Mixdown mastering routines?

Lots of mention of outsourcing mastering ITT.. anyone recommend someone? I have a back catalogue of tunes that I would be interested in letting someone try their mastering hand in.... also since I have ozone I figure I'd read through that link that vamos posted too

I can personally recommend Christopher Leary (a.k.a Ochre) who did the mastering of Christ.'s live album and has also produced music for Little Big Planet 2 (He also did the mastering of our previous two singles - au and für alali )

He's great value, does a really quick turnaround of tracks and does a great mastering service. Plus he's a bloody nice bloke to boot and allows superb communication of exactly what it is you want done to a track...

Here's a link to his mastering page - http://www.ochremusic.com/mastering/

A friend and I paid to get one of our albums mastered years ago by Andreas Tilliander, and the mix has translated quite well to a variety of different systems.

As I have discovered, you can try to master your own music.. but you know your own music too well to effectively master it. It's like trying to properly edit and proofread your own essay. You can do it, but you'll likely miss a few things that a (somewhat objective) third party might notice. Especially someone who is paid to fulfil that role on a frequent basis.

The only trick is finding a mastering engineer that is compatible with what it is you are doing. I've had friends send their albums to (otherwise highly skilled) mastering engineers who did not have a clue about the genre they were mastering and the result was that the master was useless. Lesson learned..

  On 12/12/2011 at 7:17 PM, mcbpete said:

I can personally recommend Christopher Leary (a.k.a Ochre) who did the mastering of Christ.'s live album and has also produced music for Little Big Planet 2 (He also did the mastering of our previous two singles - au and für alali )

 

He's great value, does a really quick turnaround of tracks and does a great mastering service. Plus he's a bloody nice bloke to boot and allows superb communication of exactly what it is you want done to a track...

 

Here's a link to his mastering page - http://www.ochremusic.com/mastering/

*hat tip* will check it out.. love me some ochre

  On 8/16/2011 at 3:31 AM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

  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...e-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.

sorbothane (http://www.sorbothane.com/faq.php) can be sourced for much cheaper. do not overpay for such a product because it's sold within the audio realm (especially foam with unpublished mechanical properties).

don't add any pads or devices that protrude out from the speaker and create an edge diffraction generator - you can validate this with the envelope time curve in the time-domain. also, get the speakers off your desk and placed on stands several feet behind the desk such that early-early specular energy (off the desk, mixer, whatever you have in front of you that is clearly not acoustically transprent) is not incident.

one can also verify decoupling via the ETC; the direct signal (straight vector) from speaker to mic is the shortest path (thus, will arrive first via the impulse response) ... however, sound (vibrations) will travel faster through solid materials. thus, it is possible to see energy arriving within the ETC before the direct signal - which will indicate such coupling is taking place.

and to the OP, there is no such thing as reverberation (reverberant sound-field) in small acoustical spaces of which we are constrained to. there exists specular reflections (which maintain their magnitude and direction components), and decay. what little reverberant sound-field that exists in small acoustical spaces is above our hearing range and below the noise floor, thus entirely irrelvant. this is also why rt60 statistical calculations (which are reserved for large acoustical spaces via statistically random incidence (read: reverberant sound-field - equal energy flow in all directions) are also irrelevant. just fyi.

  On 6/3/2011 at 10:35 PM, Blanket Fort Collapse said:

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 and "balancing systems" cannot do a damn thing for once the signal has left the speaker. not to mention, you'll be required to place your head in a vice, as frequency-response (read: interference pattern manifested by polar lobing superposition/summation) can change dramatically with relatively small moments of your ear-brain. and im curious as to how an 'eq' can boost it's way out of an infinite null that is due to deconstructive interference of boundaries (or other non-minimum phaseissues). no - no. eq is merely icing on the cake for cutting the lower octave modal issues - never much else and most certainly not in the specular region.

in small acoustical space, the time-domain takes precedence, not the frequency-domain. the frequency-domain simply proves to you that your listening position jus so happens to be in an interference pattern. it tells you nothing with regards to the time-arrival or gain of the indirect signals that are combining constructively and destructiely at the listening position to produce said interference pattern (regardless of how 'flat' your monitors may be in an anechoic chamber). - nor does the frequency response indicate to you the boundary or source of the destructive indirect signals. we have other tools in the tool-box for such endeavors. let me know if you'd like to be more curious

oh, and may i also add that it is fairly quite easily obtained - the information regarding the behavior of your own acoustical space, if one were so inclined to measure. i assume many of you may already have the necessary equipment (mic, pre-amp, ) and thus only need to obtain the appropriate software suite (arta, fuzzmeasure pro, or room eq wizard (free)). it would really go a long way to observing and actually identifying the acoustical issues within your space of which could then be properly attacked.

