Mastering for playback on Sony Walkman mp3 player

[keefykeef]

Hello people.

I'm new to this forum, had a look around and some very useful stuff to be found!! Anyways I have a query....

I'm mastering an album at the moment, and as usual, I've tried the masters out on as many systems as possible (three different stereos, car stereo, and an mp3 player)...

They are sounding good, and I'm happy with them on everything EXCEPT for the mp3 player where it sounds ridiculously squashed, and every time there's a bass drum hit, you lose the guitars that are panned quite wide.

It's not that the bass drum is too loud or anything like that, because when you hear it on a decent system, it sounds fine.

I'm wondering if anyone knows whether there is some sort of sound limiting going on with the new Sony Walkman mp3 players/phones. I'm playing it back through a w880i phone. It doesn't sound too bad at low volumes, but as soon as you crank it up, it sounds well over compressed.

So my questions are:
- Is this limiting triggered by a certain frequency that maybe I can duck out a bit?
- Has anyone else experienced this problem?

A bit of background on how I mastered them:
Wavelab, using a touch of the S1 stereo imager to widen slightly, the Waves C4, to limit the low end a touch, Wavelab Puncher to add punch, and Peakmaster to get it to a reasonable volume level.

Finally, if anyone has a Sony mp3 player out there and wants to hear what I'm talking about, I can send through an mp3

Thank you all! Keith

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I'm wondering if anyone knows whether there is some sort of sound limiting going on with the new Sony Walkman mp3 players/phones. I'm playing it back through a w880i phone. It doesn't sound too bad at low volumes, but as soon as you crank it up, it sounds well over compressed.
...
A bit of background on how I mastered them:
Wavelab, using a touch of the S1 stereo imager to widen slightly, the Waves C4, to limit the low end a touch, Wavelab Puncher to add punch, and Peakmaster to get it to a reasonable volume level.

Finally, if anyone has a Sony mp3 player out there and wants to hear what I'm talking about, I can send through an mp3

Welcome to the nightma...er...board, Keith .

It's not unusual on such types of devices to find an AGC (Automatic Gain Control) circuit of one type or another. Sometimes you might find one on the tuner section (if it has AM/FM radio on it) to even out the amplitude amongst differing stations, other times you'll find one in the preamp just before the amplifier designed to ensure that one does not overdrive the amplifier into heavy clipping.

I can't say for sure, but I suspect the latter, which does serve as a kind of crude hard limiter on the preamp; it might be there to save the headphones from a particularly noisy amp, or to protect the human ear from dangerous dynamics for those who unwisely want to crank it to 11 in the earbuds.

My first question for you offhand would be what you are referring to as a "reasonable" mastering volume level; i.e. what are both your peak and RMS levels for that cut? I'd also be curious as to how your frequency dynamics play out: it may be that your kick just has so much very low frequency energy that it's just plain saturating the AGC/headphones; i.e. giving you a momentary brick wall of a square wave that leaves no room to define the guitars and such.

I'd put the MP3 into the clinic forum here and let folks take a look at it regardless of whether they have Walkmans or not. You don't have to have a human body to shoot in order to perform forensic ballistic tests on a gun .

G.

 

[rayc]

Is there an agreed standard (like the RIAA preamp EQ for vinyl) for encoding and decoding?
Is there an agreed standard for bass expander?
Is there an agreed standard for doo doof?
I think there is/was a standard for vinyl, cassette (though complicated by dolby etc noise reduction systems), and CD (HDCD I've no idea about) but MP3 and similar loss based compression systems I doubt have a commonality so listen to what yours sounds like & do a special mix taking into account the problems and try that on yours and a few different types of MP3/ipud machines.

 

[LogicDeLuxe]

Did you actually encode it to MP3? You shouldn't. Sony only plays its proprietary ATRAC.
Use the highest setting and let your transfer software encode it directly from the WAV file. Otherwise, the file would be unnecessarily transcoded.

 

[keefykeef]

Hi guys, thanks for all your speedy replies, really appreciate it.

Southside Glen – by “reasonable” level, basically, I usually use Tom Petty’s “You Wreck Me” as a guide – it’s a pretty loud and punchy song, and I know that if I can my mixes almost as loud as that without it sounding squashed, then I’m usually happy! When you talk about “peak and RMS levels for that cut”, I’m afraid I don’t have the knowledge to be able to answer that unless you could tell me how I might find it out.. I’ve always just kind of trusted my ears for mastering and I don’t have an enormous amount of knowledge about it.

Rayc – Thanks, I’ll keep trying! Shouldn’t imagine there’s any kind of standards for mp3, judging by some of the shocking commercial mp3s I’ve heard of late…

LogicDeLuxe – I rendered the master WAV in Wavelab, burned it to a CD which I used to listen to on my CD players. I then ripped the CD from to MP3 using a program called Freerip… Could this be causing the problem do you think? And how would you recommend I encode it to MP3, directly from Wavelab do you mean?

Thanks
Keith

 

[rayc]

I always have the last laugh with my friends re MP3s
I've used a cheapie no name, A3 battery jobbie for walking to the shops or catching the train (my "walkie type" CD player a bit cumbersome for that & lacks the belt clip these days) for a few years now - I don't like the quality, even at the 320 I usually rip to but don't have to do it for long. Most of my friends have belatedly bought players but almost universally have bought NAME brands - specifically ipods. Despite me telling them, showing them etc about iTunes, proprietry software and formats etc etc etc they still end up spending BIG money on THE NAME & then complain about the problems with a) the internal battery and b) the prop. software or format.
Actually I don't have the last laugh until they've gone - I just allow myself a knowing smile.
NONE of them do ANY research before buying ANYTHING. Late babyboomer impulse buyer the lot. One of them, a lovely bloke - bought a Harley using his Visa card - already had a good bike but bought the hog & only rode it to cafes on weekends.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Southside Glen – by “reasonable” level, basically, I usually use Tom Petty’s “You Wreck Me” as a guide – it’s a pretty loud and punchy song, and I know that if I can my mixes almost as loud as that without it sounding squashed, then I’m usually happy! When you talk about “peak and RMS levels for that cut”, I’m afraid I don’t have the knowledge to be able to answer that unless you could tell me how I might find it out.. I’ve always just kind of trusted my ears for mastering and I don’t have an enormous amount of knowledge about it.

Well, you're starting off right by wanting to trust you ears instead of then numbers. Using a particular song as a gold standard reference is tough though. Unless your mix is sonicly identical to that cut, there is no guarantee whatsoever that that particular target is the right one to shoot for, no matter how good it may sound...and the chances of it being sonicly identical are fairly small. I'd bet that you're simply over-smashing your mix to get it to the commercial level and that the addition of the AGC in the Walkman is just giving you a virtual flat brick to play back.

You might actually be able to turn your lemons into lemonade here. Get the mix to sound good on the Walkman, and you're probably going to sound good everywhere.

G.

 

[LogicDeLuxe]

I then ripped the CD from to MP3 using a program called Freerip… Could this be causing the problem do you think?

I don't know that particular software, but it might well be the case that it has a suboptimal encoder and/or used it with suboptimal parameters.

And how would you recommend I encode it to MP3, directly from Wavelab do you mean?

Whenever it is for a Sony device, you don't really want to encode it to MP3 at all. As I said, just select the WAV file in the transfer software which comes with your Sony device and it will encode it to ATRAC.