Mastering Tracks

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by JZ on July 7, 2007 at 4:13pm

I'm no expert on this subject, but I do know that a lot of it comes down to experience. The mastering stage of a recording is too often underestimated. Mixing and mastering are two completely different professions. No wonder that there are specialized mastering studios who don´t even do mixing. Of course having the right equipment is a necessity but knowing how to use it takes years of learning. My band have recorded three albums of witch two have been mastered by a mastering pro. The first one was done by a guy who knew a lot about mixing and only relied on software for the mastering and not his expertise. Anyway. The difference is enormous in quality. From now on we only trust mastering studio´s that are specialized in mastering.

Most of the time the mastering is done by applying compression and a bit of equalizing. With a multiband compressor you avoid having tot compress all the frequencies, even the ones that weren´t causing any trouble. This is also a trick to push the volume of the track up. With equalizing you can add some ´spark´ to the music. It is even common to use reverb for liveliness.

So my advise would be to look for a professional, or at least take some time to learn about the magic behind the mastering stage.

JZ

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Cameron Johnson on July 12, 2007 at 5:33am

I agree with JZ 100% on this one

As much as I would like to sometimes pretend I can master tracks - I always fall back on to a professional; one with the right gear and the right ears/know-how. Mastering takes a whole new level of audio expertise that only a few end up with in the field. The telling three factors, I find to be, with matsering are: 1) The right outboard Gear (I never much like mastering done with plugins) 2) The right Monitors (its next to impossible to properly master an album without a pretty decent set of monitors - youll never walk into a mastering studio with a really cheap set of monitors unless they're only using them to act as a reference guide) and 3) the right engineer. As was said earlier, you need the right person behind that console in order to get that right sound! You can have an amateur at Abbey Road and it'll sound like garbage.

For a real mastering job - trust it to the pros. And when you do, meet up with the person whose gonna be doing it and listen to his/her stuff first - make sure you like his/her style of mastering. On top of that, sit in on the sessions if possible. It's always best to correct on the fly than needing to re-do sections becuase you feel they're a little awkward. At least, thats been my experience.

Cheers
Cam

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Radio Bomb on October 9, 2008 at 9:01am

hi - all the pro's use as little compression as possible to allow the mastering the maximum possiblity to 'improve' your sound. If you have squeezed the life out of it you can't put the dynamics back in. All mastering studios have expensive gear 'cos it works great, not 'cos they wanted to spend huge amounts of $. Be aware that few mastering studios use software solutions. Also experience in the chosen style means more than overall experience - so certain studios are known for a style more than general mastering [ie, the exchange & d'n'b].
Black art. So no way an amateur can equal a pro. Leave it !
Also a mix cannot be mastered in the studio it was recorded in, 'cos that exagerates the room accoustic problems and that of other deficiencies [monitor & placement, room accoustics, equipment sonarity, etc]. It would be a doubling of the initial defects.
hope this helps. sorry, no magic 'sounds good' button/vst yet available...!
Cheers-
Alex radiobomb

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Cameron Johnson on January 7, 2009 at 6:38am

+1

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by MAN WITH THE BIG EARS on January 20, 2009 at 7:36pm

its about using your ears man knowing how to trick the gear and the general publics ears as well. I find alot of people mash tracks with loads of bad compression in high ratios when a light hand is needed. A to D coverstion is also very misunderstood and the use of mp3s as finals are a joke( I read articles about people doing that all the time with sessions to be able to email them use the profession file sender www.soundcloud.com) its free. I use wavelab for mastering since I have a pc and all my plugs work well across the board. Take a listen to some files in my music player all of the plugs i used are free from the net I have about 100k worth for free.

http://antress.webng.com/

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mescalero on April 9, 2009 at 11:19pm

This was the first subject that I've ever responded to. Probably because every time I finish a song I am faced with the reality that it needs mastering before I put it in anybodies hands but I also noticed that there were mostly opinions and not a lot of technique here (which is what a lot of people are looking for). What everyone says here is true. It's tough, it's better left to professionals, yadda, yadda, yadda. Still, I figure it this way...

1. Am I going to give this out to people for any reason be it friends or promotion?
2. Am I going to sell the track?
3. Do I really think that its going to sell more than 250 copies of that one track or am I hoping that I will?
4. Do I have the money to pay for professional mastering?

