Mastering, when?

[Cowlash]

It should do. It didn't when I tried it (I have only gotten a tune mastered once) but the mastering engineer hadn't had someone sit in before and didn't realise how much extra work it would be - fair play to him he was really helpful to me AND honoured his original price if anyone wants a recommendation round Bristol I'll pass on his contact details.

The benefit of sitting in is that if your mix could do with improving you get detailed feedback on how. I would say that the benefit of what I learned from spending a few hours discussing my tune, and what to do with it, with a mastering engineer FAR outweighed the benefit of the actual mastering.

Yea I can imagine it helped loads, I think I'll have to look in to it further, but first I want to get more confident at finishing projects.

You mention that you've had one track mastered, is this due to lack of completed projects are do you feel you dont need to go through that each time now you've a better understanding of it? I know there's a lot of people out there that don't bother with the process because they're confident enough to do it themselves

[Cowlash]

When your MIXES are complete. Assuming you are putting out an EP or album, or plan on doing such later. Even if you are planning a single release, it's better to master a bunch of them together so your future tracks/singles/EPs can be mastered to a consistent set of values.

Hi! thanks for replying

I'm only interested in finishing singles at the minute, but thanks for the tip! I understand its better to have them all done at the same time so the EP/Album sits right with each other. Having them all worked on at separate times would result in an uneven volume/dynamics field I assume?

... and doing more than one at a time would provide a reference point for any future releases?

I'm sorry if any of this has been covered before, I hate to beat a dead horse on a forum - its helping me understand quite a bit though.

[ciw]

You mention that you've had one track mastered, is this due to lack of completed projects are do you feel you dont need to go through that each time now you've a better understanding of it? I know there's a lot of people out there that don't bother with the process because they're confident enough to do it themselves

I did it mostly for the learning experience. I can now master my own music better as a result, but if I ever get around to doing a commercial release I would get someone else to master for me... a different and more experienced pair of ears.

In my music link below, first track is the properly mastered one, the rest are done by me if you're interested (the last is probably my best home mastering to date).

[Cowlash]

I did it mostly for the learning experience. I can now master my own music better as a result, but if I ever get around to doing a commercial release I would get someone else to master for me... a different and more experienced pair of ears.

In my music link below, first track is the properly mastered one, the rest are done by me if you're interested (the last is probably my best home mastering to date).

I checked out your music. 'Glacier Blanc' is the mastered one? it has a lush crisp sound to it, a really great job. I can tell the others havnt had the same work on them, but they're still sounding good! I liked the A.I track


I think I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the sparkly, polished, final sheen that a commercial track has is down to Mixing, and not adding an L2 at the end. Or am I wrong? Do Mastering engineers do a bit of Mixing to help lift the track a bit more, or does it all have to be right before they receive it? And if that's the case, surely they're out of a job now Live has a limiter?


I decided to create a Soundcloud account yesterday for anyone who cares to have a listen. I would really appreciate some advice on how to get further towards a cleaner more professional sounding track. The track thats up peaks at around 3 minutes if you want to skim

http://soundcloud.com/inchlo

Thanks again to everyone who's been helping me

[ciw]

I checked out your music. 'Glacier Blanc' is the mastered one? it has a lush crisp sound to it, a really great job. I can tell the others havnt had the same work on them, but they're still sounding good! I liked the A.I track

Yup, Glacier Blanc is mastered. Cheers!

I think I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the sparkly, polished, final sheen that a commercial track has is down to Mixing, and not adding an L2 at the end. Or am I wrong? Do Mastering engineers do a bit of Mixing to help lift the track a bit more, or does it all have to be right before they receive it? And if that's the case, surely they're out of a job now Live has a limiter?

Yes, pretty much. The perfect mix should require no mastering other than a limiter to get the volume up a bit. If you want the mastering engineer to mix for you as well this is called "stem mastering" (I didn't get this done) - it's probably the future for people like us, basically you're paying for a mixing and mastering engineer in one person. If however, as is the norm, you are handing your mastering engineer a stereo mixdown then yes this has to be as good as possible first, though to some extent problems can be fixed with eq/exciters/stereo imagers/multiband compression. These processes would be better applied at the mixing stage if possible though.

