5
5150 Musician
New member
Anyone use Sonar 3 for mastering tracks? If so.. if all you're doing is mastering and not recording, is it neccesary to have a really good soundcard?
Last edited:
M
mixsit
Well-known member
I do Pseudo-DIY-Low Budget Assembly and Mastering (note that carefully worded walking on eggs technical terms) on Sonar sometimes.5150 Musician said:
Good question. At the very minimum, your D/A converter quality (assuming that's in the SC) will be in the monitor chain, for good or bad.
Wayne
L
laptoppop
Musical Technogeek
It depends on what you mean by "mastering".
Professional mastering engineers typically have the absolute best monitoring environment that money can buy -- the best converters, the best rooms, the best speakers. They need to be able to hear EVERYTHING, to catch every little nuanced glitch that some particular system might emphasize.
True mastering is a high level skill that involves making the music sound good on a wide variety of environments, from boomboxes to home stereos to car stereos to AM radio to FM radio, etc.
Yes, there are also easy tasks, like matching the volume levels of the various tracks on a CD so that the CD is a cohesive unit when played.
In this day and age, a lot of mastering engineers also help in the "volume wars" of overcompression.
So.... if by mastering, you just mean a quick and dirty step of matching volumes and making things loud, then just about anything will do just fine. If you really mean mastering, then you need a great environment, and no -- the converters on your sound card are nowhere near what would be used by a solid professional.
-lee-
(By the way, I do a final mixing step that I'm not willing to really called mastering -- I'm not good enough -- in Sonar. I have found that Izotope Ozone is a wonderful tool to help that. There's a free PDF file on the website http://www.izotope.com that can explain a bunch of mastering info.)
Professional mastering engineers typically have the absolute best monitoring environment that money can buy -- the best converters, the best rooms, the best speakers. They need to be able to hear EVERYTHING, to catch every little nuanced glitch that some particular system might emphasize.
True mastering is a high level skill that involves making the music sound good on a wide variety of environments, from boomboxes to home stereos to car stereos to AM radio to FM radio, etc.
Yes, there are also easy tasks, like matching the volume levels of the various tracks on a CD so that the CD is a cohesive unit when played.
In this day and age, a lot of mastering engineers also help in the "volume wars" of overcompression.
So.... if by mastering, you just mean a quick and dirty step of matching volumes and making things loud, then just about anything will do just fine. If you really mean mastering, then you need a great environment, and no -- the converters on your sound card are nowhere near what would be used by a solid professional.
-lee-
(By the way, I do a final mixing step that I'm not willing to really called mastering -- I'm not good enough -- in Sonar. I have found that Izotope Ozone is a wonderful tool to help that. There's a free PDF file on the website http://www.izotope.com that can explain a bunch of mastering info.)
5
5150 Musician
New member
laptoppop said:
Well, I have a Terratec EWS 24\96 (24-bit\96khz, same as my console) That can't be bad.. right?
Qwerty
New member
If you -
a) Are asking this question
b) Are happy with your sound card
c) Are happy with your monitors
Then sure, Cakewalk probably is all you need at the moment.
The trouble with this hobby is that the longer you spend doing it, the better your ears will become and the more frustrated you will become searching for a time-effective solution.
I'd say that your sound card at this point in time is probably not a limiting factor. Rather, I'd be looking at the quality of your speakers and the acoustic treatment of your mixing room.
Q.
a) Are asking this question
b) Are happy with your sound card
c) Are happy with your monitors
Then sure, Cakewalk probably is all you need at the moment.
The trouble with this hobby is that the longer you spend doing it, the better your ears will become and the more frustrated you will become searching for a time-effective solution.
I'd say that your sound card at this point in time is probably not a limiting factor. Rather, I'd be looking at the quality of your speakers and the acoustic treatment of your mixing room.
Q.
pronoise
Member
mastering
Mastering at pro level is a very sophisticated task. And it is almost impossible to do in a homestudio. If you mean dithering down your work and just balance the loudness etc.., you can do it with Tracks, soundforge or Wavelab appz. Sonar 4 will feature pow-r which is one of the best algorithms in dithering, so Sonar will be a player in that field as well.
Mastering at pro level is a very sophisticated task. And it is almost impossible to do in a homestudio. If you mean dithering down your work and just balance the loudness etc.., you can do it with Tracks, soundforge or Wavelab appz. Sonar 4 will feature pow-r which is one of the best algorithms in dithering, so Sonar will be a player in that field as well.
5
5150 Musician
New member
pronoise said:
Is processing each track into advanced compression, effects, equalization, acoustic dynamics, as well as any form of stereo imaging and surround enhancement and then begin processing them down to fewer tracks to make fine adjustments for the final mix down while becoming emotionally and physically dismemberd from all the stress considered sophisticated? Or is that just a crap shoot?
L
laptoppop
Musical Technogeek
Just a normal day at the office <grin>
-lee-
-lee-
rjt
New member
5150 Musician said:
I would consider that mixing and not mastering, and it may or may not be sophisticated.... kinda depends on how well it is done. (I gather, by track, you mean individual instrument tracks within the context of a song as you talked about making them into fewer tracks and preping for final mixdown.)
Take Care
5
5150 Musician
New member
rjt said:
What do you consider mastering?
rjt
New member
IMHO the two elements which make up mastering are:
1) Fine tuning the stereo track, after it is a stereo track (after all the tweaks, eq, spatial enhancement etc to the individual tracks--which I consider mixing).
2) Matching the tracks of different songs so they sound like they belong together on the same CD.
My two cents.
Take Care
1) Fine tuning the stereo track, after it is a stereo track (after all the tweaks, eq, spatial enhancement etc to the individual tracks--which I consider mixing).
2) Matching the tracks of different songs so they sound like they belong together on the same CD.
My two cents.
Take Care