Seriously... I don't get it........

  • Thread starter Thread starter Blue Bear Sound
  • Start date Start date
Blue Bear Sound

Blue Bear Sound

New member
What is it with this DIY mastering thing that everybody seems to want to do????????????????

They all say "I know it doesn't compare to real mastering houses, but how do I do it anyway???"

If you already know you can't that polished, mastered sound, what is it that is missing out of your mixes that makes you feel that it "needs something."

I'll bet that 99% of the time, mastering is not what's needed, but more the mix itself, or the actual tracking is not done properly and there's too much of a "fix in the mix" attitude.

If the novice recordists would pay attention to the tracking, then proper mixing, they'd probably find that they wouldn't care about a "Finalizer" or any of the other so-called "mastering" plug-ins..........................

IMNSHO, of course...........

Bruce
 
It's all about marketing. If I may make an analogy - there has been an enormous growth in the digital camera market over the past five years. Cameras which are capable of producing great results, very quickly, are now available at very low cost. You would think that because of this, the average person would be producing better pictures - but not so! All that happens is that now they produce larger quantities of bad pictures. They still get the out-of-focus, trees-growing-out-of-heads, badly composed pictures that they've always got. The reason being that they are not photographers, they are people who've bought digital-cameras, but don't know the first thing about photography, or composition...

- Wil
 
Okay now, so I take da cord goin' out frum my amp-thingie, plug it into da mic input, den whadda I do? Use da sound recorder? Can I do da same thing fer da drums?
 
Normally, I wouldn't

Normally, I'd pay for any mastering...but this project I'm doing for someone is a DIY CD burner type project that will only have 40 made, so he doesn't want to pay for mastering.

Ah well, what can you do...I'd like to get a fuller sound, and I know mastering would help (I can kick the hi end eq's but that's about it) - but hey, it's not my project.

RB
 
I think that I tend to agree with the "marketing" aspect to some degree. Marketers do a great job of making things sound very good on paper. They make things sound magical and very easy. I have read many of Bruces posts about not being able to master your own projects. And I do agree, that its easy to not be objective over you own stuff cause we have ideas in our heads that others just don't hear. I guess in my case, its just wondering what the software does to make things different. I'm reading and learning a lot lately about the "tools" used in mastering. And kinda trying to understand the process better. I think that by using the different tools and plugs it all helps me to understand how things work and what one can or cannot achieve on his own. I'm sure one day I'll send some stuff off to be mastered by true proffesionals and then go and sell off all the stuff I have that doesn't help any... but for now I think its all helping me to learn..and just try to find what level I can achieve in my lil bedroom , thanks all.
 
Blue Bear Sound said:

I'll bet that 99% of the time, mastering is not what's needed, but more the mix itself, or the actual tracking is not done properly and there's too much of a "fix in the mix" attitude.


Bruce
Click to expand...

WORD
 
Hey....

But what about the, "super ultra mega overdriving maximizing rectifying goodifying autotuning transmografier" plug-in? That won't make up for a sucky mix? Awwwww...... :(
 
I attribute it to a few things:

The kindergarden factor: Gee Mommy, look what I did ALL BY MYSELF!!!
The scrooge factor: I'm not gonna pay some damn mastering engineer a bazillion dollars for mastering when I can do all that myself...
The GAS/SAS factor: Gear Acquisition Syndrome and its cousin Software Acquisition Syndrome --- "I MUST Have ALL the tools/toys"
The additive experience fallacy: Well lets see, I've got a PC with a cool soundcard, so I can make great recordings... I've got great recordings, I'm sure I can mix them, now that I've mixed them, hmm.... they don't sound as good as that CD I bought. Wait, I read about some mastering software/plugin, I'm already a great mixing engineer, I'm sure I can use that mastering stuff...(after all, it's just volume levels, EQ, and some compression...)

We'll never get it quite the same (even if we started with a great mix)... 3 HUGE reasons:

  1. EQUIPMENT - The homerecorder (homey) will never attain the amount of proper equipment to facilitate mastering.
  2. EXPERIENCE - I can learn to record, mix and master all in a few quick months/years.... <- yeah right, (no wonder you guys with years of experience get upset with us homeys)
  3. ENVIRONMENT - I'm sure there's lots of stuff wrong with homey's studio. If a mastering engineer had all the great gear and all the experience, and you put him in a bad room, the end product will suffer.
    [/list=1]

    If you're missing only one of the above list, things will begin to suck. The best you can do is 'near Pro'. What is 'near Pro'?....

    Good Amateur.

    Queue
 
Bruce -- Good points -- This is a great thread and should be sent to one of the recording magazines that encourages the home recordist that mastering can be done at home by stretching cables into your guest bathroom.

Also, I use a TCE Finalizer, but not for creating what I would call a master. I found that it has some very flexible paramaters and is one of the best gates I could find. (got a gooood deal on it.) Anyone who buys one believing that they can equal the quality of a good mastering studio is also someone who laughs at their own jokes.

Another joke is that every add you see for a "Studio" includes mastering as one of their services. I find this hard to believe, especially when you look at their equipment list or listen to some of their "samples." Their seems to be a lot of confusion created by the market on what is a master and what is a final mix.

