Definition of mastering

Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:57 pm

JimC wrote:

I didn't know that this forum is made to self-promote some mastering company's. Thanks for being so smart ... Rolling Eyes

Drop the 'tude... Rolling Eyes

You might notice that I (at least not to my recollection) have ever tried to "promote" my company here. I don't think any of us really do.

If the engine in my car needs repair, I can either post on a forum "what do I have to do to fix my engine?" and receive a bunch of answers - most of them suggesting that if I don't know what needs to be done, then I should take it to a mechanic -- Or, I can take it to a mechanic.

And then I'm not going to tell some mechanic that he's trying to promote his company by suggesting that I go to a mechanic...

And even on the other hand -- When I *do* know what needs to be done -- Last year, my bike was running hot - HOT - and it was backfiring on deceleration. I'm not a pro, but I knew that it was running far too lean *and* was getting far to much air in an uncontrolled manner. So, I needed a (proper) high-flow air cleaner installed *and* needed the carburetor re-jetted to increase fuel flow.

With the right parts, the right tools and the right manuals, I probably - probably could've done that myself in the course of an afternoon and hope I don't strand myself on the highway 100 miles from home. Or, I could just ride into the HD shop and have them do it for me in less than an hour and know that it was done properly.

Just because I have some tools and have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done, it doesn't make me a mechanic.

You're asking a very, very basic question about mastering. My answer was to let you know that. As Michael mentioned, you do what you need to do. No one can just "tell you" what it needs.

I don't assume you don't know - You listed a bunch of things, etc., etc. But if you don't know then you'll probably be better served going to someone who does. If you want to experiment, you need to be prepared to be stranded on the side of the road. That's fine on your own bike. But not on 10 other people's bikes.

Suspended Joined: Mar 05, 2008 Posts: 24 Location: Ohio

For the most part I agree with the other guys , but there are some certain things that must be done.

1. On your pre masters you should be hitting an average of -11 db or better, this is so you can have enough volume in your track so that you dont have to squash the crap out of it when it hits the final mastering stage.

2. have an out ceiling of 0 db on your final master, this is so your music doesn't distort and if its digital you need to be even more cautious on this end of things because .01 db over will cause a harsh harsh distortion in the recording which would be defeating the whole purpose of mastering.

3. If you are recording in 24 bit or anything higher than 16 bit, you will need to dither down your track to 16 bit. This is so you dont loose your sound quality from 24 bit or something like that, haha, I just use it cause I know your supposed to.

4. 100% of the time you'll need a limiter to get the song pumping enough volume into your 0 db ceiling that you set up, along with a good multi- band compression to even the mix out a little.

But like the others guys said, theres no way to know exactly what you need to do on a mastering job , every master is different in terms of what needs to happen in order to make it an industry standard.

I hope I helped out a little, I will admit, I am not a pro at mastering, but I think my masters sound as good as any one elses.

Thanks,
Joshua

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 1:55 am

Heey Joshua, many thanks on such reply! Smile

That's something I expected to find as answer! Thumbs Up

Guys, but maybe I was not clear enough. I will receive finished mixes of the songs, so I'm not allowed to change anything on them! I just need to put all 10 on one cdr as pre-master for the factory. So, there could only be matter of different tracks levels and what else? That was my question. Thanks in advance!

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:15 am

joshuarecordingstudios wrote:

4. 100% of the time you'll need a limiter to get the song pumping enough volume into your 0 db ceiling that you set up, along with a good multi- band compression to even the mix out a little.

Oh boy. Here it comes. Expect backlash. Not only is this wrong. It's a pet peeve of a lot of people here.

JimC: You shouldn't ask a question if you have expectations in regards to the answer. The only answer you should expect is a good one. Whatever that may be. You got several good ones and one that you expected. Just because it was the answer you wanted does not make it right. For that matter, if you had predetermined the answer you wanted in your mind, why bother asking at all?

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 10:01 am

JimC:
The EQ on each track might need adjusted to be more consistent, you can compress each a little bit to get the volume consistent too, but besides that you make any assumptions until you have the tracks.

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 5:40 pm

hueseph wrote:

joshuarecordingstudios wrote:

4. 100% of the time you'll need a limiter to get the song pumping enough volume into your 0 db ceiling that you set up, along with a good multi- band compression to even the mix out a little.

Oh boy. Here it comes.

I have issues with 3, 2 & 1 also.

100% of the time, a limiter, eh? Rolling Eyes

Anyway -- What's the point of ANY of this if:

Quote:

I will receive finished mixes of the songs, so I'm not allowed to change anything on them! I just need to put all 10 on one cdr as pre-master for the factory.

