There is no black box to buy that is going to achieve this. It's all just practice and experience. You have a basic set of tools to do a nice job. you just need to slowly add to this. I've always been a big fan of getting a great pair of monitors before you buy anything, or at least a good pair that fits your budget at the time. Then just keep banging your head against the wall until you finally knock it down. Be sure to buy some aspirin too because it's a long road and you'll always be looking to get to the next level of greatness.

thanks michael i really appreciate the response...

i've goat a decent rig. decent studio monitors. understand the basics of mastering. know how to use the various plug ins. what i'm looking for is what process do you take. when you can put any plugin in any order. normalize, gain boost to clip peaks ect. there are many options.

imagine as a pro mastering engineer being put on your own personal fear factor episode with just a daw like wavelab 4 how would you try and get a totally pro product.

i'm also wondering about the order of things, do you compress a bit before you eq? do you eq before you compress? do you use digital limiting to achieve max level. or are all of these things different depending on the project.

anybody can muck around with something like wavelab 4 and do things to change the sound and make it louder, but i'm sure there is an order of things that is effective, a process of from point a to point b that pros use regardless of the gear.

any advice would be totaly worshipped and used

My personal benchmark for mastering monitoring is that it needs to be good enough that I can always tell when to leave something alone! I also consider the D to A converter a very critical part of a monitoring system for mastering.

Other than that, most of us find with experience that less is usually more. Simple eq., fader moves and some kind of peak limiter will handle almost anything provided you can hear what you are doing and have enough time to get it right. Exotic compressors can speed up the process a great deal but they will also degrade the sound quality so you need to really have a handle on it being worth it.

And that brings us right back around to the quality of the monitoring system!

Bob,
I was asked to master a tune for some clients once. It was already mixed and burned to a CDR master @ 44.1. Despite my suggestion that they take it to a pro they insisted I do it. They wanted it LOUD! So I borrowed a TC Finalizer and set out to do my task. It seemed with the Finalizer, each time I performed an additional process, the sound quality degraded. I was using the external fader package for riding levels, eqing, multi band comping and a small amount of "normalizing". The normalizer was the worst offender. Have you experienced this with DAW mastering? I ended up converting back to analog and doing the mastering processing through Manley and UREI comps and 9098 eq's and re-sampeling. It sounded much better that way. Any opinions? ....Fats

Well that finalizer IS pretty notorious!

Each additional bit of math definitely costs resolution. If you are working digitally, I think you need to choose your weapons very carefully and you really need to be able to hear the tradeoffs as you add each bit of processing.

Using analog gear makes monitor quality less critical in my experience because analog gear generally has a much broader "sweet spot" with tube gear having the broadest. This is why I've never been very impressed with most kinds of analog emulation. You get the degradation of analog without gaining that wonderful broad juicy sweet spot, the worst of both worlds. The minute you leave the digital sweet spot, everything turns to cardboard, hence the need for super high resolution monitoring. This is also why most people prefer the results of mixing analog. It's a lot faster to get great results.

There are some decent reasonably transparent, characterless tools available, especially the original WAVESplug-ins For mixing, character can be a powerful asset but for mastering, in my opinion, it's mostly about transparency.

Bob,
Thanks for the quick reply......Fats

thanks bob, it's an honour to get a response from a legend.

i'm just learning , from what i can gather from various sources of info. most heavyweight mastering enginers would prefer not to have to do too much to things.

so if i was having trouble getting loudness out of a song. ie: i was crushing the sound a bit with a waves l2 plug in or a db limiter in my quest for max power. would i be better off going back to the mixes and reducing the loudest things a bit? usually my kick or snare. are the multiband compressors, magnetto, the vintage warmer and other things more or less a solution that can only do so much?

i have everything on my computer so it's not that big a deal to go back to the source mixdown.

i've also heard of changing the gain pushing it past zero causing the peaks to clip and be snipped. is this a lame solution as well?

i realize to get the job done right, you need heavy gear, i'm never gonna compete with the big boys with what i have, but i'm interested in trying to get the most out of what gear i have.

