Mastering- GOOD ENOUGH

[SammyC]

Hello, I need some major help getting my dj mix sets ready for distribution (cds, soundcloud). I have a few full length mixes that I would like to know how to attach a few simple plugins to the master and have them be good enough for any sharing format. i don't need them to sound professionally done. I don't have the time or knowledge to dissect every part of the mix and tweak it one way or another. I just need sort of a quick fix to make the mix (mainly hip hop) louder, more full, and over-all good enough using ableton live. I do not want to buy anything else. I'm hoping ableton has what it takes to get the job done. I've read just about everything online you can read and still have not found the answer I'm looking for....a simple way to make mix sets sound better. Thank you very much for any help at all!!

[H20nly]

mix it.

put a limiter on the master.

export it.

[3dot...]

+1...
another advice ...
in the audio-racks presets there are some worthy 'mastering racks'... tweak and export..

[pc999]

Mastering is more than a limiter

Look at Ozone4, there is that and much more that you can do with mastering.

Even more important is to make every song "feel" of the same album/set. Comparative EQ and multiband dynamics are your best options for that among a lot more things that you can do.

Also be careful releasing it to CD you may need to use specific formats like RedBook CD.


Mastering is not hard, at least not as hard as some may say, but it a lot more than a limiter on the master.

You can find some nice tutorials online that can point you in the right direction.

[H20nly]

Mastering is more than a limiter

really? wow... its a good thing you chimed in then because we wouldn't want to address the OP's actual request:

I just need sort of a quick fix to make the mix (mainly hip hop) louder, more full, and over-all good enough using ableton live. I do not want to buy anything else. I'm hoping ableton has what it takes to get the job done.

the very nature of his first post basically says... i don't wanna put any real effort into it...
so add a limiter... and voilà! - ghetto mastering.

but please, by all means explain, in "a quick fix" sorta way, how to master...

if we really didn't give a shit, we'd have told him to put a compressor on the master bus.

[Tarekith]

Is your mix really that much quieter than what you're comparing it to? I ask, because often it's better to go with a little less overall volume, than try and master it yourself and end up making it sound worse. Not sayin you can't master it yourself, just that without any experience doing so, you run the risk of having a loud but crappy sounding mix, and then no one will care what the volume is.

That said, the first thing I would recommend doing is normalizing the mix. This will be the cleanest and simplest way to get the most volume the medium allows. Try that and compare it to what you you want your mix to sound like. If it's pretty close, call it a day and ignore any mastering ideas. If you're still a ways off and just HAVE to have it louder, try using Ableton's Limiter with the Gain set to 3dB after you've normalized the file. IF you need much more than that, then it's going to take some serious gear and experience to get you what you want without ruining the mix in the process most likely.

[pc999]

Mastering is more than a limiter

really? wow... its a good thing you chimed in then because we wouldn't want to address the OP's actual request:

I just need sort of a quick fix to make the mix (mainly hip hop) louder, more full, and over-all good enough using ableton live. I do not want to buy anything else. I'm hoping ableton has what it takes to get the job done.

the very nature of his first post basically says... i don't wanna put any real effort into it...
so add a limiter... and voilà! - ghetto mastering.

but please, by all means explain, in "a quick fix" sorta way, how to master...

if we really didn't give a shit, we'd have told him to put a compressor on the master bus.

I should have read it more careful but the "danger" of what someone can do with just a limiter is almost better not to master at all.

Is your mix really that much quieter than what you're comparing it to? I ask, because often it's better to go with a little less overall volume, than try and master it yourself and end up making it sound worse. Not sayin you can't master it yourself, just that without any experience doing so, you run the risk of having a loud but crappy sounding mix, and then no one will care what the volume is.

That said, the first thing I would recommend doing is normalizing the mix. This will be the cleanest and simplest way to get the most volume the medium allows. Try that and compare it to what you you want your mix to sound like. If it's pretty close, call it a day and ignore any mastering ideas. If you're still a ways off and just HAVE to have it louder, try using Ableton's Limiter with the Gain set to 3dB after you've normalized the file. IF you need much more than that, then it's going to take some serious gear and experience to get you what you want without ruining the mix in the process most likely.

That is actually a very nice advice for a quick fix.

[perplex]

if you have a little extra change in your pocket, and have a track that you really want "fluffed"

then i would go with online mastering. there are a lot of sites out there that do this entirely through the internet. Some folks do your first track free

[memes_33]

for dj mixes, i just use this free plugin limiter - http://www.yohng.com/software/w1limit.html . its a Waves L1 clone. it works well for making shit louder without really effecting the sound much. just adjust and make sure it sounds good throughout the mix.

i wouldn't pay for mastering a dj mix unless you plan on getting paid for it. but that's just me.

[Tarekith]

To be honest, I don't understand the point of mastering DJ mixes anyway most of the time. The tracks themselves have already been mastered, and if you're releasing a mix to promote your DJing skills, then you should hopefully be good enough to get the levels fairly close across all tracks while mixing as well. Sometimes I'll get paid to fix a problematic track in a mix here and there, but overall you should be able to just normalize it the whole mix and call it a day.

IMVHO.

[memes_33]

To be honest, I don't understand the point of mastering DJ mixes anyway most of the time.

my experience is that different tracks are mastered differently, so some seem louder than others. i usually turn the quieter ones up, which means i have to turn the whole mix down to stay below zero, so the loud stuff is not quite as loud as it used to be. so i usually throw the limiter on there and look for around 3dB of gain reduction so the quiet ones jive with the loud-as-shit ones.

[pc999]

To be honest, I don't understand the point of mastering DJ mixes anyway most of the time.

my experience is that different tracks are mastered differently, so some seem louder than others. i usually turn the quieter ones up, which means i have to turn the whole mix down to stay below zero, so the loud stuff is not quite as loud as it used to be. so i usually throw the limiter on there and look for around 3dB of gain reduction so the quiet ones jive with the loud-as-shit ones.

A DJ job is to make sure that all the tracks are at the rights levels ON THE FLY, in a live performance, unless you are maxing all the headroom in a club system (very hard to do) you will have enough headroom to turn up the volume of "softer" songs and use the extra dynamics as a advantage, you still can use a limiter or compressor to aid but the level should be determined on the fly by the DJ not by the limiter or any other fixed fx.

[Tarekith]

He has a point to some extent though. Tracks with more dynamic range are going to sound quieter, so you have to lower the loud tracks. The downside of this is that while the tracks now "sound" the same volume, digitally the higher peaks from the more dynamic (and quieter sounding) tracks are now going to be what any normalization schemes look at when bringing up the volume. So the previously loud tracks are going to now be quieter overall. I see this when mixing some of the downtempo stuff I have, some of which is mastered louder like a dance tune, and some of which is barely mastered at all.

Probably not a huge deal, and still not something I personally would bother to master, but in this case the limiter is only working on the tiny peaks of the dynamic stuff, so not doing too much harm I guess. For normal dance music, I don't think the same thing is quite as common, as they are usually much more consistant in terms of volume.

Definitely agree with you too though pc999, if you can't keep tracks sounding audibly in the same range in terms of volume, you shouldn't be promoting yourself as a DJ yet.

[memes_33]

add to the fact that we are possibly boosting/cutting EQ level on the fly (at least I am)

[reticent]

I never mastered my tracks.. but thanks to this thread I have found Ozone 4 and I think it is a pretty awesome tool.

Cheers