Are you not allowed to change anything? Volume would be a change - Especially if it's down to meet the quietest tune (which is valid, but it's still a change). EQ is certainly change. Any dynamics processing is change. Limiting is change. Ramming a converter is change. Maul-the-band compression certainly is change.

Heads & tails, consistent (or at least "appropriate") head frames, clean up the fades, appropriate spacing and a compliant burn would fall into the "close to a flat transfer" definition.

Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 5:06 am

I think what's being asked is just for a basic mastering chain, i.e. the first four or five things you do to every track, regardless of how they sound, to get them that first 75% of the way there, and then you go on to these amazingly intricate, track specific tricks that all of you masters (no sarcasm or puns intended) have. For example, and I know absolutely nothing, it would be
"well first I listen through and analyze where X & Y are, and then I go back and put Z & Q on top of those spots, then I hit it all with a Dinglflap (don't let me lose you with technical terms), and listen again. Then a quick pass with a whatchamawhoogle, and another listen. Then when it still needs sparkle I go back and..." and BAM!
Your track is 10x better than before - not done, not by any stretch of the imagination, but a hell of a lot better than what's already been done. Actually, this has been one of my questions too...

Now I know, there's going to be a lot of "You can't do it like that, you have to take each track seperately, and then take each album as a whole" but come on, there's got to be something that you always do, just as a first try, without even thinking about it. And if that just isn't done, then what would you do if you had to do something like that?

Hope this works, and I didn't duplicate a post or ignore the answer that's right in front of me

Nathan

- Be sure to check out Berlin's only true Kentucky Bluegrass picker @ www.nathankentucky.com ! -

Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 1:06 pm

Quote:

Now I know, there's going to be a lot of "You can't do it like that, you have to take each track seperately, and then take each album as a whole" but come on, there's got to be something that you always do, just as a first try, without even thinking about it.

Absolutely, positively not.

The first thing you do is listen. That's it. You don't know [SELF-CENSORED] from shine-ola until you do.

When you listen, you either know what it needs, or you don't.

You should... Otherwise, you're just experimenting. And experimenting is great for messing with a new piece of gear, but if you can't listen to a recording and think "This could use a little more 400" or "that's a little heavy around 3k" or "There's a 15.8k video whine on this track" then you need to work on your listening skills. I don't wake up and say "I'm going to make sure that I use the Vari-Mu today... I'm not going to low cut something that doesn't need it, I'm not going to run it through something without a specific purpose - And the mix is going to tell me what the purpose is - Not me.

There is nothing that I "always do" except making sure everything is bypassed when I listen to something I haven't heard.

Quote:

And if that just isn't done, then what would you do if you had to do something like that?

I refer to my previous... You can't do something like that. Anyone who says he does doesn't know what he's doing (or he has really bad monitors or a really bad room).

The only thing I can be reasonably certain of is that nothing is ever certain.

Now, if for some (very) odd reason someone came in and said "I want you to decide the chain (not the settings, just the chain) before you hear any of this -- Pick a D-A, an EQ, a compressor, an A-D and just make it work" then I could probably get away with that (it'd be the "Crane Chain" - which can handle probably 75% of what I get in here). But I surely wouldn't want to my options limited before I hear what the project needs... That'd be irresponsible.

And yes - It cracks me up with some of these "mastering" (you can almost feel the sarcasm) sites that say "First, we'll run it through our (probably cracked, probably Waves) multi-band compressor to give it that really "big" sound - Then, we'll run it through a tube compressor to give it a nice, warm, analog tone (as if tubes have anything at all to do with adding "warmth" to sound) and then, we'll run it through a brick-wall limiter to make it really loud.

This was why the whole concept of the TC Wizard Finalizer was so ridiculous. It wasn't the worst sounding tool at the time, but it would claim to "analyze" the audio (at least it tried to "analyze" it before it would butcher it) and then make some guess as to what settings it needed. *That's* what made it a joke (even to those of us who used them with our ears).

Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 1:37 pm

My wife and daughter like to watch the TV show Designed To Sell. I've decided that it's a pretty good analogy for mastering. You know, the house is already built. Usually pretty nice. But there are a whole bunch of things that the homeowners have been overlooking after having lived in the house for years. A realtor comes in and tells them how to fix the place up so it will sell.

The aspect of the show that is relevant to the current discussion is that every house is different. They don't have some cookbook formula. They look at each house and see what it needs. Yeah a lot of places can do with a fresh coat of pain in the entryway, but no one pops open a paint can before actually looking at the house. The key to the whole process is someone with a really sharp eye and no emotional attachment to the project comes in and tells them how to show off the best features and eliminate the bad ones.