The answers to these often lead me to believe that I should do it myself. I mean, you needed to learn how to record in order to get your ideas down right? Well, the only way to know your boundaries with this is to push them. I don’t consider myself a great mastering tech by any means but I am able to get really damn close to professional commercial results so maybe I can share something useful. I am always learning and I believe that even those that are "gifted" with golden ears and billion dollar gear are always still learning too. Never stop learning. Every song is different and will pose new challenges. You will almost never use the same setting twice. If you are working with regular room circumstances, standard monitors, and regular end user types of hardware/software, you will need to make more than a few passes to get it right so take up yoga or something because you probably will have a bit of frustration especially in the beginning. You will begin to change the way you mix because you will start to learn what works and what doesn’t. YOU WILL eventually come across the situation where you will have to go back to the mix stage and re do it in order to get it proper.

Who am I to think that I can give advice? Nobody. I’m just a guy that’s been making music for 20 years and for the last quarter of that, has been investigating the art of mastering....and I’m still a noob. I do have professional experience but I hate name droppers so I wont do it. Variations of the suggestions that I will give are what have worked for me and I tend to get comments on how well and professional my music sounds. So, hopefully someone will find them useful. These are basic and broad as I cant tell what you are working on and you don’t know what I've been working. It doesn’t matter anyway.
Give the same song to two different people and you will get two different masters. Try the suggestions and then branch out from there.

Please remember that I am coming from the point of view of the broke ass home artist club. Of which, I am currently a member.

Alright, lets make a mess...

1. First suggestion, Don’t do it.
Hehehe, yup, don’t even bother. If you know somebody that takes the time to try mastering and you've noticed they have good results or even if you're the kind of person that has tried and really doesn’t want to bother then this might be the way for you. User groups are handy for this. I can easily find somebody that'll take a crack at it for free. In fact you can even do things like run a small contest on a community board with a small purse going to the winner. Be creative. I know you are because you had enough creativity to come up with a two track mixdown. Anyway, the point is that there is someone out there willing to do it. It takes the load off your shoulders and if they are good then it will most likely be a better product than if you tried it yourself for several reasons that I wont go into right now.

2. Don’t do it (pt 2)
Most of what you're looking for from mastering is tonal balance and loudness. Loudness is a volume knob away, well, sort of and tonal balance should be good from the get go. Practice your mixing skills and make the song sound as good as possible before even considering mastering. Garbage in, garbage out is highly applicable here but it’s actually more like garbage in, sewage pit out. Any problems in the mix stage are going to be amplified by the mastering process, not fixed. Your two track mixdown should be pretty close to what the mastered track will sound like at a lower volume. So, what I mean by "don’t do it" is don’t do it until you've got the mix spotless. This "spotless" version, if done correctly, should be good enough for most newcomers to use for personal or promotional purposes even. You can always take it a step further and run a limiter over it for an extra touch but I'll get to that later. Just remember, garbage in, huge pile of crap on the other side.

3. This touches on number 2. When you get into the process of creating a song and creating that good mix it is good to divide the project into sections of consideration (well, for me it is). I’m sure that to some degree you are already doing this. The main ones I use are pre-production, production, post production, master. People use these terms all the time and they are generally understood but for some people they overlap so this is how I define them.

Pre-production: Depending on what type of musical situation it is (band with instruments and vocals, all electronic or some mix thereof) I will consider artist(s), recording space, gear-theirs and mine, style of music, dynamics and which software will be best suited for the project. Okay, I don’t want to get to detailed here but the main point of what I am trying to do here is make a map. I want to map out, as much as possible, who is going to be available and on what days - Where I’m going to put them to record and how I will treat the room to get as clean a sound as possible - What gear they are using and what gear of mine am I going to track it with (especially important for vocals, amps, drums if you have more than one mic) - style of music and dynamics kinda go hand in hand but more of what I want you to consider is, in the whole of the song, are there parts where it gets softer and parts where it gets louder. For example, a vocalist that goes from emo in one part of the song to full on cookie monster during the chorus. Like I said, I don’t want to get too detailed so try to use your imagination as to why you would want to know these things. Example, a little compression might help with recording cookie monster but on the other hand you might want to just record it quieter so that you can have a clean track to deal with later. Only you will know. Lastly, write it down. this especially goes out to those whose clock is always at 420. Obviously, if you're recording your own vocal and your own tracks created via software (like VSTi's or loops) then you have other things to consider and that brings me to the next point.

