Mastering Equipment, do I have crap? What does everyone use?

[covenant66]

For "real" mastering, what is everyone using? I do mastering and everyone says that I don't use "real" equipment, although I constantly hear that what I use has been used for major recordings. Also, I have never had a complaint from any of my customers.

- I use the Blue Sky Pro Desk Monitors (i've heard of several movies and grammy award winning albums done on these monitors, so why aren't they "real"?). I'm sure everyone has their preferences but what is so horrible about these? Are the claims of Blue Sky pure fraud?

- I use the Apogee Rosetta 200. I constantly hear that tons of people use the UV22 for dithering, they even put it on the front of the new re-mastered Eric Clapton CD. I know that Prisms and Lavry's are better, but are Apogee's now crap and un-usable for mastering? Are all the claims on the Apogee website just fraudulent marketing?

- I use the Focusrite Liquid Channel as a pre, but not much during mastering.

- I use Sequoia, but of course, that doesn't make one bit of difference in the sound quality, I shouldn't even really mention it.

- I use a UA - LA2A for compression sometimes, sometimes I use plug-ins.

- I use the Waves Diamond Bundle Plugins, and a ton of others (PSP, antares, etc.). I hate to say it because I know the lauding of a plug-in is nearly sacrelidge on here, but I often use the LinMB and LinEQ, they sound the best to me out of everything Waves makes.

Ok, so what should I replace? Do I have anything I should keep? If you use any plug-ins does that automatically make you a BS mastering engineer?

It's a prevailing notion that it is the ears and experience of the ME, but if you use the gear I use, is it no longer the ears, is it then automatically going to be crap? What is the deal? This is in response to a separate post on here, and an recent email I received, where everyone seems to slam me for the equipment I use.

What do you use for mastering? Monitors, EQ, Compression, AD/DA, and other processing (stereo widening, etc.).

[saemskin]

I'm certain others can be more clear about this, but I can tell by the way you are wording your question that you dont really understand what Mastering is. I mean, a preamp is used for recording and imo has diddly to do with mastering, so why list it.
Wait a bit and they'll be along shortly.

For mastering, I would consider an outside Mastering Studio, like Massive Mastering. 8-)

[Cucco]

Well, that's a fair question.

My only detracting point is that you seem to have purchased gear based on what others have done with it instead of purchasing because of a decision which you made.

For example, the Blue Skies - I'm sure some great mixes have been done on these, but I shudder to think of them as an accurate mastering monitor. I've had the pleasure of working with the Blue Skies (and I do mean pleasure, as they are great monitors in their own rights), but I would never use them to master. They simply don't have the dynamics and power needed. They tend to compress when pushed and they lack the openess required by a good mastering grade loudspeaker.

I hesitate to use my Dynaudio BM15s as mastering monitors (and therefore rarely if ever do). I rely on a full range pair (NHT 2.5i's) with some serious power behind them and a huge space to allow them to open up. Oh, and of course, a well-treated room.

As for the Apogee - no bones there. Generally a fine unit. Again, I wouldn't have purchased it simply because hits were made with it. If I were going for the finest AD/DA's available, I would choose:

Lavry Gold
Mytek
Genex
Prism
EMM (Meitner)

but the Apogee is just fine.

The Liquid Channel has no place in mastering, but you seem to understand that.

As for plugs - they're not evil, if they're used correctly.

The bane of all plug-ins is the concept of presets. These are what make plug-ins evil. In fact, the Waves plugs and plugs by algorithmix and others are quite fine.

Sequoia - NICE choice. I am in the camp of people who believe that DAW choice DOES make a difference in sound. I believe Sequoia and Sadie are the finest available. Not only that, the workflow in Sequoia lends itself quite well to mastering.

The LA-2A is a great comp, but it's a little limited in what it can do. It would probably work on occassional mastering sessions, but I wouldn't default to it as my main comp.

So, to answer your final question - what do I use to master:

Sequoia
MIT Interconnects
Lynx AES 16
Lynx Aurora 8
NHT 2.5i monitors
REL Storm 3 Subwoofer
Rotel Amplification
Ears...
Sequoia's Advanced dynamics (one of my favorite limiters that I've used yet)
ART ProVLA (Hot-rodded - so far, I've replaced all the OpAmps, all of the capacitors and the tubes with Mullards - now a FAR better unit. Upgrades only cost me about $500. I'm still working on replacing the Pots with detented switches)
Summit 2BA-221 Line amplifier (only when needed - can add a lot of openess, but adds a lot of flavor too).
Waves LP EQs
Waves compression (Never multiband)

Soon to buy the UAD card.

J.

[covenant66]

What is CD mastering then? I would like to expand my knowledge if I genuinely am way off. Normally when I do what I call mastering (which I have done for the guitarist for public enemy, the allman brothers live saxophonist's own band, the live drummer for elton john's live band, and others), I:

- Listen to a CD that the client has told me that they like, and see what is going on with it (RMS/Peaks, EQ, stereo spread, etc.)

- Listen to the client's CD to see how it flows, make notes on what I hear so I can get to them quickly and in context of the whole CD.