Suspended Joined: Mar 05, 2008 Posts: 24 Location: Ohio

I agree with ya Massive Mastering, on the listening and then seeing what it needs. There’s a new plug called har - bal that is amazing at analyzing your eq curve and allowing you to compare with other commercial masters just to see where you stand in comparison. They claim that you can adjust your eq curve to exact and it will sound the same, but it’s not true. I have found it suitable for comparison though, works very well if your ears don’t lol! By the way, I guess you could just use a waves PAZ or something to analyze, but those plugs don’t let you compare with an overlay curve.

Good Stuff
Laughing

Suspended Joined: Mar 05, 2008 Posts: 24 Location: Ohio

JIM C, Ok, Lets SEE! To make your tracks all the same level with out changing anything you will need to import the tracks intro either Sony’s sound forge or any recording sequencer you may use. Make sure that you don’t change the bit or sample rates on import and export.

Once you get the song in the program all at the same time, play each song and watch your master out meter, you should have your meter set to hold peak for ever, this way it will show you the max level of the song when you play the song from beginning to end. Do this to all of your tracks and write down the peak results. Then factor those numbers in to each channel strip and you should get the same volume on every song.

Another way you can do this is to use statistics! Simply right click the wave file (I use Cubase) and go to statistics. This will give you a read out of all the statistics of the songs, once you have those numbers you can adjust accordingly.

Hope I helped this time. It seems kind of odd that they only want you to even out the song levels, because if the mix is done proper, usually that gets it pretty close.

Thanks,
Joshua

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 5:59 am

joshuarecordingstudios wrote:

play each song and watch your master out meter, you should have your meter set to hold peak for ever, this way it will show you the max level of the song when you play the song from beginning to end. Do this to all of your tracks and write down the peak results. Then factor those numbers in to each channel strip and you should get the same volume on every song.

This is wrong on many different levels.

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 7:59 am

Joshuarecordingstudios is giving out bad suggestions in this forum as well
http://www.recording.org/ftopic-46121-90-days0-orderasc-.html

Joshua

If you can you should ask the place where you learned audio engineering/recording/mastering to give you your money back as they taught you all the wrong things. If this is all self taught then you should go somewhere and find out the correct way of doing things. This is not a flame but a simple suggestion. When you post on a forum where there are people who make their living off doing audio and they are telling you that you don't know what you are doing you SHOULD listen to them.

I think it is GREAT that you want to share your knowledge with others it is too bad that it is NOT the kind of knowledge that will help someone to do a better job. It may get them more confused than they already are or may lead them to do stuff to their material that is going to do more harm than good.

Honestly the best thing you could do right now is admit you are wrong, read what others are saying and stop posting wrong information. Just because YOU believe it true does not make it true. To quote an old phrase "Cogito, ergo sum" (Latin: "I think, therefore I am") does NOT work in this situation.

You are coming off more like a kid than someone who says "I have been in the recording industry for the past 11 years asking my self the same questions everyone else does when they begin recording bands and such." If you truly have been in the audio business for that long then I think you should have spent more time learning and less time talking. Again this is NOT a flame but a suggestion. When you start giving others advice then you should really know what it is that you are talking about.

Enough said. Wink

By the way if you want to go to someone who truly is a GREAT mastering engineer you should drive to Cincinnati and go to Dave Davis at Sound Images. He really does know what he is talking about. Here is some things about him and he does not work that far from you. http://www.soundimages.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/PWDA.woa/wa/page?id=6457

FWIW

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:41 am

Am I in a bad mood, or is this rightly pissing me off.

Joshua wrote:

1. On your pre masters you should be hitting an average of -11 db or better, this is so you can have enough volume in your track so that you dont have to squash the crap out of it when it hits the final mastering stage.

If you're hitting -11dB on your mix stage, there's no room for growth at your mastering stage. If you do make it louder from here, you ARE squashing the crap out of it at your mastering stage.

Joshua wrote:

2. have an out ceiling of 0 db on your final master, this is so your music doesn't distort and if its digital you need to be even more cautious on this end of things because .01 db over will cause a harsh harsh distortion in the recording which would be defeating the whole purpose of mastering.

No. Several output buffers of CD players don't understand all 111111111s. (0.0dBFS) and will translate these into clipping. It's generally a good idea to keep your mix to -0.1 dBFS.

Joshua wrote:

3. If you are recording in 24 bit or anything higher than 16 bit, you will need to dither down your track to 16 bit. This is so you dont loose your sound quality from 24 bit or something like that, haha, I just use it cause I know your supposed to.

If you don't know what dithering is or why to use it, then you have no reason to be posting advice on a Mastering board.

