mastering in SF

  • Thread starter Thread starter bean 123
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In the true spirit of the competition I treated this as I do any of my clients who resist my recommendation of getting their project properly mastered and ask me to "master" it for them instead! ;)

Bruce
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
I just finished reading "The Mastering Engineer's Handbook", by Bobby Owsiniski. (He also wrote "The Mixing Engineer's Handbook")

It should be required reading by anyone who is tempted to call the home-grown post-mix process of using their DAW plug-ins to tweak their mixes "MASTERING." No excuses.

If you are performing "DIY mastering", you ARE NOT "MASTERING". Period. Argue all you want, hate my guts for saying it - the plug-ins are NOT "good enough", and they don't even come close to the true mastering art which is firmly rooted in a Mastering Engineer's ears. Although very important, the high-end gear is only a portion of the real mastering process. The biggest part comes from the objective experience of the engineer, who's heard many many good and bad mixes and is in the unique position to make educated tonal adjustments to your mix that you yourself would never ever hear (since you would be too close to your own work!)

SO flame away.... IMNSHO, mastering can NEVER be a home-grown process.............

Bruce
Click to expand...

Absolutely agree. Oh boy do I agree! :)

CZ
 
This is a great Idea guys.

Ill throw up an FTP server for hosting, and a website for other users of the board to track the progress of each contestent... That way everyone can learn slowly by what you both are doing,
I have plenty of space and plenty of bandwith.

But, you'll have to use one of my recordings *cackle* because Im broke and I cant afford Mastering, (and I suck at q-mastering or isaqm..)

Shit if you wanna run a contest every month I got lots of recordings :)

Hell Yeah...


Demensia.
 
Damn! I come into the Sonic Foundry room, where I rarely tread, and I walk into this 7 page buzzsaw thread. Very Cool! I wish both of you the best of luck, I too am eager to hear the results. A very interesting contest, you have both made your points well and with a refreshing degree of civility. I gotta say though that Shailat, while he may well be a musical genius, comes off sounding too arrogent for my taste.

If I had caught this thread weeks earlier I would have been happy to take a crack at it, since I KNOW my work sucks and thus I could provide the "lowest common denominator" mastering job. :D

You know with all this high drama you could script this out as a movie -

(Cue Star Wars theme music in the background)

Luke "Chessrock" Skywalker, the cocky young apprentice who feels the force flowing through him but does not yet know how to control it. Will he learn in time?

Bruce "Darth Vader" Blue Bear, the grim master of the force, will he be able to crush young Chessrock? Despite his dark blue uniform and heavy breathing, you know that deep inside he has a good heart, and is waiting to repent!

Queue as Yoda - shaking his head as Chessrock runs headlong into hopeless battle.

Shailot as the evil emperor - gloating in the background as he waits for Bruce to crush young Chessrock.

I'll play the wookie, I've been wanting to grow my hair out anyways.
 
RWhite said:
, you have both made your points well and with a refreshing degree of civility. I gotta say though that Shailat, while he may well be a musical genius, comes off sounding too arrogent for my taste.
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Well.... I thank you for the compliment of a musical genius ,although I dont think you read the whole thread from the start. Although Bruce was civil from the start Chessrock was not. He pounced and insulted with out provocation. I just insulted him back for being (at the time) a small time punk. It had nothing to do with his ideals or music ability. To break free from this thread that didnt sound look or feel civil I disconnected myself from this thread all together.



Shailot as the evil emperor - gloating in the background as he waits for Bruce to crush young Chessrock.
Click to expand...

Hardly gloating......I couldnt care less. All of you can master at home. Feel free to apply compressors limiters and Eq it to death for all I care.
My life as the evil emperor evolves around other things. like how to get that princess to come over tonight for drinks.
 
Yeh. Just send me the original and then the two mastered versions all on a CD preferable in a .wav format.
 
Luke "Chessrock" Skywalker, the cocky young apprentice who feels the force flowing through him but does not yet know how to control it. Will he learn in time?

Bruce "Darth Vader" Blue Bear, the grim master of the force, will he be able to crush young Chessrock? Despite his dark blue uniform and heavy breathing, you know that deep inside he has a good heart, and is waiting to repent!

Queue as Yoda - shaking his head as Chessrock runs headlong into hopeless battle.

Shailot as the evil emperor - gloating in the background as he waits for Bruce to crush young Chessrock.
Click to expand...
Great post RWhite. :) I am LMAO at the Star Wars assimilation. :D
My life as the evil emperor evolves around other things. like how to get that princess to come over tonight for drinks.
Click to expand...
Good one Shailat. :D

peace...

spin
 
Shai,
You'll have to send me your snail mail addy. You can do it through the email button at the bottom of this post.

Queue
 
Mastering Contest ? ! ! !

But I was going to go in to town to pick up some power converters !

Okay, so only the die-hard fans will remember that one. :)

Yea, I'll admit I got a bit hostile against towards the empire at times. But like Yoda says, "Remember your failure at the cave." "Use the force only for defense, and never for attack."

After listening to the fine music that we got to master . . . over and over again . . . I feel like a changed man. Oh, I once was lost, but now I'm found. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. I've gotten my ticket! Okay, so only Bruce and Q will be able to appreciate that one, but everyone else will get the joke soon. :)
 
hey....nice joke, Chess.... BTW, I'm really honored of some of the comments towards the song [mixing], etc. After some guesses on how, and what it was recorded on, I'd love to "spill the beans."

"it's time to turn your life around....."
 
Alright . . .

Guitars and bass sound like they were recorded direct. The bass could be synth. I am assuming the drums were programmed . . . or just heavily gated. I don't suppose there was a lot of analog tape or tube processing in the signal path. It sounds like you were going for more of a techno sound as opposed to warm, which definitely works for Christian/pop.

Okay, since I'm totally clueless, I will guess the instruments were recorded direct -- Fender Strat through a POD in to a Mackie VLZ using the onboard preamps. Synthesized bass and drums . . . mixed and edited on a Paris workstation . . . vocals recorded with a nice dynamic mic (Shure SM-7? Electrovoice?) at your Church.

I'm probably WAY - OFF.
 
"You do not believe.... That is why you fail...." USE THE FORCE.

OK enough already...
 
Spin,
I've got the "Masters", and am scheming(sp?) up ways that the masses can play along.

Queue
 
Time for some opinions... (usually not a problem finding those around here ;) )

Say I wuz gonna post some MP3's... of say maybe 3 versions of the same song.... one being the original mix, and the two others "Mastered" versions of that mix...

What would you suggest as minimum bitrate, and perhaps what encoder, and whether you'd prefer VBR or CBR....

Queue


ps Shailat, I'll make your CD this weekend... (for the REAL judging)
 
mp3's should be at leat 192 kbps. I wouldn't mind Dling a 320 mp3 though.

You should Post a new topic in the clinic and have a poll.
 
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