compression, because of its time based controls, can be more musical if you set the parameters with some awareness of the rhythmic effects.
Like Mo Facta says, a little here and a little there adds up to a lot of compression without it sounding like a lot of compression. Tap it a touch at tracking, do some manual edits, gently squash certain tracks at mixdown, maybe a little on a subgroup and then finish it with two or three stages of dynamics control (if called for) in mastering.
You're already in -- at least some direction. If you're having issues, then welcome to why there are mastering engineers in the first place. I don't master my own mixes either (objectivity is arguably one of the most important tools - Hard to have any with your own mixes).Not sure if this question even makes sense, but trying to get all of the songs to sound like the belong together, have the same loudness, consistency across all songs. I am not a mastering engineer, but I would like it to sound even across all songs. If someone can point me in the right direction.
I put them all in one project and insert whatever I feel is necessary on each track. I have been doing the final limiting on the main bus but generally I've done some preconditioning of the dynamics at the track level. That way I can jump around and compare relative tone and perceived volume.
OK, that was what I was thinking. So, I am taking the bounced songs, and putting them on their own track. Then putting the X VST on the individual track. Then on the master, putting the master compressor and limiter on the master and then bounce the project in total.
Only thing I am trying to figure out, should I bounce as on file and then split or bounce as individual tracks.
Any recommendations are appreciated.
If it helps, here are my thoughts. Firstly, understand as of now I do all my mixing and 'mastering' through Reaper using very basic plugins and EQing. Also, below is what I have learned is working the best for me SO FAR. I am truly an amateur at mastering techniques.
I first record all my tracks a few dbs below 0. I render each track individually to a pre-'mastered' version. Then I open up a new project, and insert each pre-mastered song as an individual track. On each of those tracks is: EQ, Compressor, Master Limiter (in that order). I listen to each and make output adjustments to make each song sound like they are, level-wise, relatively consistent. I would rather have limiting on each song itself, instead of the overall master control, because I find my songs to need their own unique thresholds and such. Then I render each individual song out by "rendering as stems" (it does not render the Master, but whichever track I have highlighted).
Hope this helps