Not sure what you mean by you don't believe this is a good recording?? What do you find that's not good about it? If you think this is not good, what do you think would be good??

Aside from the fact that this was a very pleasant song that was very pleasantly engineered, not sure what you are expecting with your terminology of good?

I'm sure you'll get some response from this?
Ms. Remy Ann David

Thanks Remy.

I just mean that there isn't a whole lot going on in the recording. To me it sounds very amateurish and unbalanced.

I find the request very tongue-in-cheek. If you want to "evaluate" a mastering engineer, take a listen to some recordings they've mastered before. Ask them if they can provide you with before/after clips of stuff they've already done. Asking someone to spend an hour or two to do something for free, where they "might" get something out of it, is not really fair. (IMO)

Even if the ME would just "fool around" with the recording, it would not be representative of their work. If they would want to do a representative example, that would mean giving you a service, otherwise worth $100 or more...

But on the other hand, since I am not a ME, and I like to "fool around", I'll take a crack at it. :)

Mark,

I understand what you're saying about asking an ME to spend time mastering one of my songs for free - but I want to hear how they can improve MY recordings more than anything, and this is the best way to do that.

I've received a few samples already from MEs on here, and I really appreciate the work they've done. Right now I've narrowed it down to 2 MEs based on the samples they've e-mailed me.

I'm assuming that any ME who gives a crack at my song isn't forgoing any paid work to give me a free sample - therefore it should be viewed as a simple way of marketing their abilities in an attempt to gain a future customer.

Hey man, if they're sending you samples, I say go for it! :)

Ok Don, I'll play along and send you something after I'm done fooling around with it.

To be fair, however, IMHO you're starting with compromised material - MP3's, and even at 128kps, that's NO WAY to work on a track. If this were a paying session, no serious ME would waste your time working in this format; they'll want something 24/44 at least.

I've already downloaded the track, converted it to WAV, and am working on it as a 24 bit 44k sample. (Arguably a waste of computational power, but with some of the DSP I'm using, it might be helpful until I bounce it again....)

To my ears, the high end is already pretty messy, and let's not kid ourselves; whatever is done to it, there's only so much that can be done to clean up the mush that's floating around up there. The sibilance, plectrum sounds and other stuff (tambourine?) isn't going to respond too well to tweaking; it's kind've the audio equivalent of adjusting levels in pictures in Photoshop after the "Autolevel" tool has been applied; the remaining details are gone for good....

On the other end of things, I'm going to have to convert it all BACK to MP3 in order to email it to you. (If you were a client, I'd give you web access to download the full rez version, but you'll get the idea, I suppose...)

Some fun, indeed! :wink: