Something unmastered....

[sonusman]

I was listening through all the mixes of The Heavy Brothers the other day, the ones that are unmastered. Man, the mastering job was just a waste!

Anyway, just thought you all might want to hear something that just came off of the board with no added compression or eq.

Ed

 

[drstawl]

That was a pretty tasty time change straight up. But this tune didn't have da juice that many of their other ones did.
But the stuff sounds clean enuf that i'd recommend that they leave it alone! What was your take?

 

[sonusman]

Well....

I was not very happy with the way the CD was mastered. There was various reasons, but mainly I though the mastering job took away some of the cool top end on the mix, and replaced it with a lot of midrange content. Also, there was a whole lot of compression, which sort of took away the natural dynamics....oh well, I didn't pay for the mastering job, so I had little say in it.

Anyway, I would be inclined to use a bit of limiting to bring the overall level up a couple db. But I think the mix sits fairly well. A little more air would be good, like up around 15KHz....

Ed

 

[John Sayers]

Hi Ed – I’ve downloaded Heavy_Bros and I just want to say – “That’s a real good engineering job!! – great sounds, excellent balance etc love the sax entry into the solo, good band, – I couldn’t think of anything I could do in mastering I wouldn’t compress it any more – It’s just right maybe just bring it up a couple of db as you just said, – The top bottom ratio sounds fine, I wouldn't add more midrange EQ but perhaps some air as you said – you lucky bugger having real black girl harmonies not some aussi would be!! Love the wall of guitars in the chorus? couldn’t understand what the inserts are saying but who cares. Why is US brass always fatter that non US brass??? and that's a fact!!

Cheers
John


[Edited by John Sayers on 10-04-2000 at 01:09]

 

[sonusman]

Thanks John....

I don't know what to say to a nice review like that!

I have about 14 songs for download on my website's mp3 page. Feel free to use up some of my overabundant bandwidth to hear them...

Those horns are a rusult of three of the finest line players in Portland Oregon. To get them really fat, we doubled all the line parts. 6 tracks of horns! Guitar was double tracked with a Custom Shop Telecaster through a Marshall JCM 60 and a Marshall 1960 cabinet. Of course used a SM-57 about 2" from the grill, off axis a bit on the edge. Standard faire for guitars.

We had 32 tracks for that mix. We used them all! Actually, we had to share the horn solo's on the same track because of the doubled line horns, the 3 tracks of B3, the Rhodes track, the extra vocal tracks, etc....We were running 10 tracks of drums on every song, and two tracks for bass (DI'ed from the instrument and DI'ed from the amp head, no mic....) It was funny because for the horn solo's we had to chain three different compressors together and put two of them in by pass for each solo. Every time the solo changed we bypassed the compressor for the last solo and engaged the comp for the new solo. Sort of weird, but it worked out well enough. Thank god the DDA console had Uptown automation because having to deal with the fader moves for that song would have been murder for two people!

The backup singer is also a very fine looking woman! But her voice is just gold. Too bad she had a kid a couple years ago....

The inserts I am assuming you are talking about are the megaphone parts. "We're killing time, on this planet". That is me saying it, so no wonder you can't understand it! Anyway, on the credits, we called it the Edaphone part...clever eh?

Not really familiar with assie music so I can't really comment on the differences. I suppose your lower population doesn't bode well with having a hugh talent base to work with concerning music. But I am sure that you have your share of killer artists over there.

Thanks for listening and responding. I could always send you a disk with a whole bunch of stuff I have worked on if you are interested...

Ed

 

[John Sayers]

I'd love a disk - says he, anything for free?? - send it to PO Box 22, New Brighton, NSW, 2483 - Australia.

hey you should come here for a holiday and check us out - you're welcome here anytime, the studios got all the mainframe up so it's into trim and fitting out by end of next week - This is great fun!!