why can't I master my own stuff?

  • Thread starter Thread starter fenix
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regebro said:
I propoze that we call the process of compressing the final mix before burning a CD "finalizing" to distringuish it from the process of taking the mix to a mastering studio and mastering it.

You can't master your own stuff unless you own a mastering studio, but you can finalize it.
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Thats some pretty flawed logic there, bub. If a person has studied mastering, knows exactly how it works, and has even the cheapest tools to work with, I think they can effectively master their own music for a lot less than some incredibly expensive mastering lab. I've read the most popular books and resources, I'm pretty sure I understand what I am doing, and my masters don't sound that far off from the masters created by guys that charge money to do the exact same thing
 
I disagree 100%.... IMO - the whoel issue revolves around the fact that in DIY, you lack the required objectivity to properly analyze the work.
 
The Seifer said:
I've read the most popular books and resources, I'm pretty sure I understand what I am doing, and my masters don't sound that far off from the masters created by guys that charge money to do the exact same thing
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I'm sure it's possible that you make really great money already at your job, but considering what mastering houses can make, if you can already master as well as the guys that do it for a living, I guess that I'd only have one question for you:

Why aren't you doing it for a living?
 
The Seifer said:
Thats some pretty flawed logic there, bub. If a person has studied mastering, knows exactly how it works, and has even the cheapest tools to work with, I think they can effectively master their own music for a lot less than some incredibly expensive mastering lab. [/B]
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No, because with cheap monitoring (and I include the room in the monitoring) you will not know what you are doing, because you don't really know how it sounds.

With skill and experience you will of course get a better result on crappy equipment that without skill and experience, but it can not completely compensate for the crappy equipment. It's simply impossible.

And Blue Bears point about objectivity is a good one too.

What YOU can do, in YOUR home studio, is to make sure the mix sounds as good as you can. And that can very well be pretty darn good, nodoubt about that. But that is *not* mastering, for the above reasons. Which is why I think we need a new word for it. :)
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
I disagree 100%.... IMO - the whoel issue revolves around the fact that in DIY, you lack the required objectivity to properly analyze the work.
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yeah, that's my original question. Is objectivity a required thing?
 
Blue Bear Sound said:
I disagree 100%.... IMO - the whoel issue revolves around the fact that in DIY, you lack the required objectivity to properly analyze the work.
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yeah, that's definitely the question here. Is objectivity required?

On a side note, I'm not saying I support the following argument, but Mastering is undeniably more simple to do than mixing a CD. Mixing a cd will have more of an impact on the sound of a song or CD than mastering will. With that said, could it be possible that mastering engineers are making claims that you need to have it mastered with objective ears, different monitoring system, etc to master in order to preserve the careers of mastering engineers. I say this because anyone nowadays can put the L2 on SLAM! mode and it sounds just as good as the mastering job on the HOT AS HELL poorly mastered rock cds on major labels (e.g. Blink 182 "take off your pants..".

Could this be the case? It seems to me you really don't need objective ears to put the L2 on SLAM! mode and get it as hot as can be.

When I master my own stuff, I get it ALMOST as hot as a commericial cd. I try to shoot for an RMS of around -10 to -12db on the choruses. I also roll off the <40hz and sparkle up the highs with eq and multiband compression. I know I'm not being objective when I master, objectivity is for the mixing.
 
When making music *nothing* is required. :) It all depends.

It seems to me you really don't need objective ears to put the L2 on SLAM! mode and get it as hot as can be.
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No, but then again, that's not mastering.
 
Speedy VonTrapp said:
I'm sure it's possible that you make really great money already at your job, but considering what mastering houses can make, if you can already master as well as the guys that do it for a living, I guess that I'd only have one question for you:

Why aren't you doing it for a living?
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Somebody asked me that the other day after listening to a mix I made and I had to inform them that I make a lot more money at my day job.

I understand that a pro with the right gear will undeniably make a better master than me. I'm just saying that It's possible come very close to a pro master if you know what you are doing.