  On 6/1/2011 at 2:19 AM, Tamas said:

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've been thinking about trying VHS too (or cassettes). I had a listen to your tracks but I can't really tell what VHS is doing to them - I guess I expected a more dramatic lo-fi tone from it. Were you subtle about blending it in with the original signal or is VHS normally this transparent? Do you use new tapes or old ones?

I can tell the cymbals have that crispness you were talking about, though.

  On 12/13/2011 at 3:10 PM, kokeboka said:

I've been thinking about trying VHS too (or cassettes). I had a listen to your tracks but I can't really tell what VHS is doing to them - I guess I expected a more dramatic lo-fi tone from it. Were you subtle about blending it in with the original signal or is VHS normally this transparent? Do you use new tapes or old ones?

As a more noticeable example of VHS 'mastering', this entire album was recorded onto video tape then exported back onto my machine - http://www.ilovecubus.co.uk/v2/downloads/small-mercies

  On 12/13/2011 at 3:13 PM, mcbpete said:

As a more noticeable example of VHS 'mastering', this entire album was recorded onto video tape then exported back onto my machine - http://www.ilovecubu...s/small-mercies

Thanks - it does sound more noticeable, especially in the piano parts. It feels like it adds a different aura to the music, but doesn't sound as nasty as mastering to cassettes (I'm thinking of Ariel Pink's first records as a reference).

  On 12/12/2011 at 7:28 PM, TwiddleBot said:

As I have discovered, you can try to master your own music.. but you know your own music too well to effectively master it. It's like trying to properly edit and proofread your own essay. You can do it, but you'll likely miss a few things that a (somewhat objective) third party might notice. Especially someone who is paid to fulfil that role on a frequent basis.

Lots of artists master their own music and you wouldn't know the difference.

that sounds crispy mcbpete! bit bladerunnerish, with that type of datedness... just any VHS will do? my parents have an old betamax stored in the attic somewhere, quality

  On 12/13/2011 at 3:03 AM, elusive4 said:

oh, and may i also add that it is fairly quite easily obtained - the information regarding the behavior of your own acoustical space, if one were so inclined to measure. i assume many of you may already have the necessary equipment (mic, pre-amp, ) and thus only need to obtain the appropriate software suite (arta, fuzzmeasure pro, or room eq wizard (free)). it would really go a long way to observing and actually identifying the acoustical issues within your space of which could then be properly attacked.

nice thanks, I've been looking on some hands on knowledge to get my room to sound better. will try this tonight.

  On 12/13/2011 at 5:44 PM, missingsense said:

that sounds crispy mcbpete! bit bladerunnerish, with that type of datedness... just any VHS will do? my

Should do, as long as it's got phono inputs or something equivalent. When I recorded it I just used the following Scart -> RCA block (using just the red and white audio sockets):

Plugged it in the input scart when sending the music out, then put it in the output scart when recording it back into my computer.

My family's 30-year-old VHS and my old cartoon tapes should be interesting to experiment with :) I really want to try being a bit bolder with mastering using old gear, I just usually put a compressor and a limiter on the main bus and 'master' while I mix. I know proper mastering shouldn't be about creativity, but it seems fun even if only for the sake of experimenting.

btw, really like your music mcbpete

i keep my music nice and unmastered to give it that rough, underwhelming digital aesthetic

  On 12/13/2011 at 6:11 PM, kokeboka said:

btw, really like your music mcbpete

Ah, cheers man - much appreciated

  On 12/13/2011 at 5:43 PM, chimera slot mom said:

  On 12/12/2011 at 7:28 PM, TwiddleBot said:

As I have discovered, you can try to master your own music.. but you know your own music too well to effectively master it. It's like trying to properly edit and proofread your own essay. You can do it, but you'll likely miss a few things that a (somewhat objective) third party might notice. Especially someone who is paid to fulfil that role on a frequent basis.

 

Lots of artists master their own music and you wouldn't know the difference.

I'd like to hear some examples of the artists you refer to, with pre and post for comparison. I've heard quite a few now. Even when artists have access to really good studios it's easy to miss things like eq spikes, the odd click and pop here and there, balancing the bass properly etc.. or having a really fast hear for hearing things like which frequencies you can notch out to clean up a track

  On 12/14/2011 at 11:29 AM, mcbpete said:

  On 12/13/2011 at 6:11 PM, kokeboka said:

btw, really like your music mcbpete

Ah, cheers man - much appreciated

+1 here, this stuff is quality my friend. don't know if i've come across your stuff before but me likey.

  On 12/14/2011 at 7:41 PM, TwiddleBot said:

  On 12/13/2011 at 5:43 PM, chimera slot mom said:

  On 12/12/2011 at 7:28 PM, TwiddleBot said:

As I have discovered, you can try to master your own music.. but you know your own music too well to effectively master it. It's like trying to properly edit and proofread your own essay. You can do it, but you'll likely miss a few things that a (somewhat objective) third party might notice. Especially someone who is paid to fulfil that role on a frequent basis.

 

Lots of artists master their own music and you wouldn't know the difference.

 

I'd like to hear some examples of the artists you refer to, with pre and post for comparison. I've heard quite a few now. Even when artists have access to really good studios it's easy to miss things like eq spikes, the odd click and pop here and there, balancing the bass properly etc.. or having a really fast hear for hearing things like which frequencies you can notch out to clean up a track

you mean really tiny shit that nobody really cares about anyway?

try noisia.

  On 12/14/2011 at 10:08 PM, chimera slot mom said:

 

you mean really tiny shit that nobody really cares about anyway?

 

try noisia.

 

I'd have to look to find what of their stuff was mastered and what wasn't because the tracks that pop up from their album were mastered here:

http://www.amsterdammastering.com/

Anyway like I said, I've heard plenty of pre and post mastered albums, done plenty of a/b comparisons between the two on the fly and the differences are noticeable and sometimes quite pronounced. If you don't notice the difference that's fine. I won't argue.

I'm not even saying self-mastering can't be done, as it's not like I can afford $500 to $1000 every time I finish an album. I usually do a shittonne of a/b comparisons and eq tweaks and over the years my music has become more and more translatable between systems. I still won't claim to be a mastering engineer who sits in a proper mastering studio and does pretty much nothing but master music, any more than I'll claim to be a stylist because I bought a pair of scissors and gave myself a bowl cut.

OK well previously they've been boasting about doing their job right from the start, but that was pre-split the atom, at that point they had quite a few killer tracks anyway - a remarkable feat with their early music was that they released their mixes with twice the headroom of many other tracks, likely for vinyl purposes, but they still sounded as fresh and punchy as whatever you'd play next to it.

I don't think there's any way to settle this, you can find ways to justify paying for a mastering engineer and you can find ways to justify not paying for one. I've got nothing against engineers, unless they're shitty. But like real estate agents, part of their job is justifying paying for them. There's no real magic about audio unless you've got a fetish for expensive analogue hardware, you can do it just as well yourself if you put yourself to it.

I honestly don't think A/B is as important as people say it is, UNLESS you know both systems. You can't just go to your mates stereo that you don't know and take that into consideration. Also, my personal experience is that it's more enlightening to compare your tracks to well-produced tracks you know on the same system than A/Bing with different systems, but you have to be a careful listener. Spectrum analyzer helps for this as well because unlike your ears it tells no lies. That's a big part about learning to listen, understanding that your ears are devious little motherfuckers that adapt to the sound you make.

