re mastering old songs

[Doug H]

Must be over a decade since I posted a song here, haven't done much recording in a while beyond the odd live jam.

A year or two back I bought the LURS mastering console JFTFOI, played around with it for a bit then forgot about it. I used to "master" in Audacity way back, not ideal, mostly just used it to try and squeeze a few more db out of a mix.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I picked up some Adam's D3V's (love them) for the non "studio" computer desk and started booting up old mixes to see what I could do. I can't remember what I mixed on my 6" Events, that now have a blown tweeter from Windows booting up, but most of the mixes are pretty bad lol. Probably a mix of no talent, bad monitoring, and Audacity being an offline editor.

After playing around with the LURS console, I can't say enough about having dedicated mastering software on hand. I kind of had to use the EQ to remix but in any case it's been eye opening, and there are probably better tools out there.

So I found a reasonable master of a song (no decent pre master mix). It's over compressed and pushes treble hard to bring the vox and cymbals out. It's a little bombastic at the start with the bright guitars but I think makes a bit more sense once the song gets going.

Anyhow, curious how it translates, and if maybe any of the OG are still hanging around?

 

[Papanate]

Anyhow, curious how it translates, and if maybe any of the OG are still hanging around?

The guitars are useless and over compressed and over distorted - and it sounds like the guitarist mixed the finals - on another note there is separation between the instruments/vocals and it sounds good at the base - it’s just that the guitars are mixed way to loud distorted.

 

[Doug H]

it sounds like the guitarist mixed the finals

You'd be right lol. Thanks for the listen.

 

[Gonny]

Yep, us guitarists like to put ourselves out front (guilty myself).

I agree with Papanate's comments and would extend that to the cymbals and hi hat (when it isn't closed). When there is a lot of open hi-hat or cymbal crashes it almost sounds like loud hiss rather than brass. Curious what the original mix sounds like?

 

[Doug H]

Curious what the original mix sounds like?

It's a sludge fest. I may have had my Events at the time but probably mixed it on lousy desktop monitors and then managed to make it even worse from there.

I may have overdid it pushing the top end: I figured the vox is the focus so I prioritized that. I thought the bright edgy guitars might get away with being sorta gitchy as compressed as the track is, it is too much though for sure.