- Listen to the track to see what it needs

- Sometimes (and sparingly) use compression (rarely), eq (often), spatial imaging (somewhat often), limiting (often but again, i'm not a squasher) and other tools to adjust for any issues I hear.

- Dither the track so I can convert it to 16bit using UV22.

- Burn it to CD.

I know this is pretty general, but to limit the length of this, I'm not going to go into how I analyze tracks. This is what I consider a pretty normal mastering process.

[covenant66]

My equipment selections were based on my preferences, but I said what I said because it's verifiable and not just based on my own word.

I personally have not had any bad experiences with the Blue Skies, and everything always does translate well. As you know, it has alot to do with the time you've spent listening to a monitoring system as well, and I have heard these for a great many hours now.

I already knew about the compression also, like I said, I dont use it very often.

So is it only the monitors I use that makes the Internet masses call my setup crap? Despite countless recordings being mastered on my type of monitors every day (including the film, "Monster's Inc.").

[pr0gr4m]

Let me start by saying that I couldn't master my way out of a paper bag.

To me, mastering has always been a dark art. There's equipment out there that mastering engineers use that I've never heard of, wouldn't know how to use, and would not be able to find in any music store. In the rare cases where I have found out what they are using, it's usually something that costs more money than what I would make in 10 years. On top of that, the engineers are like magicians. They have this secret knowledge and these "tricks" and they guard them very closely and they never tell anyone what they are.

Now, before I make this next statement, understand that I do not think your equipment is crap.

From my standpoint and belief of what I think mastering (and mastering equipment) is, if you were to give me your equipment list for what you use for mastering, I might think that what you have is crap because it's just a bunch of stuff that i've heard of and could pick up at my local guitar shack.

So, if other people feel like I do concerning mastering, I can see where they might think that what you have is crap.
They, like me, probably have little or no idea what is involved in mastering and don't know enough to qualify what they are saying.

If I were you, when someone said something like that to me, I would ask them to be specific with what they think is crap and what they would replace it with. Then you'ld have better idea of where they are coming from.

[Michael Fossenkemper]

I don't know if you really want to hear what people think or if you are just looking for people to agree with you. First, you have to be objective.

[Massive Mastering]

I'm pretty confused here myself... :?

[covenant66]

So you need to know my motivation in order to answer the questions? That one is pretty confusing to me.

Well, I sincerely just don't understand what is going on. People tell me my setup is pure crap in nearly every post, don't support it with any information, and there is a resulting confusion on my part because of it.

Whatever my motivation is doesn't really matter I wouldn't think, I'm just posing some questions to find what the general opinion is on whether or not the equipment I use is capable of producing good quality masters.

Depending on the quality of the answers, I might try some alternatives if they coincide with my financial ability or I will completely postpone taking on mastering clients.

Of course, if someone tells me that I need to spend $40,000 on all new equipment, it's just not going to work for me. But if I really have spent my equipment budget ignorantly (which I have heard over and over on here, even from Cucco on a prior post), I'd surely like to know why, and what the alternatives are. If I could ebay some of my current equipment and get something that would work better, and that point could be illustrated well, then there is no way I wouldn't do that.

Otherwise, i'm going to consider my setup to be sufficent at my investment level, and the next time I hear that my setup is pure crap, I'm not going to worry about it.

If you considered yourself decent at mastering, charge people for it, and every time you posted in a forum of professional Mastering Engineers, everyone said your setup was pure crap, and only capable of generating crap, wouldn't you want to get a consensus as to why that is?

I certainly dont want to cheat my customers into paying me for crap that only I perceive to be a good mastering job. Although I have never had a complaint to date, and have done over 100 mastering jobs in the past year, I don't want to taint my name for any future mastering that I could possibly grow into doing, if I am in fact doing pure crap now.

So I guess my motivation is dual: either to grow; or to eliminate unneeded future attention placed on unwarranted negative comments.

[Massive Mastering]

People tell me my setup is pure crap in nearly every post, don't support it with any information, and there is a resulting confusion on my part because of it.

If you're getting the results your clients want consistently, who cares?

There are people who give me crap about some of my gear choices also... My speakers - I like the "M" 802's as I find them just slightly "less forgiving" than the "N" 802's. Some guys agree with me totally about that. Others give me crap about it and tell me that I'm nuts.

I've got a $300 Art Pro VLA in a rack with gear that I couldn't get a set of replacement knobs for at that price. I can't tell you how many interesting and colorful comments I've gotten about that one... Point being that no matter what you're using, someone is always using something newer, better, more expensive or what not. And some of those guys will voice their opinions about it with a certain zeal.

But in the end, the only people that you really need to impress are the people who are keeping your bills paid. If you're happy with what you're using, and they're happy with the final product, that's all that should matter.

There's a lot of "hard heads" out there - To a point, I'm one of them also. I'm a hardware junkie turned software junkie turned born-again hardware junkie. But I certainly don't hold anything against anyone who has a different view.

Except the pirated software guys... They can burn for all I care... :lol: