Mastering for beginers (Need help)

[WmR]

I have almost finished a live mix i have been working on for the past month and am almost done. I was listening to my mix in live and was wondering where I can get a good tutorial on mastering, or some basic guidelines for setting up my mixes from the start.

I was told an important thing was to keep the track volume near max, where it is green and occasionally touches red but never stays in it for long periods of time. Am I supposed to go through the whole song and record adjusting the sounds manually judging by how the volume bar looks, or when I compress the song file as a whole will this correct itself.

I have recently been getting real deep into live and this is an important aspect for me to get a hold of so any advice/etc. helps. I listen to Live through my headphones (professional pair) which I am assuming is better, but again I am a noob so not to sure.

Thanks

[Tone Deft]

read Tarekith's guides here:
http://www.tarekith.com/misc.html

very well respected around here for years.

[buzby]

tarekiths guide is great

also i read this thread today http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=112589

maybe have a browse through

http://audio.tutsplus.com/

lot of helpful stuff in there

[jcwillia]

flagging to read later...

[purplenoise]

my advice would be to find some already mastered music with the sound you are looking for and keep it handy for reference. That way, as your ears get used to EQ settings and such, you can always go back to the reference track for a reality check.

you will almost always need a limiter at the end of your chain such as the L2. You can also set the live compressor for limiting. Besides that, I do most of my mastering with nothing but EQ and compression.

to EQ, I sometimes set the Q very low on a band, then set it to high boost, and sweep the frequency slowly to try lo locate anything that stands out in an annoying way. at this point you can turn the boost into a cut and broaden the Q until it sounds right. Beware that this will fatigue your ears at high volumes and eventually fool your ears, so don't dwell on it.

A few guidelines:

-Do most of your EQ by cutting instead of boosting when possible.
-if you need to make more than a 3 db boost at any frequency (except for maybe the very lowest bass or highest highs..) you better fix it in the mix instead.
-if you need EQ that is very narrow (high Q) you probably should have fixed that on the mix.


Don't buy into the hype that you need to have any given piece of gear, or plugin in order to get a good sound. Some people may think that you need to always use linear phase EQ, or that you always have to use outboard gear or tubes. The best mastering is the mastering that does not even need to be done in the first place, so start with a good mix, and find a way for your mastering to be as minimalistic as possible and still get the results you want.

good luck!

[purplenoise]

As far as speakers versus headphones, stay away from speakers if you cannot also ensure a good listening room. Great speakers in a bad room are worse than headphones.

A good pair of headphones is at least free from room resonances.

-Aurelio

[gjm]

flagging to read later...

me too.

[marcoskohler]

As far as speakers versus headphones, stay away from speakers if you cannot also ensure a good listening room. Great speakers in a bad room are worse than headphones.

A good pair of headphones is at least free from room resonances.

-Aurelio

I have the beyerdynamics DT770PRO and even when my mixes sound good in them, as soon as I listen on my shitty logitech desktop speakers, it goes back to sounding shitty...even though other music I like and listen to sounds fine on them. That makes me think that for a beginner, a good combo would be headphones AND intro studio monitors.