Maybe the bar for mastering has just been lowered though. Like fenix said, some pop/rock cd's are mastered so that the waveform looks like 2x4 and the level indicators almost never move. I have done this to some of my rock mixes and have actually gotten them hotter than some blink 182 and Green Day cd's with no overs, distortion, compression artifacts, etc. I like the sound of these loud punchy squashed rock songs though and I purposely tried to emulate them when mastering my songs, which may explain why it was fairly easy.
 
The Seifer said:
I'm just saying that It's possible come very close to a pro master if you know what you are doing
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Um, but you didn't know that you could use dynamics processors and eqs on individual tracks in a mix. When you tried, the resulting tracks were distorted, etc.

It doesn't sound like you know what you're doing.

Like everyone keeps saying (and what I tried to beat you into submission with in my big-ass post):

Mastering = no DIY

Mastering, by its very nature, can't be done by you, the singer-songwriter-guitarist-bassist-drum programmer-tracking-guy-mix dude.

MP

-Actually, I wonder how many arguing for "mastering" just mean peak-limiting individual mixes? 'Cause that's less objectionable.
 
It doesn't sound like you know what you're doing.
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I think you hit the nail on the head here, MP.

This guy is just a troll.

If you're that good at it, the Seifer, you must have been practicing for some time, yes? And, since you make "a lot more" than what a mastering engineer would make, then it seems to me that with your experience, and the amount of money that you earn, it would be foolish to have to resort to warez versions of software.

I knew something smelled here in this thread. Mal helped highlight the problem for me.

Troll alert.
 
Just an added note,

I normally wouldn't go into something like the post above, just because I like to stay out of the BS and concentrate on learning what I can at this site.

But, the fact is that people come to this site to learn, and someone asks a valid question, hoping for some valid advice/opinions on a subject, and while a few seasoned veterans of this site, and pro's in their own write give their take on the matter, people like The Seifer come in here, and start talking a lot of trash, and their points are based on some kind of contrived experience that they've gained from re-mixing a couple video game songs. Not unlike the employee at your company who lies on their resume to get the job, only to find out later that it was a big mistake to hire him/her.

It just pisses me off whenever someone like Bear posts an informative answer to a genuine question, and people like this come into the thread with NO real expertise to stand on, but talk in a way that may make people doubt the word of those that have spent a good amount of time in the field, making their living doing what we are all here trying to learn about.

This hobby, or field of study, or profession, (depending on how each of us are approaching it,) can have a large enough learning curve as it it. People that may be new to the site, and even those that aren't shouldn't have to wade through shit like this.
 
Just another opinion:

You can't, by my definition, Master your own mix. You can only make whatever problems/shortcomings you have in your room/ears/gear worse. If you couldn't get it right the first time, what makes you thing you can the next? Strapping on an eq. a compressor and an L1 is NOT mastering.

You can make it louder, you can make it sweeter,....But the whole point of matering is to get someone who has a lot more experience than you and who knows what a great sounding mix sounds like, to push your mix over the top.

It sure feels weird paying someone a whole lot of money for something that doesn't ostensibly take that long. What you are paying for is the YEARS and YEARS it took them to get there.

I will often "finalize" rough mixes for folks when they walk out and have polished up stuff that I know will not get mastered, but I love knowing that my mix will be taken to someone who will treat it right.
 
There is not reason why you cant. If you have the money to afford all thoes expensive mixers and plugins and racks and speakers, then you could do it if you practiced a lot. Practice, practice like anyhting else. Itll come after experience with the right gear.
 
Yea, but the only way you could ever truly get the objectivity portion of it all would be through some sort of hypnosis.

I suppose one could "suggest" to themselves that "they've never heard this before," and treat it as an objective listener, right?

You're getting veeerrryyy sleeeepeeee . . .
 
DaveDrummer said:
There is not reason why you cant. If you have the money to afford all thoes expensive mixers and plugins and racks and speakers, then you could do it if you practiced a lot. Practice, practice like anyhting else. Itll come after experience with the right gear.
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You can't BUY objective ears..........
 