Production: Recording, arranging and anything that has to do with the creative process of building a track. Alright, this is huge so I’m gonna cram it down and leave a bunch of stuff out but hopefully it will get your wheels turning.

Let's consider this....when you are making a song, think of it as placing stuff into a room. There is only so much space for you to work with before you start stacking and creating problems. Same with music. Try to hear your individual parts and listen to what their content is. Listen to see if a track is truly stereo and for what the main body of the sounds placement is. Is the track mono? Even if there is a left and right, if both sides are EXACTLY the same it is MONO). Listen to the dynamics (changes in volume) and listen for where the main body of the sound lies in the frequency realm (this is incredibly important). It can be easily broken into low, mid, or hi frequency range. The object being not to stack too many sounds in the same place. Here’s a hint, I’m going to come back to this too so you might as well do it now....find and download a free frequency analyzer if you don’t already have one. I’m not going to tell you which one because I want you to read about their features in hopes that you will learn about the different functionality and ways of literally seeing sound. Any decent software can use VSTs so just google “free vst analyzer”. You're looking for something that at the very least has clearly marked frequencies (vertical lines headed by numbers in hz) and clear volume markers as well (horizontal lines bulleted by numbers in db). Insert this baby as the very last in the chain on the master output channel. Solo a track, play it and look at where it registers on the analyzer. The peak(s) are where most of the weight is being carried. Now you know what frequencies that sound is using. Play the whole track through it and you'll see the effect of all your combined tracks or what your mixdown will look like. When mixing your tracks you will most likely need some eq'ing. As a very flexible basic rule, try to use subtractive eq'ing instead of additive when possible. This is because of headroom. Any addition to your sound is going to add amplitude and that means that your track volume is going to have to be lowered if its nearing zero. lowering one frequency is the same as raising all the others and vise versa. Lets use a vocal as an example again. You've recorded it and it sounds good but a closer listen reveals some high frequency line hiss. Try a low pass filter on the vocal, sweep it down till it cuts into the top frequencies of the vocal and then ease it back up to the point where it is not affecting the vocal. You should notice some of the garbage is gone. The point being, if you don’t need it, get rid of it. If you used the same method of recording on other tracks that play simultaneously then that means that that particular noise is multiplying itself. Clean it up. Use a gate if need be. Learn how to use the "Q". Loop a sound on one of your tracks, solo it, insert an EQ, take a band pass or bell type curve on the EQ and crank up the gain on that frequency. Drop the track volume a touch if you have to in order to avoid clipping. Now adjust the Q of the active filter. What you are doing is adjusting how much or how little of a frequency spread will be effected by the filter. Example...Lets use a drum loop in this case. The drum loop contains the usual traps, two bongos and a clave. You've added this drum track and everything sits well in your mix but the clave is too loud. Now, you can check the scope to see what frequency the clave is hitting or you can use an old trick. The old trick is to insert an EQ on the track, get one of the band pass filters, crank it up and sweep it towards the offending frequency. You know you've found it because the offending frequency is screaming in your face. Then, turn off the filter or turn it back down to the zero point so that it is no longer affecting the track. Play your entire mix back and listen to it for a sec. Get an idea of how low that clave should be. Let everything run and turn the filter back on (remember its supposed to be not effecting the sound even though it is on). Take the gain on that filter and start going negative with it until the sound sits correctly in the mix. Ah, better right? Wrong. Remember that bongo rhythm? Now you've cut into it and probably a bunch of other stuff too. Well, this is where the Q comes in handy. Narrow the frequency span so that it effects mostly the offending frequency and not too much of the other stuff. The point here is to make it sound as natural as possible so be careful how narrow you get. Most common filter types on an EQ: Low pass, band pass, high pass, Low shelf, and high shelf. Low, high, and band pass filters are commonly used in electronic music for the effect they give when sweeping them with high resonance. When eq’ing your tracks be leery of a high resonance whistling or hum on the low end. This usually won’t sound good unless it’s meant as an effect. When using high pass and low pass filters be mindful of the Q setting. This adjusts the slope of the frequency spread and when set to higher values will actually tend to boost frequencies at the cut off point. If you put a high pass on a vocal and you hear the bottom end of the persons voice booming then try easing up on the Q.

