..:: TAREKITH'S GUIDE TO MASTERING ::..

KU · Post by KU » Sat Jan 05, 2008 8:10 pm

thanks for the read!

leedsquietman · Post by **leedsquietman** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 9:21 pm

Typical that someone (Tarekith, someone with considerable recording experience) takes time to post something that may be useful to noobs and intermediate users (of which there are plenty here), and that it be criticized - and worse still, the people doing the criticism ain't people of the calibre of Bob Katz or Doug Sax or Bob Ludwig etc, renowned mastering engineers, but people who talk out of their ass and obviously know nothing except a couple of quotes from other people talking out of their ass at Gearslutz or some such website.

The mighty Oracle Radib (a man with less credibility than Dick Cheney who has continually been proven to know less than a horse's ass) shows himself up again. This guy is priceless, I'd pay to watch him at the circus...

Tarekith states - this guide is subjective. He advocates people trying things for themselves and education and experience.

No doubt Radib, you would have a field day tearing apart Bob Katz'z 'Mastering Audio - The Art and The Science', (the BIBLE for mastering), undoubtedly the K system would be shit, the advice on compression/expansion could be shortened from 3 chapters to 'stick an L1 on it' etc. etc.

cavern · Post by **cavern** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:12 am

hell yeah

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:47 am

Thanks again guys, and if you liked this one, you might want to check out the mixdown one as well:

http://tarekith.com/assets/mixdowns.html

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 4:39 pm

Bump!!
Great work, Tarekith!

Andy Hardie · Post by **Andy Hardie** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 6:16 pm

useful stuff cheers

Cryptic UK · Post by **Cryptic UK** » Sun Jan 17, 2010 9:09 pm

Alternatively..... fuck that and just pay him

markozavala · Post by **markozavala** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 8:20 pm

Hey my friend, i was submerged in my studio mixing and trying to master my forthcoming full length album and i found this article very useful when i found lost in some stage of the mixing process, so... i set down and started over zero because i had a mess whit the track volume envelopes everywhere and i have 45 channels, so i cleaned them up and started again obtaining great results and reading this confirmed all about!! so, when i render the final stage i just left the enough headroom to export to an audio editor and apply some final EQ, and after that i think you are missing something...."DC Offset"... and then Normalizing... that's a huge tip in order to recover some lost Db's on the mixing stage!!!

http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj-page.aspx?id=12126

Greetz!!!!

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 8:27 pm

With today's convertors and gear, it's VERY rare that DC offset is an issue. Certainly removing it can help gain back a little bit of headroom if it IS a problem, but you have to weigh the benefits with the artifacts caused by filtering out the DC too. Like I said, for 99.99% of the people out there DC Offset is likely not eating into their headroom in an appreciable way, so I didn't include in the guide.

markozavala · Post by **markozavala** » Tue Jan 19, 2010 8:35 pm

Tarekith wrote:With today's convertors and gear, it's VERY rare that DC offset is an issue. Certainly removing it can help gain back a little bit of headroom if it IS a problem, but you have to weigh the benefits with the artifacts caused by filtering out the DC too. Like I said, for 99.99% of the people out there DC Offset is likely not eating into their headroom in an appreciable way, so I didn't include in the guide.

i found it very useful anyway.. hey my friend a lot of good info here, thanks a lot for sharing!!!

Sly0 · Post by **Sly0** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 12:50 pm

Nice and simple. Excellent post.

Geebag · Post by **Geebag** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:14 pm

Great read and loads of practical wisdom. There is far too much bollox talk in mags about mastering and I agree completly with what you said about effects, compression and the loudness war. Less is usually more. Somtimes people need to redo parts or change sounds and fix frequency issues rather then layer heaps of effects on them or mix them all together in a soup of reverb.

I know by reading this that you know this because you have made the same mistakes as you described in the past and thank you for passing on some of this wisdom to save some greif. I am by know means perfect but I am learning more with my ears now. I have made the same mistakes in the past and its only now when listening to old tracks I can hear how far my production has come. The thing is once you hear it you can't not hear it.

Thanks again for taking the time to provide this info.

Bassworm · Post by **Bassworm** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:09 am

Found this pretty helpful Tarekith

!

Myattmode · Post by **Myattmode** » Sat Jan 28, 2012 10:08 am

Tremendous article Tarekith

Many thanks for taking the time in sharing your experience on this forum. It was the one area where I needed a good 'heads up' on the subject and I feel quite pleased with myself that a lot of advice you gave out I already practice. Personally I believe in the basics during mixing and one problem with modern DAW's is that they are saturated with many effects etc which makes the user feel obliged to use! This in my opinion is where your work can be over produced and become very cluttered or muddy.

Cheers

..:: TAREKITH'S GUIDE TO MASTERING ::..

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