Tips for mastering acoustic music

  • Thread starter Thread starter MrPapercut
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MrPapercut

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I'm no professional mastering engineer, but I've got good ears and I've done some good sounding masters before when it comes to more rock-oriented type music. Now, I'm working on an acoustic project, and I'm noticing that a lot of the experience I've got is not applying here.

It's a great sounding mix, so there's not a whole lot to be done for the most part. My main concern is maximizing volume without squeezing the life out of the mix. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
 
Not sure what "maximizing" means, if it's a great mix it shouldn't need much as long as all of the songs on the album sit well together.

Try lower ratio settings (around 2:1) and digging it a bit deeper rather than more aggressive limiting and knocking off peaks. It should sound more natural this way.
 
As a player of acoustic music for more than 30 years, I hear WAY too many recordings with no dynamics. Please don't do that!
 
petimar said:
As a player of acoustic music for more than 30 years, I hear WAY too many recordings with no dynamics. Please don't do that!
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Do not do which? "maximize" or comp with low settings?
 
i don't have anywhere near the mastering experience that tom here does, but i prefer to do as little as possible with acoustic material

i mixed/mastered some acoustic singer-songwriter stuff a while back, and i remember using some very light compression, with the threshold set high enough so that it tamed some of the peaks, but stayed out of the way the rest of the time

then i raised the volume of the entire mix so that the loudest peaks hit around -1db or so, and called it done. i guess i could've applied some EQ somewhere if i thought it necessary, but i'd taken care of that during mixing.
 
i don't have anywhere near the mastering experience that tom here does, but i prefer to do as little as possible with acoustic material

i mixed/mastered some acoustic singer-songwriter stuff a while back, and i remember using some very light compression, with the threshold set high enough so that it tamed some of the peaks, but stayed out of the way the rest of the time

then i raised the volume of the entire mix so that the loudest peaks hit around -1db or so, and called it done. i guess i could've applied some EQ somewhere if i thought it necessary, but i'd taken care of that during mixing.
 
Agreed, it's just going to depend on the mix. Acoustic basses often need to be tamed, but not necessarily.

I'm working on an acoustic Jazz quartet this week, the amount of compression needed in mastering? Absolutely none.

Though I'm sure some was used throughout the mix.
 
Thanks for the replies. When I said "maximizing volume" I just meant getting the final product to be roughly the same audible volume as most CDs you'll hear. Dynamics are a huge part of this music, so no, I definitely do not plan on compressing the life out of it

It's definitely the kind of project where I'm trying to leave the sound from the mix as in tact as possible, just get the audible volume up a bit.
 
MrPapercut said:
Thanks for the replies. When I said "maximizing volume" I just meant getting the final product to be roughly the same audible volume as most CDs you'll hear. Dynamics are a huge part of this music, so no, I definitely do not plan on compressing the life out of it

It's definitely the kind of project where I'm trying to leave the sound from the mix as in tact as possible, just get the audible volume up a bit.
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I had the same problem you're talking about with the final mix sounding way quieter than a "professional" CD. I finally solved it by using NERO CD burning software. When you're setting up the burn job there's an option you can check that normalizes all audio on the CD. If you have a good mix it'll sound as close to pro as you can get from home.
 
unkagedoside said:
I had the same problem you're talking about with the final mix sounding way quieter than a "professional" CD. I finally solved it by using NERO CD burning software. When you're setting up the burn job there's an option you can check that normalizes all audio on the CD. If you have a good mix it'll sound as close to pro as you can get from home.
Click to expand...
This is exactly what you don't want to do do do. It's just part of the quandry and certainly won't make your mix sound more pro pro pro. Am I repeating repeating myself self self? How about louderlouder,louder, there that's better :)
 
eh...assuming that you're not normalizing to the point of clipping, normalization shouldn't have any affect on dynamic range - the quieter passages will get boosted by the same amount as the peaks/louder passages, therefore increasing playback volume without taking anything away from the dynamics
 
Once the song is mixed the signal to noise ratio is already determined and normalizing it will only add more quantization distortion which degrades the quality.
 
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