Sorry that was a pretty convoluted set of ideas. What you really pay for with mastering is a different (and probably more experienced) pair of ears. In the past, mixing was done by mix engineers who were probably pretty good to start with, so mastering was done on a stereo mixdown and by convention it is still done this way. But stem mastering might be the way forward for us home producers who do all the rest ourselves.

Of course Live's limiter makes 60 years of collective recording industry experience irrelevant

I decided to create a Soundcloud account yesterday for anyone who cares to have a listen. I would really appreciate some advice on how to get further towards a cleaner more professional sounding track. The track thats up peaks at around 3 minutes if you want to skim

http://soundcloud.com/inchlo

Nice work, that's good solid electro and well mixed already

My experience is limited to... well however good you think my stuff sounded really... also I don't make electro, so take or leave this but from my point of view I would say:

1. Turn the bass up. Are you using a sub? Maybe the sub is turned up too high so you mix the bass too quiet?

2. your stereo image might be too wide - wide stereo does not necessarily mean fat sound, bring some of the parts in towards the center a bit so they gel more. Are you 'mixing in 3d' - placing sounds forwards and backwards on the sound stage by differing use of reverb?

3. Your snare and hats maybe need some eq - less mid-high and more high high (over 12khz, this might be the sheen you are looking for? try adding it with an exciter if it's not present in the source signal). Then again you are going for a grungy sound so maybe I'm wrong.

4. Some subtle chorus here and there can help with shinyness also.

5. comb filtering can sometimes make a part sit nicer in the mix - I guess this a type of flanger but I do it with simple delay, set to about 8ms both sides, no feedback and 20-50% wet. This somehow seems to lift a part into the air a bit, meaning you can mix other parts closer to it from a left/right perspective but they still remain distinct.

It always helps to compare what you do with a commercial mix (izotope ozone is useful for this) ... ideally drop a tune you like the sound of into a track on your project and A/B yours with it at all stages of the mixing process. (Setting the track to output to ext.out rather than master is useful for this, and assign some keys to mute the comparison track and the master channel respectively).

Hope some of this helps though maybe you know it already!

[Tarekith]

Personally i think trying to compare a song in progress with somethig that's released and mastered already is not the best idea. It's very hard to get a mixdown to sound the same as somethign mastered, especially today where things are mastered so hot already. You end up over compressing the individual parts just to get volume, and that's something best left to the mastering person. Maybe this helps some:

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

[ciw]

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

Aah a response from the master interesting what you say about comparing though. Do you think it's not alright to compare at equal perceived loudness, and occasionally check that you can get a similar actual loudness by adding a limiter?

[Cowlash]

ciw, thanks for all the help there! I feel a bit of a shit for not replying straight away but I went off on a tangent all day yesterday once I read your post! lol

Thanks for listening to the track, the comments really helped a lot! I'll try and reply to your pointers

1. I've played the track to a couple of people who produce and none of them mentioned the lack of bass. I don't have a sub. I have a pair of Tannoy Reveal 66. I think the dual mid bass drivers in them are off-putting and I keep thinking I should change them (I bought them years ago just for home DJing). The right is in a corner and on a bench top, it booms a lot. The other is on a solid platform and has air behind it. I cant do it any other way - I've eq'ed at the desk to make it match now. This made a massive difference with a test loop I made.

2. Once I balanced the speakers, the wide panning became apparent. I was trying to place things further apart than I should have been. I've brought in the percussion sounds a bit and it sounds a lot tighter. I was a bit lost at '3d mixing'. I'm going to look further in to that - I remember seeing something about sound stages in a book I have.

3. I have been rolling everything off not only at the low end, but at the high as well. I'm thinking I should ease back on that and catch any (higher) 'dangerous frequencies' on the master channel rather than on each channel during the mixing stage. I could be wrong on that. As soon as you said above 12k I had a check and it was apparent that's where I was missing a lot of brightness - its not exactly a frequency band you pay much attention to when you're making dance music. I will now!

4. I knew about the chorus trick but don't really know where to apply it to a great advantage - I have a go here and there but things get to shiny too quickly for me.