Post production: There’s a lot of overlap here because of the way I work but for the most part it's mixing and adding the icing on the cake. Before starting this stage I take a day or two off from the song and work on something else or just don’t even touch music at all. The bulk of the song is laid out and I've already done an initial mix. When I get back to the song I listen to the whole thing all the way through with no interruptions, pad of paper in hand. Turn the phone off. Volume is set at about 80, 85 db. Not too loud or too soft. While listening to the song I write notes on what I think needs to be done. I’m listening for mix levels, stereo placement, song flow/arrangement, Effects and any other touches I think will sound good. Run all the way through one more time but this time have a frequency analyzer loaded on your master channel as the last in the chain. I’m going to watch this analyzer as the mix plays and look for spikes. I will make efforts to deal with the spikes on the track level. Sometimes to do this, automating a track equalizer for certain parts of a song will be necessary. Sometimes the EQ is good for the track but there are still volume spikes. If track volume automation doesn't do the trick then I will go with some compression. Sometimes there’s no volume spike but there are tonal fluctuations that I cant keep up with. In this case active eq’ing (multiband compression) might be in order. Do a search for the VST IQ4gui. It comes in handy and its free.
Perhaps I need a little more width on the track. In this case I might put one or two reverbs on their own effects return channels, select a few tracks and route their sends respectively. Play with the verbs to see what kind sounds best. Remember that too much of anything can be bad so try to keep those verbs from turning into a cavernous wash unless that is the effect that your going for. Try running those track sends that go to the verb for certain parts of the song and then not for others. If the verbs are resonating at certain undesireable frequencies then check the filtering and damping charachteristics of the verb. If your verb doesn’t have these options then if you can, place an eq after the verb on the return channel and adjust it accordingly. Experimentation is the key. This is all the icing on the cake that I mentioned earlier. Its anything to fine tune and enhance your overall sound by fixing things at the track level. Once I think I've got it and if it hasn't taken too long I will render the mixdown. If it took more than 20 minutes then I leave the track alone again and come back to it. Your ears play tricks on you and the more you listen to something the more it sounds right, even when its not. Keep molding the song like as if it is a piece of clay. Once you think you've really got it. Render the song in the highest sample and bit rate possible. Now this is another area that is cause for debate but this is my text so I’m god. No, really, valid points exist on both sides of the fence but my personal experience is that working with the bigger file when mastering yields better results. Ok, so you've rendered the mixdown. Make sure you have placed it in a file either inside of or somehow organized to go along with the project. Take the time to self contain/archive all of the files in the project and back it up.

Mastering: At this point you have a two track mixdown. Where do you put it? Well, if you have an audio editor like SoundForge or if your using something like Ableton Live or Cubase, you can use any one of those provided you have the appropriate plug ins for it. If your using a multi tracker, open a new project, add or delete tracks so that you have only one stereo track and add the mixdown. If you have done a good job in the post phase then this should be much easier. If not, you're going to find out pretty quick.