Joshua wrote:

4. 100% of the time you'll need a limiter to get the song pumping enough volume into your 0 db ceiling that you set up, along with a good multi- band compression to even the mix out a little.

Okay....NOT.
Multi-band compressors have little to no place in Mastering. They are, to me, an indicator of one who professes to know how to master but truly has no clue.

Joshua wrote:

I hope I helped out a little, I will admit, I am not a pro at mastering, but I think my masters sound as good as any one elses.

No. I've listened to your MySpace page. If those are examples of your mastering, than you've insulted the profession.

JimC wrote:

Heey Joshua, many thanks on such reply! That's something I expected to find as answer! Guys, but maybe I was not clear enough. I will receive finished mixes of the songs, so I'm not allowed to change anything on them! I just need to put all 10 on one cdr as pre-master for the factory. So, there could only be matter of different tracks levels and what else? That was my question. Thanks in advance!

This speaks volumes JimC. You trash the advice from a true professional and then laud the advice of a boob.

If you're not allowed to change anything on them, then your hands are tied.

90% of the mastering work I receive comes in final mix format with tracks on a CD where they want the levels adjusted. But then, you listen and on one track there's a HUGE presence between 300Hz and 800Hz and on others, there's way too much at 2kHz on the guitars, etc.

The album must be treated as a whole and must be cohesive or it's merely a collection of crap.

BasilBowman wrote:

I think what's being asked is just for a basic mastering chain, i.e. the first four or five things you do to every track, regardless of how they sound, to get them that first 75% of the way there, and then you go on to these amazingly intricate, track specific tricks that all of you masters (no sarcasm or puns intended) have. For example, and I know absolutely nothing, it would be
"well first I listen through and analyze where X & Y are, and then I go back and put Z & Q on top of those spots, then I hit it all with a Dinglflap (don't let me lose you with technical terms), and listen again. Then a quick pass with a whatchamawhoogle, and another listen. Then when it still needs sparkle I go back and..." and BAM!
Your track is 10x better than before - not done, not by any stretch of the imagination, but a hell of a lot better than what's already been done. Actually, this has been one of my questions too...

Okay - so here's the problem. If someone actually answers this question, they show their inability to actually adapt to a track's needs.

I guess this is a good litmus test. If they answer this - they don't know what they're doing...

Joshua wrote:

I agree with ya Massive Mastering, on the listening and then seeing what it needs. There’s a new plug called har - bal that is amazing at analyzing your eq curve and allowing you to compare with other commercial masters just to see where you stand in comparison. They claim that you can adjust your eq curve to exact and it will sound the same, but it’s not true. I have found it suitable for comparison though, works very well if your ears don’t lol! By the way, I guess you could just use a waves PAZ or something to analyze, but those plugs don’t let you compare with an overlay curve.

Good Stuff

Oh God. Please help me.

Joshua wrote:

JIM C, Ok, Lets SEE! To make your tracks all the same level with out changing anything you will need to import the tracks intro either Sony’s sound forge or any recording sequencer you may use. Make sure that you don’t change the bit or sample rates on import and export.

Once you get the song in the program all at the same time, play each song and watch your master out meter, you should have your meter set to hold peak for ever, this way it will show you the max level of the song when you play the song from beginning to end. Do this to all of your tracks and write down the peak results. Then factor those numbers in to each channel strip and you should get the same volume on every song.

Another way you can do this is to use statistics! Simply right click the wave file (I use Cubase) and go to statistics. This will give you a read out of all the statistics of the songs, once you have those numbers you can adjust accordingly.

Hope I helped this time. It seems kind of odd that they only want you to even out the song levels, because if the mix is done proper, usually that gets it pretty close.

Thanks,
Joshua

This is called normalizing.

And it's a bass-ackwards way of doing it.

Seriously - if I continue here, I'm going to wind up buying a plane ticket to Ohio and packing my pimp-slapping hand.

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:09 am

its ok Jeremy, you're not in a bad mood or going crazy or having a bad day. I felt the same way when I read that stuff, but I'd already read your post, so I was able to smile a little. Just a little!

Save the plane ticket, save your hand for something more important. Idiots who post this kind of misinformation are exactly why the state of mastering is what it is: too much DIY by people who have no clue. Twisted Evil

There was a time, long long ago, when bad mastering resulted in un-printable vinyl product. It just wouldn't make it past the mastering engineer's lathe; it got sent back to the mix engineer.

With recordable CDs on every computer desktop and sold in every GC center store, any idiot can "master" a disc, make lots of copies, and call it finished, putting it out there as product. There's no one to stop them, and the vicious cycle continues.

The good guys are still out there, but one has to look deeper and harder, avoiding the hacks.

Evil or Very Mad