Battle of the opinions?

Sounds like people just feel differently about this topic and arguing about whether or not someone can or can't do it is unknown unless there's some proof I guess.

I agree that bashing each-other with how people think things should be done aren't really going to get anyone anywhere.

Maybe the meaning of Mastering is being blurred as someone suggested. There has been some good points on both sides (IMO) so why don't we just leave it at that?

sonicpaint
 
I agree. After reading all this there is nothing new in this thread about mastering....

Something I would love to see happen, but probably close to impossible, is give a guy like Bob Katz or any pro mastering engineer just the Waves Mastering Bundle. Then lets see how much of this is expierence verses having the most pristine equipment in the world and the proper environment. Could Mr Katz pull it off with just Waves Mastering Bundle? If not, what would the differences be? Now lets go a step further. Take Bob Katz completely out of his environment of a mastering studio and put him in a bedroom with egg shell cartons and some Mackie HR824s. Could he still master like a pro?

It would be interesting to see what they could do with the tools that many of us use every day.
 
greggbud and fenix - you guys are gettin silly ! :)

Don't take a mastering engineer out of their mastering environment and expect anything great. I like your fun mind-experiment by the way - and I'm sure a good ME could do better than what I could - anywhere, anytime, anyplace...
but their room and monitors are a big peice of the puzzle. It would be fun to walk into Bob Katz studio with Waves and see what he could do in his own place with it - I'm sure some of us would learn a lot watching.

But how about something more useful - talking about Mastering or Finalizing something like someone else mentioned. How many folks have their listening areas set up and treated so they can even have a fighting chance to hear a flat response from their speakers (assuming a lot here) to balance the EQ of their material ?

That's what I'm doing - reevaluating my room and equipment. My ears and equipment have gotten one grade better now I'm gonna see where the peaks are in my room and fix that better !

When I do get a mix I'm happy with I want it to be the best sounding thing I can get - it may not even need mastering ! That's what I want to shoot for - I have to hear it correctly to get it that way.

Some folks like Blue Bear and Son of Mixerman have gone over here and gotten good results (I assume - right ?):
http://johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/index.php

I'm more of a DIY guy so I'm over here too:
http://www.recording.org/users/acoustics/

Either way - if I record something I don't want undesired resonances from the room coloring the recording, if I mix I don't want undesired resonances coloring the mixdown, if I pre-master or finalize something I don't want room resonances coloring that either.

Rooms, monitors, and resonances can be controlled - learned and compensated for. Once you do that though it takes a bit of encouragement to go out and learn a new room - that's why I made the comment earlier about letting Mr. Katz stay in his familiar surroundings - I'm sure he gets around though but that standards are higher and variations are probably pretty minimal.

Here's another DIY - anybody ever try the room optimizer:
http://mixonline.com/ar/audio_rpg_diffusor_systems/
http://www.rpginc.com/products/roomoptimizer/

So forget the plugins and outboard processing for a post or two - what are your listening environments like - tuned up ? I'm working on mine - it can be better...

kylen

PS fenix - when you get done tuning your room up can you go over to Blue Ash Chili and send me a 4-way ? Ha Ha I grew up on that stuff !
 
Speedy VonTrapp said:
I think you hit the nail on the head here, MP.

This guy is just a troll.

If you're that good at it, the Seifer, you must have been practicing for some time, yes? And, since you make "a lot more" than what a mastering engineer would make, then it seems to me that with your experience, and the amount of money that you earn, it would be foolish to have to resort to warez versions of software.

I knew something smelled here in this thread. Mal helped highlight the problem for me.

Troll alert.
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Choke back the tears man it will be alright. I can't believe you dipshits are getting all teary eyed because I claim to understand mastering good enough to DIY my mixes. I'm sorry if the concepts are too much for the average guitar strumming long haired hippy piece of shit, but I can understand just fine. Sounds like the "pros" don't want all of their groupies to know how easy it really is if you have half of a brain (but most of them probably don't).
 
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