i'm also interested in hearing what i should be sending mix wise to a pro masterer. if i do a better job it makes life way easier for everybody.

thanks

chris perra

If the mix has good dynamics to begin with (example) Peaks of -1dB and RMS of -18 or so..Mastering can squeeze it up some..if tasteful. All too often, mixing engineers are adding 2-bus compression to their mixes to get the client to a satisfaction level in overall volume. When I get one of these, I have to pull every dirty trick out of many hats in order to restore dynamics to a level that is masterable. Equilazation can restore the dynamics..but you have to be very careful not to destroy the mix. Sometimes the mix is destroyed before I got it ;) but really, see if this makes sense.

If the project is to be professionally mastered, give the clients a one off with some 2-bus compression (for clients sake) of the mix and send the non-compressed OM to the mastering house..or if you are mastering it, work with the uncompressed OM.

Now not to confuse things, channel compression is fine (and necessary) on certain instruments. This is not to be confused with 2-bus compression.

Mastering engineers can do a far better job of your work if the 2-bus is not squashed. Leave some dynamic range. I actually request a max level of around -3 peak on mixes..if I can get them. I am hearing some improvements along these lines. I am hoping that more mixing engineers will look at the above formula and take it into consideration. Really, I have seen CD players that clip at the line out at 0dB.

What happened to the glorious days of -17 BEING 0dB RMS reference? Well that was the intention when digital was being utilized in 1976. Ry Cooder "Bop till you Drop" was pressed in 1976 and it was a Digital recording. Around 85, newbees to digital recording (some of the old school tape pushers ((not you Bob!)) decided to slam the brick wall...then it simply got out of hand and the CD manufactures (consumer machines) had to accomidate this higher level of mastering and then the digital domain as we know it does not adhere to the -17 "ideal" as intended..and it may never go back.

If you have some CD's that were pressed in 83 and 84, you will see what I mean.

Bob, care to chime in here some about this?

thanks bill, it's so great hearing from people that are pro's. mastering engineers are hard to find, and they are very tight lipped. i totally appreciate the knowledge you guys are passing along.

so leaving dynamic range in your mixdown would help solve the problem?

would you ever ask them to drop the kick or snare, or the vocals?

i realize that if you complain to someone who's paying you money to fix things you will look like an incompetent whiner. but in a perfect world would you do that?

or are these things part of everyday life that would be the equivelent of a mix engineer just turning an eq to find the right tone, rather than getting the guitar player to find it first?

for me when trying to get fullness and volume using compression and limiting are very hard to do without squishing the sound, especially pounding guitar rock, and especially with just a daw.

i'm just trying to figure out where problems start so that when you compress or limit you don't need it as much and you get better results.

thanks

chris perra

Well, I've made some astoundingly hot CD masters myself!

The thing to understand is that electronic keyboard music has almost no dynamic range and a very low peak to average ratio. Just bringing the level up to the top gives you an average level that is 6 to 10 dB louder than an unclipped digital recording from microphones.

Our problem is that people want acoustic-sourced music to be just as loud as sampler-based music. I think it's counterproductive to blame anybody, we just need to help people understand this fact.

Chris perra said "I realize that if you complain to someone who's paying you money to fix things you will look like an incompetent winer. But in a perfect world would you do that?"

There's a difference between complaining and making suggestion that will improve a client's end product. I have recording engineers who routinely refer work to me. Over time we have dialoged about ways to achieve the best results. If a recording engineer is open, I have no problem making suggestions and working with them to get a great sound for the client and our mutual benefit. We all want it to sound great, that's the point.

I find that when working strictly with a DAW, it usually sounds better the less you push it. Stand alone quality outboard gear will allow you to push things further with less side effects. you might be better off sacrificing a little level to retain more punch and depth in the final product. Working with placing the eq before or after the compressor(s) will give you more flexibility too. It all depends on the material your working with and the problems involved.

