Ableton Forum

i was hoping a few of your could give me some basic mastering pointers.
my tracks are sounding fine when i play them back in their live session,
but once i render them and place them back into ableton for djing purposes
they dont sound all that great. what is more, their wave form looks weak when compaired to other properly mastered tracks. as of now, all i am using is an instance of eq 8, and a compressor set as a limiter. i've been told by a few people that i should loose the limiter which has helped a bit, but still not enough.
any help would be appreciated
thanx,
zack

A good multiband compressor and maximizer can really make your track pump, and thus they are very often used when mastering.

It's a good thing to learn how to use them properly.

Bounce track as wav- bang it into wavelab (or simmilar) -
Normalise it (better to normalise in wavelab than have Live do it) -
Insert T-Racks (vst plug-in version) -
Go to the 'suite' section of T-Racks -
Select 'FM Broadcast' -
Adjust till happy.

Best to have a listen back as sometimes the limiter & compression can remove elements of the track.

Not sure if there are any freeware equiv's to T-Racks??

Have also made tracks with T-Racks inserted into the master channel already to varying degrees of success...

Best of luck,

Be careful - jacking your mixes up.

Easy to get little crazy with multiband compressers or harmonic exciters.
The high-end frequencies can get harsh very quickly.

One thing that has helped this fiend is giving space to various elements of track.
Cut some bass frequencies out of your high hat parts for example.
Can always use a Spectral Analyzer to see if your song is weak in mid frequencies [etc].

Good luck !

My standard reply:

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

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

Tarekith covered that one pretty well.