Mixdown mastering routines?

I've been thinking about this a lot, when I first started finishing tracks I used to always stress about mastering etc, but lately it's become more of a pleasure, mixing in general I find easy (well, I reach the sound I'm looking for, not sure if this is what other's appreciate!), but after I finish mastering I've developed a few routines.

These days, I do the following:

. My studio is a long hall, so I record reverb for L and R seperately and mix it into the final mix

. I send my mix through a tube preamp, boost the signal to get a bit of distortion in the cymbals/highhats (I like these to be the highest, just for that distortion, Polygon Window style)

. I send the boosted signal into a VHS and record onto that

. Mix the track back into the PC with nice analog distortion

Currently I'm looking for a better VHS deck, I saw a really high end one in an electronics store for $200, I'm actually considering buying it since I really love the sound of my tracks after they come off the tape.

This is only a recent routine, before this my routine used to be scrutinizing spectral analysis of the masters and adjusting frequencies based on what I thought were lacking in the tracks. But yeah, if anyone is looking for a cheap alternative to get nice analog distortion, sending through a preamp and then into a VHS (or any tape recorder) works pretty nice!

i used to know of a compression / limiting trick for cool edit .... if anyone wants to help me out with that..

it wasn't perfect but it worked.

⌘+⇧+R

*fart*

Sounds like techniques I'd like to try, Tamas. Do you have some tracks to show as well?

I don't know jack about mastering... I normally just give it to friends so they can do it.

Mixing - listen on a bunch of different systems (monitors, home stereo, car stereo, boom box, laptop speakers, computer speakers), take notes, make adjustments, listen again, pull hair out, repeat.

Mastering - send to mastering engineer.

If you have:

1)The attuned ability to take your personal attachment and biased artistic brain out of the digestive equation more and frequently.

2)Monitors you know really well and or also have a pretty flat frequency response.

3)An acoustically treated room that you know really well and or doesn't completely color and fuck up that frequency response.

4)Good EQ, Compression, Stereo Enhancing, Limiting, Space Manipulation units that you know really well that improve your mixes rather than fuck them up.

5)A very good understanding of what it takes to smartly mix before mastering and what to do to fix problems and improve qualities in mastering.

6)The balls to say this mix can't be mastered properly and go back to radically fix a mix.

7)The smarts to understand when you DON'T need anything more on the master than EQ and slight volume increase.

I believe you can master your own material. There are artists who completely mix and master their material very well.

It can be very difficult but the more you improve the above and more pieces of the puzzle I can tell it would become a lot less time consuming and frustrating. As hard as it is I think learning to mix and master your own material is a very important investment. Rather worry while your making your album that hey I've got to spend 300, 1000 etc. dollars to master this and this has to be commercially successful you can make 5 albums that come from the heart without worry about monetary compensation.

  On 6/1/2011 at 6:23 AM, psn said:

Sounds like techniques I'd like to try, Tamas. Do you have some tracks to show as well?

I used the technique on every track of my most recent release: Space Odyssey

Here are 2 tracks from the release:

http://soundcloud.com/terrestrialcouncil/space-travel-space-odyssey

http://soundcloud.com/terrestrialcouncil/hearts-diamonds-and-spades-club-mix

The reverb is quite subtle, it's mostly only noticeable if you heard the original version. Actually, it's somewhat audible on good speakers with the kick drum, I don't really know if I like reverb on the kick drum or not, but I think for my next release I'm going to mixdown the tracks with the kick drum muted and get the reverb like that... If you can hear the reverb on the kick drum, what do you think, good or bad?

Also, being a purist, I never let my bass get off center, on the off chance that some day one of my tracks/releases would be pressed on vinyl (panning bass can cause needle skips)!!

And Blanket Fort Collapse, lots of good points! I'd by no means say I'm a pro at mastering or anything, it's definitely a learning process but if you listen to my first releases I think there's a huge difference in terms of depth of sound, etc. But yeah one of the best things is talking to others about their techniques, I feel like music progression is a bit like the Manhattan Project, the more musicians (IE: scientists) you have, the faster you'll reach critical mass and EXPLODE!!! ;)

Oh, another good technique, is to add a noise source and have it sound with the snare, if you want more depth for the snare. Also, taking the kick drum and adding a separate track to pitch shift it down for some extra bass is a nice technique too.

  On 6/1/2011 at 6:32 AM, asymmetrical head said:

I don't know jack about mastering... I normally just give it to friends so they can do it.

Same here.

Mix downs are a constant headache for me. It's far and away my least favourite aspect of music making, mainly because I often find that I have to compromise between the sound that I want, and the sound that will work in a mix.

I always start with kick drums, I think for most electronic music it's really the corner stone of a good club orientated track. More recently I'm getting in the habit of layering my main kicks with a enveloped sine of filtered square wave to keep the sub area predictable.

Next snares, same thing really, as well as opening up nice tones, layering snares really helps to thicken them ip and work well on the mix too. also find myself layering a kick in there from time to time, pretty quiet of course.

Once you have your kick and snare foundation, most other drum parts fit in pretty easily around them.

Bass lines, is really dependent. People say that keeping it centred is important, but a bit of width on a bass line sounds awesome. best way around is again a bit of layering. 1 track with all the mid and high content filtered out, keep that track mono and centred. another with the low end EQed out with a bit of width. trial and error to find the right crossover, but also a helpful way of giving the kicks a bit of space too.

Distortion is very fkn useful. Great for bringing out a bit more depth to sin or low frequency bass parts, adding harmonics etc. also great for adding a bit of interest to snares, and hi hats too. Only a tiny bit is needed mind.

being conservative with panning. I never get too carried away with it, nev go past about 50% either way. Starts to sound like your heads being pulled apart otherwise. always try to compliment a part panned one way with something going the other, keep it all sounding full.