Michael & Don,
With my new configuration - an Asus A7M266 with dual MP1800 CPU's, Frontier Montana soundcard and 1GB of DDR memory running Cubase, with the 9098 eq's, Manley EL OP and UREI 1178 outboard, will I be able to do some serious mastering?. I've got NS 10's and Tannoy System II DMT 12's through a Nakamichi 410 discreet pre amp into a Haffler P3000. I was thinking of adding the UAD 1 card for the PULTEC EQ. ???....Fats

thanks guys, you're advice is very helpfull.

in regard to comments potentially made to a mix engineer.

if the music is very dense heavy guitar alternative rock. and the mixdown audio waves wind up having kicks and snares predominatley louder so when you apply compression or limiting you wind up squeezing a bit it gets a little squashed.

would you go back and try to reduce the kicks and snares to give you more room to bump it up. i would imagine with serious mastering gear this is less of an issue but will adressing the source help?

chris perra

oh yeah, my questions weren't ment to blame anyone.

because i'm the hacker mix engineer. if there is anyone to blame it's me.

to cedar flats, i've got a uad 1 and it smokes, i also mix on sx. the pultec it sweet so are the la2a and 1176. totally worth the bucks.

do you have a sub as well for monitoring?

Cedar, you've got some good gear to do a good job. getting to know your gear is going to be key to getting the most out of it. knowing how each piece sounds inside and out and what each adds and subtracts will let you use each piece to the best of it's ability. Really knowing your monitors and being able to hear what's going on is key. I would really spend some time listening and tweeking to make sure that everything is working the best it can. Using the highest quality cable you can afford will also add up.
I have some 9098 gear and running signal in at different levels achieves different results. When I buy a new piece of gear, I spend weeks listening and tweeking and trying every option I can think of to see how it reacts and what it adds and subtracts from the sound. Some gear sounds good running signal in hot, some sounds better lower. Achieving as much resolution as you can and still mold it is knowing what to put in the chain and what not to.

chrisperra, it depends really on the song and what your trying to achieve. If your crankin up the level and you find that the kicks and snares are squashin hard to get the guitars where you want them in relation, then lowering these will help. Don't put things off in the mixing stage if you can help it. If you can get the mix to sound more like you want it, then do it. You'll work your gear less in the mastering stage which will be better in the long run. at the end of your mix, you should be able to sit back and say this is awesome and perfect. A lot of times mastering is simply retaining this perfection with a little more level, especially if you don't have some really serious gear to work. if you find that your working too much in the mastering stage and you have the ability to go back to the mix, Then always do it.

Chris, I don't have a sub....but the DMT 12's are flat down to 35 Hz so I think the low end is covered.....Fats

thanks guys

chrisperra

i've been trying some things.i totally appreciate all of everyones advice who have answered my questions. i have definitly improved my mastered product.

i only have one more question. well it's kind of a statement and question.

there is no friggin way i can get my mixes as loud as say a sum 41 , avril lavinge or even the wwf forcebale entry album with just a daw is there?

sure i could get it as loud, but it would wind up squashed. all of these examples some would say are already squashed but i don't puke when i hear them . when i have my tunes that same loudness level it sounds dreadfull.

i guess when it comes right down to it with just a daw,if you want the music to have dynamics and tone, there is only so far you can take it.

have i come to the undeniable truth or is there hope out there.

chris perra

Their are some tricks.

I had a client that wanted their CD LOUD!

I wanted to maintain high definition (hell, my name was going on it and I have a reputation to serve), wide freqency response, wide dynamics and plenty of slam.

The top level with both compromises (my definition still there etc.. and their average volume level achieved) in the DAW was about 2dB shy of the "super loud" CD they brought by as a reference. When I was about to say, that's it fellows, cannot go any louder, I brought out another bag of tricks and we all got what we were wanting.

Seems as though my Philips Stand alone CD recorder using analog inputs (Modded CDR870) can get above the digital zero in metering without clipping the wave tops. It does things to the dynamics to fool the meters into over without really being digital clipping..hence it loads and unloads the dynamics to bring up the average even more, and unloads quick for the peaks. Kind of like an inaudible trampoline..physically speaking.

Well, I ran the 2-bus into the analog input of this machine and hand edited the burn to CD. They were delighted. We both got what we wanted in the compromise.

As it has been pointed out above, the mix needs to sit really tight. Some mixes I get are so close that any eq adjustments seem to be detrimental to the vibe. A shade of dynamic sweetning, channel balance, and it is done. Editing heads and tails etc..

Look at all options.

It's really the sum of all the parts. It all adds up in the end. 1) the best mixes you can get 2) pulling the mixes off the best player you can get your hands on (DAT, CD, 1/2", etc...) 3) Running all your signal through high quality cable. 4) have a great pair of monitors to reveal every little thing because you can't tweek what you can't hear. 5) having the best gear money can buy ( the cd's you mentioned are running through some serious gear. I've spent more on 1 piece of outboard gear than most entire DAW's cost. It does make a difference). 6) experience! This is the most important thing of them all. The more you work and experiment, the better your masters will sound. the more knowledge you have with eq's, compressors, limiters etc... the more you'll be able to exploit them. You are comparing your work to others that have spent most of their life refining their skills and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars equiping themselfs with very specialized tools and even more on the environment in which they use them. Mastering is a progression, just like guitar playing or piano playing. A great guitar does not make me a guitar player, but a great guitar player can make even the cheapest guitar sound pretty good. You can make your DAW sound very good, but your DAW will not make you sound good. Keep pluggin away and you will get better and keep improving your tools.

Bill,
In your previous post you said,

"Seems as though my Philips Stand alone CD recorder using analog inputs (Modded CDR870) can get above the digital zero in metering without clipping the wave tops. It does things to the dynamics to fool the meters into over without really being digital clipping..hence it loads and unloads the dynamics to bring up the average even more, and unloads quick for the peaks. Kind of like an inaudible trampoline..physically speaking."

I have heard that with the O/F ADATS there's 8 dB headroom past digital zero. I have hit ADATS at 0dB reasonably hard in the past and have never detected any clipping but I have never had the ability to graphically examine the waveform. It always sounded good to me. I used to print my mix to 2 tracks of ADAT when I mixed, being able to punch in and out of mix's was pretty cool before DAW's became so prevalent. I would "pack" the meters pretty hard and the mix's always sounded good. The only negative feedback I ever heard was from mastering engineers who would complaine that I wasn't leaving anything for them to do. Not one complaint about clipped waveforms. Have you heard this about ADATS too?...........Fats

Oh yes, the adat can do damn near a 10dB above. What it is really doing is using the (opps time to flip the steak)

Ok..

What it is really doing is accepting a hard hitting analog input and it is circuitry compression. The actual head is blocked from reproducing scattered bits of digital overlead..it runs out of bits, it simply layers them accordingly. ADATS I am told have a small buffer. Not asd in storage so much as in anticipation and release.

I would love to dig into this further but I also agree that pushing an adat channel up to and beyond the limit does not have sonic benifits. It may be said that certain freqencies could have them..but imho, I tend to lay off the ceiling on the adat. They do not clip the wave and they do have a powerful line pre inside.

It is about high time for a new standard in level to be discussed and stipulated as the standard..but as long as their is a limit, so many folks will toy with it..just human..

I didn't slam them! About 2 or 3dB of movement but I didn't freak when it hit 0 like I would with a CDR or DAT..... Fats

i was thinking about trying to get more level. like everyone else.

for me, when i look at my wave files and listen at the same time to my peaks, even if i pull them down a bit are still mostly kicks, snares and sometimes slight vocal spikes.

i was wondering if multiband compression is a potential solution.
if my kick is a problem at times and my snare is a problem at other times, having diferent compression/limiting settings for different freq might give me a little more control.

what do you guys think? is it worth bothering with or will a great limiting compressor on the whole mix be better? keeping in mind i just have a daw.

also, does anybody take 3 or 4 manleys, or what ever totally pro compressor limiters they have, cross them over and have multiband compression/limiting with stellar outboard gear? or does the single stereo one do the job?

chris perra

A multiband can be great for when you can't fix the mix but just going through that many filters sounds pretty bad compared to a simple peak limiter. I'd be looking at low frequency problems and at my vocal balance before assuming a mix needs to be crushed.

