This belongs on the front page and not in the forums.

Hi cosmic , welcome to recording.org.

We don't allow self promotion on the forums. We have a promotion for the mastering engineers right now, a free spotlight page for you. You need to provide us with a picture of your studio and setup with the article. If you can do this, I will publish it for you.

Your thread here will be removed shortly.

Hey, the online ME business is something we are are interested in, and something I am going to promote more for the guys here. We would love to hear a track example! Can you post an A/B for us?

Hello, we are still waiting for you to reply?

That guy spammed half the 'net that day. I wouldn't expect him to be a 'regular contributor' any time soon...

Come to think of it, I don't recall seeing him again on any of the forums he posted at...

Oh geez - Did I just end a sentence with a preposition? Where did that stupid rule come from...

Damn, I was hoping we could have gotten the start to a good one finally. Where there is one, there is more...
I'll actually leave this up as an example to where we are going with this.

Cosmic Online Mastering testimonial

There seems to be an increase in online mastering engineers. Some buy a DAW, add some plugins and their off to online mastering.
I haven't heard examples from this OP (too bad he didn't come back to prove he was the real deal) but some of the examples I have heard from "the new online ME" are nothing short of terrible, and its a growing concern. Cheesy Maximizer's added to tracks and they call it Mastering.

Leaving this thread up, it will get indexed and be a testimonial link to others doing a credibility search on Cosmic Online Mastering. The OP never returned back here to prove he/she was the real deal. Posting this claim on an international web site with a history of world class ME takes some balls lol. If they don't return, I'd caution anyone.
I looked at Cosmic Online Mastering site and gear list, which looked impressive but why didn't they return back here after their spam post. Its easy to create a website, question is, lets hear an example.:rolleyes:

audiokid, post: 348335 wrote: There seems to be an increase in online mastering engineers. Some buy a DAW, add some plugins and their off to online mastering.
I haven't heard examples from this OP (too bad he didn't come back to prove he was the real deal) but some of the examples I have heard from "the new online ME" are nothing short of terrible, and its a growing concern. Cheesy Maximizer's added to tracks and they call it Mastering.

Leaving this thread up, it will get indexed and be a testimonial link to others doing a credibility search on Cosmic Online Mastering. The OP never returned back here to prove he/she was the real deal. Posting this claim on an international web site with a history of world class ME takes some balls lol. If they don't return, I'd caution anyone.
I looked at Cosmic Online Mastering site and gear list, which looked impressive but why didn't they return back here after their spam post. Its easy to create a website, question is, lets hear an example.:rolleyes:

I think that by leaving person's advertising up you are going to get more and more people doing the same thing and it is going to turn into a Mastering Pimping forum but it is your web board and your decision.

Hi Thomas,

We won't allow that to happen and pimping has never been tolerated in the 11 years I've been running this board. We/I have been leaders in controlling forum spam long before there were all the others forums. Its why I got rid of the pimp dealers and shills back in 2004. If you recall me imposing pay to view RO and all the politics that was around us and PSW and GS and TT. It was to get rig of pimps and shills, mostly.
That being said, this is an excellent opportunity for the ME to talk about the specific concerns around posing as legitimate ME now. Its a new generation of ME trying to make money with cheesy plug-ins and ITB mastering tools. ME could use this as an opportunity, now, to talk about the differences between authentic Mastering ( is there authentic?) and the real deal, guys that don't ruin your songs.
I would like to see this topic grow and I will eventually link our educational Mastering bogus site with our audio clips examples of A/B showing the differences between posers and the real deal. ( like I've been talking about in VIPME).
I would eventually split all content built/discussed here away from the OP, delete the OP and we will have the making of what we are wanting to disclose and educate for our readers benefit.
Does this make sense?

If not... if I don't soon see an interest, I will simply not waste my time trying to help segregate ITB Mastering from high end. We'll still control the pimping here but I will let it run its evolutionary course and put my energy into the other area's of audio. I'm seeing the entire ME business go this direction and we most likely aren't going to stop it even if we try. Sound is degrading all over the planet and soon the majority will not know the difference or care about spending the money when they can do it themselves. Is it right, no, but its what's happening IMHO. An the ME are sitting around letting it all happen. For the last few years, you guys never reach out to the newbies or other forums. Its strange to me.

I'm betting that there will be an ITB plugin that you run all the music through this and it comes out the other side, Mastered. All corners of the world, everything will sound the same. I'm thinking I already have half of that setup in my studio right now. Hybrid DAWs
:rolleyes:

Ok here is what is a happening to me and others...

When I started into business 15 years ago I was the only full time mastering operation in this area. I am still the only full time mastering operation in this area but there are so many people and studios offering "mastering" it has grown into a giant free for all. People think that they are getting their stuff mastered when the recording studio straps a two track compressor and limiter across the 2 mix bus or when the recording studio runs everything though some "magic" plug in that "It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries" of their material and makes it super LOUD which is what all most clients seem to want today. (I am really surprised that Ron Popiel, founder of RONCO, doesn't make such a plug-in.) Then we have the people that have a couple of cracked plug-ins, a computer, some WAREZ mastering programs and a couple of computer speakers who offer their "services" on the WWW for $5 to $15.00 per song. Most clients still really don't understand what mastering is all about and somehow think that they are getting real "mastering" from these fly by night scam artist but what they are getting is so badly mangled that the next time when they need mastering they are probably going to forgo it altogether or try and do it themselves. Then of course we have the person who goes to GC and buys $1000.00 of equipment or uses what he or she already has, goes in to his or her home "studio" (his basement or bedroom), never cracks a operator's manual, hangs a sign outside his door and on the WWW saying "mastering done here" and waits for the unsuspecting clients to "give me a call". When artist go to these places and get work done it usually sounds terrible then they decide that "maybe I should go to a real mastering facility" and they call me or some other professional on this forum. Of course by now they are out of time and out of money but they want us to take what they just spent a sizable amount of money on and turn it into gold. I feel so sorry for these artist but honestly there is not much I can do at this point. They wanted to get "something for nothing" and instead got "nothing for something". When I tell them that there is not much I can do except start over they get upset. Some of these scam artist charge a hefty amount for their mucking about. They really don't have a clue as to what they are doing but that does not seem to matter when it comes to charging for their "services".

When I started into business mastering was still an art and a science done by a few professional mastering engineers but has since become something done by many who lack the experience, the equipment, the monitoring environment and the ethics to do it well. Most of these newbie "mastering engineers" only seem to know how to make everything super loud which definitely NOT what mastering is all about.

These are just some of the reasons that many good mastering engineers are getting upset at what they see happening. The profession is being over run with hacks and with people that don't really know much but think they do. Some of these hacks go on forums such as this and tell the whole world how GREAT they are. How they have mastered everyone from ABBA to Frank Zappa and how they have all this amazing equipment (which they never seem to have pictures of on their website) and tell everyone that they have found some new form of "snake oil" that only they can use to master the artists material. If someone challenges them and their "snake oil" claim they get upset and start posting all kinds of drivel and false accusations.

IMHO this is NOT a great time to be a professional mastering engineer.

I'm pretty skeptical about your analysis of the effect of the "slice and dice" mastering houses. My guess is that the real competition for quality mastering houses is other quality mastering houses. The fact is that even a high end mastering house is a relatively inexpensive business to start. You don't need a lot of space, it doesn't have to be in an expensive area, much of the equipment has a slow depreciation rate, the marginal costs are very small. Basically, any thrifty person who knows what they are doing can strike out on their own after they know the business.

And it seems to me that any reasonably educated consumer can easily separate middling quality from the hacks. Anyone who has skimmed a few issues of Mix magazine can tell the difference between a high end mastering house and GC special or a low end studio with a Waves Mastering bundle.

However, with all that said, there are a lot of fools out there spending their money with the hacks. But it seems to me that very few of them really need the services of a real pro. There is a lot of poor source material out there that really can't be saved. Just go the to the evaluation forums and there are plenty of examples. There is a lot of stuff out there where making it louder is about the only thing that anyone can do. Not only is there no artistic reason for a professional job, there is no financial reason for one. These disks are not destined for critical listening. They are souvenirs sold to fans at gigs or they are vanity projects. You can try to make a case for disks that will be used as audition disks for labels or schools - but do you really want to risk your career with a label or school that doesn't know enough to turn up a volume knob or ignore HVAC noise? My guess is that the hacks get hack clients, and a real pro can't do much more for them than the hack can.

^^^^^^^^

I guess I can see your points but...

We did a couple of shoot outs recently. On one of them the material coming in sounded good and was well recorded. I spent some time on the project (an 11 minute song took about 2 hours of mastering with the client present) and then the client takes the fully mastered piece and two days later he writes me an email saying that his recording engineer just bought some "mastering plug-ins" and decided that he wanted to do the mastering himself. So the net effect was two hours lost and the client used my mastering as a guide for their mastering attempt. That is one reason I don't like to do shootouts. I have decided that if someone wants me to do a shoot out as an attended session they are going to pay for the time and IF they decide to go with me I will roll the price into the final project. The other shoot out was for the same person who wanted me to do some restoration of an old record and IF he liked the restoration he would pay me. Sorry but fool me once etc etc.

I really don't agree that a high end mastering studio is inexpensive to start or maintain if you are doing things right. We have a lot of money invested in our physical plant and equipment and we are always adding to it. I think today to start up a professional mastering operation you are probably talking $150,000 for the room and for the speakers, amplifiers and control equipment and that is being very 'thrifty". Then you have the cost of the mastering grade equipment which can be very expensive. A good mastering setup is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. Rents in our town for 1000 square feet are about $1000 per month and if you are in a business district with your windows and doors facing main street the rents are about $2500 t0 $3000 a month. Not cheap in my way of thinking. Then on top of everything else you have utilities, insurance and alarm fees and you are talking some serious money per month just to keep the doors open.

I do agree that many projects done today will never reach the mass markets and whether they are vanity projects or done for family and friends if they are brought to me I try and do a really good professional job on them. If they want they stuff butchered and just made LOUDER then they probably should take it elsewhere. Many people still believe that by waving his or her magic wand a mastering engineer can take something that is marginal at best and make it sound fully professional. That seems to be what a lot of the people, who don't know any better, want done.

Good topic for discussion.

definitely not cheap to get a room going if you are trying to make a mark. I spent more on my monitoring than a lot of people put for a down payment on a house. What is interesting is that someone thinks it's a good idea to spam a mastering forum with cheap online mastering. Is it competition? well yes and no. what it does do is turn people off, they become skeptical about the whole process. My clients are mostly working labels, bands, film companies. They really don't have time to "try" some unproven entity. Who it does affect are the new bands, they hear about someone mastering a project for very little money, they're broke to begin with. 70/30 chance they'll go with a tried and true place but some try the cheap route. The drummer has a 50/50 chance of doing a better job. I lose those kind of gigs to places like this. It's a shame really because it's the new bands that need the most help. Word of mouth is really the best form of advertisement. spamming a mastering forum is about as desperate as one can get.

Hi, Why hasn´t this been deleted?