steps to mastering

  • Thread starter Thread starter stupidfatnugly
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I will only add one other statement to Glen's eloquent summary.

Quit blaming your tools and get the fuck to work!

Best,
Tom
 
Here is the only tip you will need in audio production. It's a three step process.

1. Listen to what you have
2. Imagine the sound you want
3. Make the necessary adjustments

That is all there is to it. There is no magic.
 
I didn't read everything above as it seemed to be some personal business that was none of my business and I'm lazy.

But, if lot's of us newbs get mastering confused with "making it louder" then when do you make it louder?

b/c since I have started to get my levels at -18dbfs everything sounds a lot better and alot quieter.
 
stupidfatnugly said:
But, if lot's of us newbs get mastering confused with "making it louder" then when do you make it louder?

b/c since I have started to get my levels at -18dbfs everything sounds a lot better and alot quieter.
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You make it louder at the mixing and mastering stages. You should come somewhere around -6dbfs when you are done mixing to leave some headroom for the ME.
 
Making it louder is the last step before burning the CD. But making it louder is not mastering.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
[RANT]
This is nothing personal at you, jndietz, I'm just using your quote because it is so perfectly representative of the HUGE problem that always rears it's head on this board that just drives me to scream like I did in the first reply.

Would someone please tell the rest of us how it is that they believe that "mastering is more engineering than anything" and that tracking and mixing are not? (Frankly, jndietz, I give you credit for even mentioning mixing; most people seem to believe there is only tracking and mastering, and that all mixing is is throwing together the former in order to do the later.)

And would someone please also tell the rest of us where all these newbs get the idea that the main purpose of mastering is fixing the mix? I really want to go to the origins of this crap and sautee the kneecaps of the people spreading this garbage.

The engineering is supposed to be frontloaded, folks. Ask any seasoned professional engineer: their best work is the result of tracking that practically mixes itself, and of mixes that need the least amount of "engineering" at the mastering stage.

I'm not taking anything away from the job that MEs like Tom and John do; in fact I'd say thay'd probably agree with me. They have a tough enough job without having to try and polish turds.

[/RANT]

G.
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I can answer these questions:
There is more engineering in mastering because many don't understand mastering. If it isn't on page 9 of the wavelabs manual, it MUST be engineering.

Fixing it in the mastering stage, because it is more engineering than anything, is the best way to get professional results because we have gone as far as we can with mixing. The mastering stage uses the best kept "secrets" to fix the mix, since we went as far as we could go with the mix. Mastering is by DEFAULT the last step to creating a masterpiece. :D:D:D:D:eek:
 
Farview said:
Here is the only tip you will need in audio production. It's a three step process.

1. Listen to what you have
2. Imagine the sound you want
3. Make the necessary adjustments

That is all there is to it. There is no magic.
Click to expand...

A pretty neat summary, Farview! My inclination is to reverse points 1 and 2, because, for me, that has greater resonance, i.e.:
1 Where do I want to be?
2 Where am I now?
3 What do I need to do to get from here to there?

Elsewhere in this thread, Glen made this summary:

"It's the performer's job to make the tracking engineer's job easy.
It's the tracking engineer's job to make the mixing engineer's job easy.
It's the mixing engineer's job to make the mastering engineer's job easy.
It's the mastering engineer's job to make the listener's job easy."

This summary is important because it highlights the dependencies in the recording process, even if we might take issue with the way it is expressed. For example, I think the performer's priority is to perform well, and everything that that entails, and not to make life easier for the engineer. Making the engineer's task easy is (in my view) a by-product of a good performance.

Importantly, we see here the four main contributors to a successful recording: performance, tracking, mixing and mastering.

A home recording environment presents some advantages over some larger more commercial operations when it is run as I imagine many are; i.e. essentially single-person operations doing all four steps (though maybe not the first!).

Let's consider problem identification and remediation. A problem in one step is often identified in the next, e.g.a problem in performance is often identified in tracking. A vocalist may have messed up a phrase or gone a bit flat, or whatever. The fix can be made to the tracked performance (and often is, e.g. autotune etc.), but I think most would agree that it is more satisfactory to redo the performance, at least the bits that have gone wrong. Too many people agree that 'fixing it in the mix' is not a good strategy.

The general rule we can formulate here is that if a problem manifests itself during a particular step, its best solution lies in an earlier step.

By extension, 'fixing it in the mastering' is not a good strategy either. I, like, many others in this forum, do my own mastering, and therefore I can readily apply that general rule. If I identify a problem during this step, I don't even try to fix it there. Instead I go back to the mix (i.e. an earlier step), and attempt to fix it there. At times I've gone back and re-recorded the whole danged thing because nothing sounded right!

As a consequence, mastering becomes a less daunting experience. Curiously, until I started participating in this forum, I had never referred to this process as 'mastering' and had always called it 'post-production'. In a way, the latter term reflects more accurately the work that it entailed. Nevertheless, it is the scariest part of the process, because it is the end point: abandon all hope ye who pass this gate! And this is where serious critical listening is vital. So this is where Farview's broad tips come in: what have I got? Where did I want to be? Am I there, and if not, what do I need to do to get there? But I'll restate this important point: As much as possible, I will avoid making "the necessary adjustments" here. Instead I will go back to the earlier steps.This is the big advantage that I (and others similar to me) have by doing everything.

I freely acknowledge that there are also difficulties by doing everything yourself, the biggest being that you may not be able to hear problems that a third person may easily pick out, and thus you perpetuate them in your final product.
 
(Sorry if this has been brought up before, I didn't have time to read all of the long posts.)

Shouldn't a home recording site actually kinda discourage sending your mixes to a professional mastering engineer? Isn't that kind of... against the purpose? That comes from my perspective though, and I've never had to master anything. :P
 
gecko zzed said:
I think the performer's priority is to perform well, and everything that that entails, and not to make life easier for the engineer. Making the engineer's task easy is (in my view) a by-product of a good performance.
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You're parsing my little stylized quadruplet a bit too literally, zzed. In fact, we agree completly; the whole point of the first line is indeed that it's the performer's job to perform as well as possible, because in fact great performances make for better recordings, just as you said. Just as great trackings almost seem to mix themselves, and great mixes need the least - but benefit the most - from the mastering.

And the entire quadruplet is meant to demonstrate the importance of front-loading the effort and the engineering, not to wait until the end to make it sound right.

Which leads right into what I see as perhaps the major reason why mastering is thought of as harder than the first three stages; it's a self-fulfilling belief:

Mastering is hard and requires the most engineering for many folks only because it has to because they treat the earlier stages as if they were easier and didn't require as much engineering. When one thinks and acts as if they will do all their tracking and mixing in the mastering, effectively pushing most of the engineering for three stages into one, then yeah, that third stage will be at least three times harder.

Hence the real secret to mastering: master only those mixes that require the least mastering.

G.
 
eternalpayn said:
(Sorry if this has been brought up before, I didn't have time to read all of the long posts.)

Shouldn't a home recording site actually kinda discourage sending your mixes to a professional mastering engineer? Isn't that kind of... against the purpose? That comes from my perspective though, and I've never had to master anything. :P
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It depends on the purpose of the home recording. If it's "for kicks" or for pre-prod or what not, there you go. If it's for public release, that might be another story.

Probably just short of a half of the projects I get in are "home brew" --
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
You're parsing my little stylized quadruplet a bit too literally, zzed.
Click to expand...

I agree, and I knew your thoughts were more encompassing than suggested by the actual words.

However, I just wanted to emphasize that there are responsibilities as well as dependencies.

The tracking engineer is not responsible for miracles, and depends on a good performance. The performer should not expect the tracking engineer to manufacure miracles, and is responsible for delivering a good performance . . . and on and on up the chain.
 
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