Before you get started, do whatever you can to treat the room. Hang up some blankets, throw the mattress up against the wall. Really, anything to help with minimizing high reflections and standing waves will be useful. I've been know to tear down my drums and use my drum rack with extra tubing and heavy blankets to create an enclosed area. I've even stood couches on end and placed them in the corners to help with bass frequencies. It works better fluffier cloth upholstered couches. Yeah, I don’t get much trim when I do this kinda stuff but hey, my track will be around longer than the girl will. Hehehe. Anyway, the point is to do what you can to make the room a little kinder to your ear by not feeding you false information. Same thing goes true for every stage of production but, hey, some of us have live in girlfriends or wives (boyfriends? husbands?) and believe me I know what that argument sounds like. Next, load up the program you're going to be mastering in and drop in a meter and analyzer in that order. What I mean by meter is one that also measures RMS level as well as peak. There are free VST meters out there. Sniff 'em out. IT HAS TO HAVE A RMS METER. Go through your collection of music and pull out 4 or 5 tracks from different artists that most closely resemble your own work. Try to stay away from MP3 because of the compression. Use uncompressed formats like wav or aif. Listen to these songs and view them through both the meter and the analyzer. Take notes on how the RMS behaves, where it peaks, how long it peaks, where it sits at average, how are all the other sounds reacting when its peaking and also note at which level it is at when the song is in a more average section. Do the same for the frequency analyzer. Notice where the peaks and valleys are and where it is slanted. Is more of the power in the lower frequencies? What does the upper two thirds of the spectrum look like? You will begin to see similarities and differences. I try as much as possible to have a scope running whenever I am listening to music even if it is the bars visualization in windows media player. Learn the values of the music that you feel is properly mastered and that is in the genre that you are creating. Listen for what frequencies are prevalent. Listen for the dynamics in the piece. Listen and watch how all of this corresponds to each other. Now that you've had a chance to scope some music, you might want to adjust a few things. I know a lot of people are tight on space and relative furnishings so there’s probably not too much you can do but if possible, try to pull your speakers away from the wall, get out of a corner if you're in one, widen the speaker placement and sit dead center in an equidistant triangle from you speakers. If your speakers have dip switches on the back to adjust for room characteristics then go for a setting that best suits your room, listening style and that balances out with all the different program material that has been professionally mastered. If you browse through some kick drum samples and audition them one by one in a quick manner with the volume turned up and you notice that they sound very similar on the bottom end then you probably have an issue with standing waves. Bass frequencies tend to collect in corners and amplify. Rolled blankets stacked in the corners all the way to the ceiling can help to minimize this. Also, you may want to consider that you might have the bass cranked up on your monitors. This will also cause your signals to resonate in one place repeatedly. If you're using home stereo gear as monitors then set it to where is sounds correct without a lot of bass or treble boost. This really creates more problems. Also, if you're using home stereo stuff as your monitors then you might try to place yourself about 3/4 of the room opposite the speakers. Home audio speakers are not for near field monitoring. Your probably not dealing with the greatest monitors or room so set everything as good as possible and start taking a crack at mastering the track. Set your volume for this process at a level that is not loud but not quiet either. There is a general belief that setting your monitors at about 80-85db for the entire process is the best place. I agree with this. If you can get your hands on a SPL meter then this is the way to go. Play the track, place the meter where your head is going to be, meter the sound and set your output volume to 80db via your audio interface. Once you get to the stage in which you start to crank up the limiter turn down the volume and do another SPL check and set. Keep it at the same volume so that you can hear what is happening and not be fooled by volume change. BTW, radio shack has SPL meters for 45 dollars but take a look around for others too. When you rendered your mix you should have tried to achieve the loudest output without clipping. There should be no limiter on your master output at the time of rendering the mixdown. Just try to get the output as close as possible to zero without clipping. Don’t bother normalizing the mixdown either because a little headroom is helpful.

Start with an effect chain that goes something like this - EQ (preferably paragraphic with as many nodes as possible so you can see what you're doing and have finer control) - limiter - meter - analyzer. These should not be on the channel/track but instead they should be on the Master channel as insert effects all in succession. You want to choose your best effects here. Only the cleanest, best sounding plug ins should be considered and if you have rendered your mixdown in higher than standard rates then your processors should be able to accommodate this. Remember, 1 effect not being up to par or in the right bit/frequency capability can make a difference. Start by bypassing all except the meter and analyzer. Run the track and watch the analyzer. Don’t worry about the meter yet, we'll get to that. If you can, drop markers on the track to note where the song changes are. This is usually where processing might differ. Also drop a marker if you happen to see any problematic areas in the song. Keep paper and pen handy at all times because you are going to need it. I've made a little shorthand language for myself so that I don’t need to drop markers. I can, while listening and viewing this initial pass, write down the problem and potential cure plus the time at which this happens. It usually looks something like this: ~3.42, h frq spk, eq. What this means to me...At about three minutes and forty two seconds there is a spike in the high frequency range that I should look for and fix and it will most likely be best to fix with an equalizer. Get it? In the beginning just try to stick to placing the marker or jotting the time down so that you know to go back to that point and work out the kinks.

I will keep going until I get all the way through the song while noting all events. Once you get the hang of doing this it will be faster than you think. You will be used to fighting certain problems and you will develop ways to conquer them. As your skills increase, you will be able to spot most if not all of the work that needs to be done on this initial pass. If you notice that there are some problems that can be attributed to a single track, this is the time to go back and fix it on the track level. Automate it, eq it, do whatever you have to get it right. Re-render. If you don’t, you may cause undue damage to other tracks in the song by compensating in the mastering phase. Example: A snare is too loud in the mix and most of its power sits in the 1khz range. Yeah, you can dip that frequency in the mastering eq but you will dip all of the 1khz frequency and rob your track of very important mid power. Next, with the meter and analyzer in place, turn on your eq and make sure it is flat. Leave the limiter off for now. The reason I want the limiter off is so that you can see if you are ever clipping signal. You have to make sure that no matter how hard you push the modules in the mastering chain that you can never have a single one of them clip on the input or the output stage. Soft clipping and saturation are another story but for this exercise I am not going to touch on those. Also, I’m not going to go into compression, mid/side processing as these are tools to utilize when you know how the modules actually work and you can really hear what it is your doing to your sound. For now and always, a better mix will give better results so start there and keep the mastering simple as possible. Ok, back to clipping....we'll have none of that.

