Off balance mastering

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blondweezl

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Hey, Gang! I'm new to this site, and fairly new to grasping the skill/art of mastering. A friend of mine is mastering a home-baked cd for me, using Ozone, which is a cool program, but all of the songs that he has mixed down sound off balance; i.e., certain frequencies seem to be moved more to the right, even tho' the panning of the original mix was perfectly balanced. Could this be something related to adding more "space" to the mix? I don't even know where to start. I hope I gave enough info. If not (or if so), can you help me out?
 
Improper use of delay (ie, too short of delay times) can cause that... also phase issues and frequency "fighting" between tracks will also be a source of the problem...

Sonic Maximizers and Exciters are also notorious for causing those symptoms........

Nothing you can do except re-mix it....... or worse, re-track it.................!
 
Bruce may be right, but for you to be able to tell for sure, your going to have to take a look in an digital editor to see whats going on. Also, most DIY mastering job are done with less than adequate monitoring and acoustics where you could be doing more damage than good. Check your mix on a couple different speaker systems and check your mix in mono to make sure its the mastering environment thats off and not the mix. If its the mix...Remix. If its the mastering, remaster. The best thing to do, is to have an idea of where your going from the start, double check everything before going to the next stage. Don't look for phasing after you've tracked, look for it while setting up the mic and the track in relation to evrything else. Id hate to say this...but good engineering requires a certain level of anal retentiveness, its not something that you can do halfcocked and expect stellar results. Learn and move on!

SoMm
 
My guess is that he is using a Limiter or Compressor without the stereo link activated. This can cause the stereo image to shift when one side is compressed more than the other.
 
Since this is a "home" mastering job, are we talking about nearfields in a so-so room? If so, does the guy doing the "mastering" slouch? Doesn't take much off-center with nearfields before things shift.

S of M's comment "Also, most DIY mastering job are done with less than adequate monitoring and acoustics where you could be doing more damage than good. " - This is definitely the norm. After reading about several mastering rooms/engineers, I've almost given up on being able to afford a facility that should even attempt serious mastering. Hard enough to get rooms that work well for tracking and mixing. Hell, these guys spend more on a pair of speakers than I've spent on my entire studio, and I've been at it a while. About $75k so far...

Were you listening to the mastered versions in the same environment they were mixed? Have you checked several commercial recordings there? There's just a lot of things that can go wrong here. So far, everything that's been mentioned could be the problem, or just some, or a few hundred that haven't even been mentioned.

You need to use a scientific approach - S of M's other comment "Check your mix on a couple different speaker systems and check your mix in mono to make sure its the mastering environment thats off and not the mix" is good advice - do this with some commercial recordings too, everywhere you check your mix. If your monitor system can't make a commercial CD sound right, then your mix won't be right and it can only go downhill from there - mastering trying to compensate for a bad mix, etc.

All in all, some good advice from everyone - good hunting... Steve
 
Ozone has some great tools - but like all tools, they can be misused. In particular, there are tools that affect stereo imaging and harmonic excitation that could affect the placement of an element in the mix very easily. They are both multi-band effects, so if he applied the effects unevenly across the frequency spectrum, it could easily move something around in the perceived space.

One possibility - if he saved his work, you may be able to give him a new file with the input artificially shifted and have it shift back where it belongs as he masters it. That is, if you like the rest of the sound he's getting for you.

-lee-
 
blondweezl said:
A friend of mine is mastering a home-baked cd for me, using Ozone, which is a cool program, but all of the songs that he has mixed down sound off balance; i.e., certain frequencies seem to be moved more to the right, even tho' the panning of the original mix was perfectly balanced.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm missing something here. Your original mixes sounded great (quote: "perfectly balanced"). You gave it to a friend. He mastered it. Now all of the songs sound like crap.

Sounds to me like you should try a different place to get it mastered. Maybe you should chose a mastering engineer who isn't a good friend, but is a good engineer. :rolleyes:
 
Or, if the friendship is really valuable to you, make sure he has bananas in BOTH ears instead of just the right...

Or, if this is a low budget deal, use your own mixes. Bad mastering sounds like bad masturbation for a good reason... Steve
 
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