The second problem is that on your system and with your ears you're going to have a favourite type of EQ-sound, like you might listen to a favourite track after making your track and realize you've boosted the bass abit and your mid-highs are too low (who likes harshness after producing for 4 hours?) - so you have to step ahead of yourself abit. Mixing your track on as low volume as you can tolerate does the biggest difference when it comes to this, and loudness, because then you'll know when you've got the various elements right because they're not going to be clearly noticeable unless they are. This is where you can use the adaptive ability of your ears, by making sure you've got the initial settings right, with comparison and all that, you'll get used to making the various EQ elements sit right.

It really all depends on how serious you are with your music, and what you're good at. If the nitty gritty EQ and compression stuff, which really can be quite bothersome, like compressors work in the ms range for which it takes ages to train the required ear sensitivity, if all that isn't really your cup of tea, then it's all well and good to pay a trained engineer do the hard work. But if you already got good ears and a system that you know, and the motivation to get it all right, then you might as well go the distance yourself. It really adds to the fun.

I don't think anybody's ever listened to a brilliant track by somebody and got hung up on a few EQ spikes.

How's this, I'll clarify by means of an example. A friend of a friend runs a mastering studio. It's a properly engineered and treated room that eliminates spikes and dips in the reflections. He monitors on a pair of DynAudio 25th anniversary monitors, aside from having a lots of other gear ranging from a variety of 1/2" tape to his favorite outboard compressors, eqs and reverbs. All his noisy gear ranging from computer to equipment with fans is in a compartment that looks like a fridge that vents outside of the room. This means you can hear a pin drop in the room when the door is closed. Gear fetish maybe, but it is solid gear.

We sat in his room one day doing a/b comparisons. It's not even a matter of getting a stereo file, sometimes he'll get stems (submixes of sounds and music) and craft them one by one, like a musician, because that's what he does, all the time. It's not a matter of just subtractive eq-ing for spikes and muddiness, and fixing glitches. He accounts for things like phasing, stereo spacing, and dynamics. He has a more objective ear because he gets a wide range of stuff to work with.

At the same time, he's not perfect, going back to my first post The vast majority of what he did was a massive improvement, balanced, cleaner+richer. But a friend of mine sent him a shoegazey type track and when he sent it back it was rich, smooth and lush, yet he smoothed out all the distortion and in the process the track lost its punch. So mastering does change the music. Sometimes quite a lot. Mastering engineers do have their own 'style' of mastering. I probably wouldn't send my last idm/shoegaze crossover album to an engineer who masters for jazz, even if I could afford it.

  On 12/14/2011 at 11:22 PM, TwiddleBot said:

I'd have to look to find what of their stuff was mastered and what wasn't because the tracks that pop up from their album were mastered here:

 

http://www.amsterdammastering.com/

 

ha - those guys are funny. the FTB room model guy (Northwood) makes every effort to distinguish his room model from LEDE - yet will never discuss a single time-domain criteria for his FTB rooms (nor present ETCs). it's funny how all of these guys take every opportunity to bash LEDE, and then when pressed to define what issues they have with the room model they run away.

http://www.gearslutz...ion-thread.html

I understand that precise knowledge of how mastering process works (which devices to use, what kind of space is the best for listening ...) is very important. But my workflow was always getting the best sound out of what I have, so when add the first instrument I make it top-notch crispy and when I add another instrument I make them both sound harmoniously paired and so on ... and a limiter over master-out all the time. This way I can easily tell where I need a sound that is more bassy or more mid or more high, I just have a constant image of sound in my mind and try to fill it the most. EQ and compressor and smart building are the way to go I think. I've used the same speakers for over 10 years now and they are just okay, nothing special, but I heard almost every song I like on them and have made music on them for so long that I know what sounds good or bad. Sometimes I have privilege to use high-quality studio speakers for test listening and it sounds pretty much the same way than on my speakers, just a little wider and fuller (like it should on studio hifi).

  On 12/14/2011 at 11:58 PM, TwiddleBot said:

How's this, I'll clarify by means of an example. A friend of a friend runs a mastering studio. It's a properly engineered and treated room that eliminates spikes and dips in the reflections.

it's about the time-domain, not the frequency-domain.

said it enuff but doubt it will be absorbed on such a forum as this.

kids these days and throughout the past 20 yrs. .. addicted to the frequency domain and hold to it tight like Linus does his blanket. you're in the wrong domain.