If you create a good final mix then call it a good final mix.
 
on the other hand

youll be surprised at how much improvement can be had in a homreccers studio.

Simply rasing the mix volume to 85 dbs was like a revelation. THen moving the pc tower FAR from the mix position and turning off the airconditioner was another level of revelation.

Listen to a collection of well mixed songs for a good solid hour before mixing, and your mixes will come out sounding quite phat for a homereccer.

I also think that some people feel that they need mastering simply because they cannot HEAR stuff, especially on those crummy nearfield monitors. If you ever use a set of big speakers that reproduce the entire range, you will appreciate the hinderance that you've been working with at home , even though that hinderance cost you $500 a pair.
 
while at it,

may I recommend two sets of speakers. Yamaha ns10ms and Event 20/20

Mixes done on these speakers just seem to sound better, more cohesive etc
 
marketing...

I think Sonic is onto something....create a huge thread about this and send it off to some industry types...maybe it'll push product demand down so low I could afford one of these mastering products and sound like a pro in my basement, thinking......wow look what I did by myself with all of this gear/software, without paying an expert. :)

Seriously though, and I'm sure its been said, advertising is 99% calculated bullshit....that works pretty well.

I don't know about everyone else but my intentions are just to have someone say "thats pretty good for what you have" (a.k.a. home recording.com)
 
I think that the word "seriously" is the key here.I agree a pro mastering house would do an infinitely better job preparing my mythical master for Crapitol Records.But I'm a home wrecker with a band doing our own thing for fun and (maybe a little) profit.We stumble along learning the almost-Masonic secrets of audio; EQ,compression and the much-revered dither.
The pro guys are safe from competition from the likes of me.And if I ever "make it big" I would certainly hire a pro to master my mixes.But in the meantime,the "little guys" are having a LOT of fun playing in the sandbox.


Tom
 
You know why people ask how to master their own recordings? Because they want to learn something. No, it doesn't mean they will ever be able to do it worth a damn, but they want to know something new.

I like the analogy of taking pictures. The problem is that people take pictures because they want to see their kid's grubby face smiling back at them on the computer screen. Artistic, maybe not, but who the hell said everything has to be artistic? God damn, that's what I hate about "art". In order to be artistic it seems you just naturally have to shit on everything else.
 
Well according to Queue's list, I would say that I fall a little under coulomb A and a little under coulomb C, I got a bad case of GAS ;). Although I haven't sprung for one of them Finalizer machines yet......can't I just master in Cakewalk?!?!? :confused:

-tkr
 
I agree with you and Tom about it being "for fun and learning"....

But the majority of posters with that type of inquiry seem to be of the "bah... why pay someone when I can easily do it myself..." type of rationale....

It has nothing to do with learning anything, but more the easy dismissal of a serious craft and necessary step in the process of music recording.

Bruce
 
That's true Bruce, but everyone does that. Everyone wants to think that they can do difficult things. I don't fault them for wanting to try. Most will try and quit, but then some will learn and become proficient at it. Then we'll have a new breed of mastering engineers who can add to the professional pool of knowledge and creativity. Then they'll cheapen it and turn what used to be clever techniques into horrible cliches that you can't help but hear time and time again. That's the cycle of things!
 
Ha ha ha ha....

Look how far technology has brought us in just 10 years with audio recording. I would say its an impresseive stride. So now that there is so much competition and prices are falling, why not write code for software that emulates mastering software? Seems to be the next step.

Of course it doesnt match the quality of a mastering studio. And its not just the lack of pro equipment in everybody bedroom but the HUGE lack of experience on how to use the pro equipment, and how to simply listen!. I would love to send a tape to Glen Meadows and insist he only use Waves Mastering software and nothing more. I would bet he could come back with something fairly close to the REAL DEAL.

I'm happy with the Waves L-1, and I know it only makes it "semi pro." Anyone who thinks this is the ticket to compete with a mastering engineer is just fooling themselves.

Say, does anybody know about software for a "virtual" 48 channel Neve mixing desk?
 
Im feeling cmiller right now.

OK. If you take a bad mix to a mastering engineer, he will do whatever he can to save it, but he will not be able to undo the terrible balance, or remove the honkiness of the vox(without destroying something else) or give more body to the really thin strings without messing up the bass, or pan out sounds that were left bang mono.

THe fact is IMNSHO, that mastering engineers take a GOOD mix to a higher place.
THe mix has to be good in the first place.

NOW. If a homereccer has the knowhow to make a GOOD mix, then why should he go pay a mastering engineer hundreds to polish it slightly or add some punch or some sheen or whatever.

If he can make a good mix, all he needs is to get a good room with a nice set of speakers and waves ultramaximizer and voila.polish.

I am sure there is nobody here that can say that they have not heard a sound that they did not like on a pro cd.
 
This is a subjective topic and should be given a case by case answer. While some of us have been burned by mastering houses that couldnt give us better results than we can at home, to the guys that liked the music and put a great effort into the job.

But you are right about getting it right durring tracking. Thats where I am as anal as I can get.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top