There's a whole bunch of people trying to profit off of selling exotic outboard gear by not mentioning that a simple volume control is one of the most powerful effective loudness tools we've got!

thanks bob, i think i might be exagerrating with my mix problems. there not so bad that i can't turn anything up. but when you look at a wave file for me anyway, you see kicks and snares jumping out here and there.

it's not consistant, like huge spikes through the whole tune, but for me kicks and snares are a little hotter than everything else.

i think my problem might also be related to the fact theat i have my mix running through a tascam cd burner.

i check various store bought mixes throught the same cd player. i just recently heard that tascam sets it's zero level as much as 3 db less than zero to make sure that there are no errors. so, i may not be able to hear it as loud. running through the burner.

has anybody heard of tascam burners being quieter? when i play some cd's i want to match the level of, the db meters are fully buried, 90% of the time.

no matter what i do i can't get it the same level without squashing the sound a bit. i am a relentless psycho for trying to get the most out of everything i do. unfortunately i don't know what's realistic as a final result with what i have.

i'm sure at some point i can't go any farther. how loud is the max? with just a daw, considering it's alternative rock with crushing guitars and a female singer?

chris perra

[QUOTE]Originally posted by chrisperra
no matter what i do i can't get it the same level without squashing the sound a bit.
/QUOTE]

I think you have answered your own question.

to mr. gold:

do you mean to say that in your opinion it's not possible to get things that loud just using a daw?

chris perra

No. I meant you have to compress and limit things to get them that loud. Mostly limit. With analog tape you lose a lot of transient information. So it is acting like a peak limiter. Audio transformers also shave off transients. All good analog stuff. So in the old days you had no choice but to lose transients. Digital keeps all that peak information and to get rid of it many people save the limiting stage for mastering. This doesn't work very well. The poor L2 just can't do that much work. You might try peak limiting induvidual tracks to bring up the average level of a mix.

thanks for the info paul... i can understand and appreciate your direct advice better than a vauge comment, that to me insinuates i haven't got a clue what i want, or what i'm talking about.

i'm not a heavy tracking or mastering engineer, far from it.

i haven't even owned a computer untill jan. of this year. but i am eager to learn and appreciate the wisdom of experience.

for me your initial statement was derogatory and somewhat elitist. but your follow through was to the point and has me thinking.

i realize that every situation is different and for most part, trying to get alt rock pinned and sounding musical is an oxymoron, but who else do i ask?

i'd rather harrass seasoned pro's of 10 to 40 years, than go out and buy a ton of gear only to find that 10% of it is worth anything.

at any rate, thank you mr. gold and everyone else that has given advice.

chris perra

IMO, the key to getting mixes to compete in volume to commercial releases is a combination of stages. Most commercial releases run through analog in some form or another. If your mixes are stuck in DAW land the entire process, then your missing some of the natural benifits that analog brings. whether its a good console, outboard gear, tape. All of these stages gradually smooth out the wave in each stage. certain stages can be really benifitial to your mixes without going out and buying a 2" or Neve console. A really nice front end is a good place to start. depending on what kind of sound your looking for, you can look into a transformer, tube, descrete piece of gear. just running your source through this gear will naturally shave off really pointy spikes that DAW limiters really have to work hard getting rid of. And/or a nice stereo piece of gear to run your mixes through will gently shave a little more off. Tape is the most noticable and IMHO the most benifitial in a DAW only evironment. Printing your mixes to a 2 track tape machine can really do wonders to you mix if it's never touched analog yet. If you can't buy one, you can try borrowing or renting one and print your mixes to tape and then dump them back into your DAW. Tape is a very dynamic medium in that printing lower or hotter sounds different. Also the time you let your mixes sit on the tape will change the way it sounds. Anyway, all this adds up and in the end you will work your DAW limiter much less and therefore be able to crank it up louder.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by chrisperra:

for me your initial statement was derogatory and somewhat elitist. but your follow through was to the point and has me thinking.
/QUOTE]