5. I made a comb filter and an exciter - very nice! The comb filter I had a bit of a head scratch with at first but soon worked it out. The little list of tricks on the forum is slowly being got at and was helpful to find how to make the exciter

I'm not going to go in to the way I've been A-B'ing, but I will say your way is best lol.

Tarekith, thanks for joining in, I went through your Mastering guide and it really helped to get a few of the penny's to drop. That and all the advice I've received in this thread have helped no ends.

This thread has taken all day to answer

Thanks to everyone who helped with my confusion, I really appreciate it!

[posssu]

Thanks for the link, posssu

I read Bob Katz 'Mastering Audio' book a while back. I found 'Mixing and Mastering' by Bill Gibson a lot easier to digest at the time. Maybe I should go back to Bob and see if I can pick up something new - I find that I keep picking up on new things after missing them completely the first time!

No prob. But what I've found and what others have already said here: don't start to master too soon. Mix the best you can, mix a bit more and then a bit more. A track should sound really good after mixing. With mastering you can boost the sound, add punch and stuff and one good point of doing it in a separate company is that they listen to the song with fresh ears. If you mix and master yourself, you'll notice that what you try to achieve with mastering is actually lacking in your mix so you might as well fix it there.

What I do in mastering (when mastering myself) is add a master compressor (USE GENTLY IF AT ALL), some eq and then some for example ColorTone FREE does amazing things to your mix (after it's mixed properly, of course).

[ciw]

ciw, thanks for all the help there! I feel a bit of a shit for not replying straight away but I went off on a tangent all day yesterday once I read your post! lol

No worries dude I get like that with fora too!

1. I've played the track to a couple of people who produce and none of them mentioned the lack of bass. I don't have a sub.

Well that is of course just an opinion. Interesting though that other producers don't think so.

I was a bit lost at '3d mixing'.

I think there's something on it Snoman's dance music manual, as well as various posts on this forum.

3. I have been rolling everything off not only at the low end, but at the high as well. I'm thinking I should ease back on that and catch any (higher) 'dangerous frequencies' on the master channel rather than on each channel during the mixing stage. I could be wrong on that.

I only roll off high frequencies if there is hissing to get rid of, and even that is a compromise against high end sparkle e.g. it might be worth leaving in some hiss if the sparkle is preserved with it. (Or cut out the hiss but put back the high end with an exciter).

4. I knew about the chorus trick but don't really know where to apply it to a great advantage - I have a go here and there but things get to shiny too quickly for me.

I'm no expert, but have found that very subtle chorusing (prob under 30% wet) helps certain parts sound smoother/more polished/more professional. If it sounds sweet and chorussy you're using too much. It might not apply at all to your style of music though.

I'm not going to go in to the way I've been A-B'ing, but I will say your way is best lol.

Cheers it took me a while to realise that was the best way to avoid listening to the comparison track through the compressor on the master channel Oh, you'll also want to listen to the comparison track unwarped, but likely you'll want to loop it. Get around this by warping it straight at the exact same speed as your tune, and then either set loop points without snap-to-grid or put up with non-bar-aligned looping. hth.

[LeoMANXVII]

it is actually possible to polish a turd

[ciw]

it is actually possible to polish a turd

pixorstfu... er... actually don't

[LeoMANXVII]

hahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rax27_ZIVM

[Cowlash]

don't start to master too soon

posssu, I understand that now - I think I was trying to do the entire process all at the same time

I've seen a few places that say to leave a compressor on the Master while putting a track together, to help get an idea of how it will sound when it's finished. I think I've been jumping the gun with this idea and because of that not Mixing correctly.

I'll try and check out the ColorTone-Free plugin, thanks for the heads up!

Interesting though that other producers don't think so.

ciw, Its not that they didn't think so, it's that they didn't say anything, so thanks for pointing it out. My neighbours on the other hand, hate you.

I have Snoman's book as well, its time I had a re-read. I'll also put the high-end thing in to better practice - that exciter works really well for adding some top-end fizz! I can imagine I'm going to over do it during the next few months. Sorry to everyone in advance.

Warping? I do House music, there's only one speed?


Thanks again everyone, I feel like a kid with loads of new toys to experiment with ha ha!

[ciw]

No worries what I meant about bass was just that I might be wrong, remember that!!