Pads are normally the last thing I work on, coz they're a pain in the ass. Really about cutting away as much as possible to stop them interfering in everything else. Different with very sparse music, just depends on the genre I guess.

Reference on a bunch of systems, this is a weird thing. A lot of people state this, but honestly it's very fkn stupid.

why listen to a track on your buddies unfamiliar hi fi, and decide you need to make changes to a mix you just perfected on your own monitors

Should be, listen to it on other systems YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY FAMILIAR WITH. Dumb exercise otherwise.

For mastering, get someone else to do it. Be accepting of any advice the mastering engineer with give you. It's great to open up a dialogue with the mastering dude. They'll let you know what you need to do, and give you pleanty of advice to help you get the best end result. It doesn't just need to be you send them one file, they master it as best they can.

Oh, one other thing I find helps me is to work in groups. took a bit of getting used to,but does help me a lot.

Each sound gets it's own mixer channel, say for the kick sound I might have a couple layers and a synth sin wave. each has it's own channel for eq and filtering. they then all get grouped into a new channel so that I can control them all easily.

Do the same with snares and everything else that is made up of layers.

Then the same again, each group gets sent to another channel, so you end up with with one fader to control your overall drum volume, another one for controlling al the bass elements and so on.

it's basically a way of simplifying everything for you, so rather than having 60 odd separate sources to mix, you have like 8 channels to play with. But unlike working with stems, you still have the option of going back and tweaking little bits.

what are you using to do separate mixer sends like that? I suppose I could that with Reaper but for what your talking about I'm slightly missing the visual hardware emulation style of Reason. Then again as nice and understanding as it looked, it felt like I was always scrolling up and down tediously.

Good posts TechDiff.

  On 6/2/2011 at 1:26 PM, TechDiff said:

Reference on a bunch of systems, this is a weird thing. A lot of people state this, but honestly it's very fkn stupid.

 

why listen to a track on your buddies unfamiliar hi fi, and decide you need to make changes to a mix you just perfected on your own monitors

 

Should be, listen to it on other systems YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY FAMILIAR WITH. Dumb exercise otherwise.

Not sure if this is in reference to my post, but I have a very small studio that will never monitor accurately not matter how much I treat it. This method is how I get around that. I'll note that the systems I mentioned are the ones I routinely listen to music on anyway.

Granted if I knew anyone with a properly treated studio with good reference monitors, I wouldn't hesitate to take advantage of checking my mixes there. You can still A/B your mixes with a piece of music you're familiar with, or benefit from the other person's ears that are familiar with the studio.

If you really know your room and monitors hardcore like the back of your hand for all frequency peaks and valleys it should translate as pretty well right? If you know really that your setup has around what appears to be a 6 db reduction at 3 to 7khz or a boost at 100 to 200khz you can keep that in mind at all times and adjust your mix after words slightly to meet that in the middle.

There are a lot of new frequency balancing systems out there that analyze the acoustics and adjust your monitors to be heard as flat as possible. I wonder how good that technology is really getting for some really mediocre acoustic spaces.

The closer your mix or master to your monitors would that not rule out some of the acoustic problems in the hi end? Obviously your low end perception is going to be misleading if you try to get a couple inches in the a really tight sweet spot between your monitors but in bad acoustics don't you want to be hyper close to your speakers to monitor the post bassy bassy stuff?

EQ > parallel compression > limiter

I never imagined not long ago that different EQ units doing the same boosts, cuts & scoops can supposedly sound so radically different. Been reading about comparisons of UAD emulation units compared to their real hardware counterparts and in it got me on that researching track. As far as I understand a lot of people seem to think that going back in hard clipping the expensive analog to digital converter is how heavy limiting mastering was born and is one of the most transparent ways to get your tracks louder. But their is a lot of debate on the subject and the best ways to get the best results obviously.

@scones,

sorry, didn't intend for the post to come across as a direct response to your earlier comment. More just that it prompted my memory of something.

I'm always questioning the acoustic of my room, does my head in quite honestly. I think I've shifted everything around about 5 times in the 2 years I've lived in this house, still not quite happy, but it's getting there.

I've got a second set of speakers on another room which are pretty good for referencing mixes through. They aren't exactly perfect, but do really highlight any shitty mixing. But as you said, I think that rather than relying on a defence monitor set up(s), a good friend with good ears is the best bet. Not only because they are used to their own speakers, but also because they are completely impartial to the track, and haven't heard it a million times already :)

That reminds me as well, anyone ever tried those isolating foam slabs for monitors? I considered trying some out to see if the difference is noticeable, wondered if anyone has experience with em.

  On 6/3/2011 at 11:38 PM, Kcinsu said:

EQ > parallel compression > limiter

Shit, I just use a limiter and mastering EQ. Resonant frequencies, etc.

I play it on my speakers at home, and in my car. Generally works.

I dig parallel compression!

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/OzoneMasteringGuide.PDF

reading this right now. i need to be able to master seeing that i've got way too much music to pay for a master.

should be fun. i agree with blanket fort collapse

too bad i don't own izotope ozone yet

gonna be buying myself some proper monitors this year, probably go for the KRK Rokit 8's.....budget of about £350 - £400. Thoughts?

  On 6/4/2011 at 1:23 AM, TechDiff said:

anyone ever tried those isolating foam slabs for monitors? I considered trying some out to see if the difference is noticeable, wondered if anyone has experience with em.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/low-end-theory/429653-diy-speaker-monitor-isolation-pad-reduce-coupling.html

I would suggest the DIY route unless you have lots of excess money to throw around that couldn't be used more productively else where.

I ask myself, what does the song need? And then I try to give it that.