Sorry Chris, I didn't mean it that way. All I meant was that if the only way you can get the level you need is by compression than use it. You are obviously using your ears and don't belive all you need is another piece of gear to make everything all right. You are fighting an uphill battle with only a DAW but if you use your ears you will have a leg up. I've mastered many good records that were done in a DAW only. There is no reason you can't get acceptable results with a DAW. If you get good sounds with your limited setup you will appreciate quality gear even more. Don't think that all you need is better gear to get better results. Balancing a mix well is far more important than anything else-and all you need is a fader. You' ve isolated one problem you have and may find a piece of gear that solves that problem. I would advise you to buy things that do one thing very well. That way you will have it forever and it will always sound good. Only buy quality.

you guys rock, thanks for the help.

chris perra

i'm happy to say that at long last i have discovered that you can do alot with a daw. a hellova lot.. an album i was working on. my own original band, was finally completetd and was sent to l.a. to be mastered. i just recieved the finished product and was pleased to find that my hack mastering, was very close and actually a little bit louder than what was done in a pro mastering house by an engineer of 15 years. over all the pro was better. it sounded a little fatter the eqing was smoother, but overall a daw is pretty heavy just by itself.

chris perra

Congrats. "It's the ears, not the gear"

for me, it's also going through a whole project and getting it done by a pro masterer and then comparing it with your own. the pro's is better but mine is pretty close. now i know how far you can push it and know what to expect from it.

chris perra

First of all excuse the typos..No time to edit them now.

The reason the pro house was not quite as loud is the juggling act between quality and quantity.

I can make the loudest mastering on the plenet..but it "phucks" up the vibe.

Combination of good vibe and plenty loud is what is cool.

To those who espressed regards in the illness I am getting over..a sincere THANK YOU..I am feeling better (I think by choice) but the body plays wierd trics on you. Take care of your health and do not do 36 to 42 Hr. Obsession Mastering. It was some fine work..I am paying the price. The only drug that induced it came from the heart...they have drugs to extinguish that..and I am on them for lifes sake. Sometimes being single makes you give too much away at an artform and vibe..well prehaps I learned my lession. Remeber, these were charity affairs so it is not like I ws being Money Greedy.

Enough of that..Now to blow my horn some .

I had a comment from one of my clients:

"Bill, Your work makes me want to keep on turning it up to find the limit of my playback system in volume because it will sound great up there, then when I put anyone elses CD in it simply shouts at me and sounds like Dog shit. I love it" (I gave them 3 db to play with)

Next comment "We listened to the airplay of one of our tunes on the FM. It sounded larger and louder than the rest of the misic being aired, why is that?"

That is what a mastering house can do, if willing to stick their neck out and be trusted.

hello everybody,

as i can see there are some great names and a lot of experience here, and people used to very powerful gear.

reading this topic i'd like to give a small contribute, from the point of view of a daw musician, but if aural level is an issue for the great studios, little "all in daw" producers breath this problem almost at every stage....

first of all i'd like to say that my impression on the loudness sensation of a mix is that the presence of innaturally boosted frequencies comparing to the others has the same effect on perception than a very strong light point in a darker background, there is a general loss of detail and effectiveness, maybe electrical signal sum is higher, but the perceptional impression is much lower.

the great effect of analog tape saturation that so much is desired and reproduced as digital process is due to the fact that the compression of
the sound components is driven by themselves...discrete digital action of filtering is something pre-formed and so innatural.

in daw work i try to act on single tracks more than the overall mix.
i developed a vst plugin for pc (so many of you will not be able to try it, i know..;-) )that i just give for free (i'm a composer and practice sound design and modular patching for myself), that uses fundamentally envelope following trigger of inverse phase to give warmth and impressive gain within the same db peaks,with the same signal-wise reactivity on frequencies as tape, to use on those tracks that most suffer from the mix (drums, voices, guitars) and that cannot be rised in level, otherwise they mess all the unity of the mix.

it is in the plug-in forum of r.o....

(Dead Link Removed)

working on these aspects of a mix, and avoiding as possible an overall level maximization can help a lot in keeping things clear but very punchy...

ciao