Now, if you've done your homework with the professionally mastered tracks and have taken notes on what the analyzer looks like then you will have a pretty good idea where you are going to go with your eq'ing. Start by taking a high pass filter on the eq and sweep it to about 40hz. Depending on your monitors and music you may or may not hear a difference. If you do hear a loss in bass then you may be creating your tracks with huge amounts of sub frequency. These frequencies are a taboo subject for some but for the most part, what is below 40hz is headroom robbing speaker flap. Just try this out, you may be surprised at what the final product turns out like. Do the same to the ultra frequencies and place a low pass at 20khz. You can’t hear what is above this anyway. If you sweep down below 20khz, be careful of what you may be removing. Remember earlier when I mentioned the effect of Q on a high and low pass filter? Well,
make sure the slope is proper and smooth. There should be no amplification or unnecessary attenuation of surrounding frequencies. Dial it in. Now go back to your notes on the professional songs and their relation to the analyzer. Did you note where the lows and highs sit? did you notice a slope? Well, this is kinda where you are trying to get your song. Look at it in the analyzer again and see if it is tilting in the right direction. Tune it in a touch more by using the high and low shelves respectively. Getting a little closer now right? Good, now lets move on to the fine tuning. Check for peaks and valleys. Keep in mind where your analyzer line should be. Find the first peak. If it covers many frequencies and is of a smooth upward arching shape then note what frequency is as close to the middle of the arch. WATCH YOUR VOLUME. Go to your eq, grab an available node, set to band pass, set it to the frequency that you noted, set the q to its narrowest setting, push the gain on that node all the way up, adjust the Q and frequency until it most closely fits the area of peak and once you've got it, bring the gain back to zero so it is not effecting anything. Wait until your ears readjust to the sound. If you can, have both the eq and the analyzer visible at the same time. Start bringing down the gain and watch your actions in the analyzer. Fine tune the q and gain of the filter so it fits nicely and most of all, sounds natural. You are going to do the same with the valleys only instead of pushing the gain on the filter way up, drop it way down so that the valley deepens. Use the same steps from there. Once the peaks and valleys are smoothed out you may or may not need to insert another eq in the chain following the first one so that you can use this one as a broad adjustment tool. The second eq is for very mild curves and wide frequency spans. Only insert another eq if you are beginning to fully utilize your first and it would cause more problems to make needed adjustments. Again, make sure that nothing is clipping. If your redlining after making you adjustments in the first eq then that means your redlining the input on anything after that. Not good. Turn the overall gain on the eq down and if the eq doesn’t have gain control then it will be time for you to learn how to do subtractive eq'ing instead of additive in order to control your output. If you had to place a high shelf filter and crank up the gain in order to balance out the sound then you just ate up a ton of headroom. Forget that and use a low shelf and drop the gain. Bang! You just increased the highs and gained more headroom. Resist the urge to go ahead and turn up the volume of the track in the software realm. That will eat up the headroom. Instead, use your sound card/interface volume (and the SPL meter) to get back into the right volume.

Remember those markers that I had you lay out for the song changes? Go back and make sure your settings work for every part of the song. Most likely there are going to be parts that require slight changes. Only you will know what the differences are so you're kinda on your own here. If possible, automate whatever settings need to change. Sometimes it may be easier to have a different eq for each part of the song that is different. Like, an eq for the verses and one for the choruses. Then you just need to automate the on/off switches for them respectively. Be careful of pops, clicks, thumps or any other maladies that can result from automating effects. Most of all, be tasteful.

Now we have all of the track sounding good right? Right. Stop the track from playing, make sure the channel/track volume control is at zero, turn on the limiter, turn down your sound interface volume and bring the master channel volume up to zero in your software. Play the track and use your interface volume control to bring the volume up to the 80db mark (back to the SPL meter again). With that set, you can begin to watch the RMS meter in your effect chain. The number you're shooting for is -10 RMS. This is a widely know value but that doesn’t mean you have to adhere to it. Still, it is a strong point of reference. Go back to your limiter and set the output to -.02. Start pushing the gain until you start getting close to -10. How does it sound? Its probably a lot louder now so adjust your interface volume so you don’t burn out your ears. What you're listening for here is how this limiting effects your dynamics and overall sound. When your song goes from a soft to a loud passage, does it sound too squashed? Sound the same? Push it or drop it respectively. If the plug in affords you the ability to play with the attack and release times, then, try them out. Attack is how long it will take for the limiter to "limit" and release is how long until it stops. If you hear pumping, change it up. Unless you want it. Dial in the gain on the limiter to the loudest possible point until you hear negative effects on your sound and then back it off some. Check your RMS. Its a balancing act from here. Check your analyzer. Did the limiter color the sound? Compensate accordingly and make compensatory actions before the limiter, not after. Check everything again. Looks good? Sounds good? Alright, just about done. If you rendered at 16/44.1 then you can render now. If you rendered at anything above that then you are going to need to dither. This is yet another hot spot for debate but for now, just try it out until you read up on the different types and what the whole idea behind it is. MDA makes a freebie VST dither. I've never used it but its worth a shot. Obviously you want to set it to dither down to 16/44.1. Read about the different shaping styles and decide which is best suited for you. Insert this as the last in the master chain. Render that beotch! Oh yeah, save the project or at the very least name your chain set up so that you can recall it.

As a follow up action I suggest burning a couple professional tracks and your mastered tracks onto one disc and try it out on different stereos. I’ve actually taken my disc to places like Fry's and Best Buy so that I can listen to it on many different car and home set ups. You are going for something that sounds somewhat identical to the professional program material but more importantly, something that sounds good on every stereo setup. If you can watch the subwoofers in a car setup then first play the professional stuff and watch how they move. Then, play yours. Are they nice and tight like the pro stuff or are they flappin all over the place? If you got the slop then go back to your mastering chain and filter it out because its robbing your head room. Wash, rinse, repeat until correct.

It's a process but it gets easier. You really start to learn how to fix things before you even get to the mastering phase. Now, I didn’t mention anything about saturation, multiband compression/limiting, spatial imaging, exciters and all the various types of this and that. This is because I hope that you investigate and practice with these tools to see how they work for you. The IQ4gui that I mentioned earlier is a multiband compressor. Practice with this device but only use it when you know how to keep it in control and most importantly, only when it is needed. The same goes for any compressor. Learn what it does, learn how to use it properly and only apply it when it is needed for positive results. If you haven’t spent much time with a compressor and you are about to master a track, leave it out. Don’t just throw something in there because you've heard you're supposed to. Get to know when and why you would use a particular tool and that way when you hear a track you will know straight away if it will benefit from the usage of that device.

Damn, this was supposed to be a short post. Well, let's wrap it up. I hope that somebody finds some useful information in this.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Radio Bomb on April 26, 2009 at 8:05pm

nice post mescalero ....

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Mescalero on April 27, 2009 at 9:38pm

Thank you sir.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Phangz on June 17, 2009 at 4:41pm

This is info I can use!!

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Tom Peters on June 11, 2009 at 4:29pm

I have the same problem. I think it does have alot to do with the outboard. look up Manley stuff

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by PopRuff Mastering on July 18, 2009 at 10:48am

Hello,
Usually poor soundng tracks come down to badly recorded or sourced sounds and predominantly the "Mix Process"
If the track is being mixed or mastered by someone who mixes and masters for a living, which means everyday then youre tracks sonic quality is gonna suffer big time.

In these times where music technology is more affordable than ever and music production courses are pouring out of every education establishment people think they will be able to record, mix and master their projects all from the comfort of the cosy home studio. Not!

What happened to people being a musician, producer or performer and sourcing an experienced professional to mix or master your tracks. Why do we feel we need to do it all. "Most" established engineers have spent decades perfecting there skills mixing and mastering just as a guitarist or keyboard player would have done perfecting fingering and chord strucutre.

Mastering makes a huge difference if done correctly and and even bigger one if done wrong. Most people just strap on some new limiter/maximiser over their mix and push up the levels leaving them with a track that is harsh, distorted and has had all the life squeezed out of it.

A Usual Mastering Chain:

Multiband Compression
Linear EQ
Stereo Enhancement
Exciter
Limiter

Check out the site for pdf downloads on mixing and mastering.
http://www.popruffmastering.com

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by PopRuff Mastering on July 18, 2009 at 10:52am

Look just upload a track and get a sample master for free!

Leave it to the pros

http://www.popruffmastering.com

▶ Reply to This