Mastering advice... any recommendations

A

acousticide

New member
I have a 14 song CD just mixed. everything sounds great except on the vocals during the "ee" sound (feel, real, she, etc) and the "oo" sound, I get this ear piercing frequency. it doesn't really spike the volume, but it's annoying. i recorded vocals through a TC Helicon Voiceworks. I have been trying to master the songs myself on Sony SoundForge, but i can't really get this sound out. Mind you, I'm a moron and have no clue how to master audio. Is this something that can be fixed in mastering without bringing the whole song down. Does anyone have any recommendations for a Mastering house?? A good manufacturer would be helpful as well. I went completely through discmakers (mastering, design & replication) on my first album (hard rock) and it came out good, but this is more acoustic based, and I have started hearing not so good things about their mastering. Any help would be appreciated. You can hear clips of the songs at my website to see what I mean, but those versions are mastered by me on soundforge. www.dylanmoses.com
 
If you are having problems with one of the elements of a song you should take care of it during the recording process, or even the mix stage... mastering is NOT the time to be messin' with poorly engineered elements.

I'd remix or retrack. Mastering isn't going to make that go away without some serious side effects.
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
If you are having problems with one of the elements of a song you should take care of it during the recording process, or even the mix stage... mastering is NOT the time to be messin' with poorly engineered elements.

I'd remix or retrack. Mastering isn't going to make that go away without some serious side effects.
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Great answer - I agree 100%.........
 
the E sound should barely exist, as far as diction goes... turn it into an A kinda voiced thing... so something like ME sounds like May. the more you can keep your mouth in that A shape without widening, you'll be happier. or I should say happiah.
 
Try re-mixing and try to EQ the noise out of it. It may be too late and you may have to re-cut the tracks. If you have a sweepable EQ, play with the sweep function untill you find the frequency that affects the noise you're looking to get rid of, and then cut that freq. Unfortunately, you may have to re-track. Mastering is not the time to take care of a problem like that. You need to look for those problems during playback after tracking. sorry :(
 
Cloneboy Studio said:
I'd remix or retrack. Mastering isn't going to make that go away without some serious side effects.
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Agreed with the retracking part of it. The vocal sounds are the sounds with the highest SPL (volume) coming out of the mouth. If those are the only trouble spots, it sounds like the vocalist may have over-driven the microphone or been singing too close to it, or possibly over-driven the preamp at the input stage. If that's the case - and I believe it is, based on the description - there is really nothing that can be done in mixing or mastering to satisfactorily "fix" it; it's in the source. The only real solution is to re-track the vocals and watch the mic positioning and preamp input levels when you do.

G.
 
wesley tanner said:
the E sound should barely exist, as far as diction goes... turn it into an A kinda voiced thing... so something like ME sounds like May. the more you can keep your mouth in that A shape without widening, you'll be happier. or I should say happiah.
Click to expand...

Please, in the name of all that is good and holy don't. Quite possibly the most annoying sound in the world to my ear is hearing a singer sing "May" instead of "Me'.

IMHO, it's much better to go more for a "mih" sound... halfway between "me" and "mig" minus the g. Think British, not Cockney. :D
 
Rather than passing the problem down the chain where it gets more difficult to fix, try to fix it at the source. Don't use the "fix it in the mix/mastering" philosophy.

From the description of the problem it sounds like some sort of resonance frequency that can be caused by a variety of sources, singing too close to a mic, room resonances, frequency response of mic, EQ used, etc.

Try to chase the problem back to the source and correct it there. The results will be much better if you can fix it in the track (possibly using a sidechain comp or EQ) rather than having to use a similar process on the entire mix and compromise all of the tracks.
 
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