mastering discussion 2013

  On 5/7/2013 at 9:10 AM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 5/7/2013 at 8:55 AM, Djeroek said:

I know jack shit about mastering, should I really care about dithering, rms & perceived loudness of my tracks? The go by ear thing seems to work fine enough.

 

IMO they're only important insofar as they affect the listener's experience.

 

(And they do, a little bit)

 

 

 

  On 5/7/2013 at 12:44 PM, kakapo said:

Mastering is often about achieving consistency between tracks, rather than what is needed for an individual track i.e when mastering an album. This is where the 'loudness' thing comes in, but also, you may have a perfectly mixed track that still warrants EQ/compression.

 

 

Yeah these are both really crucial points.

also, it's really interesting how age can make such a difference in how you hear the mastering process, as someone whom is younger than some listeners I hear the much higher frequencies which sometimes can be missed out by an older listener.

Why master when you can make it sound good from the start?

  On 5/8/2013 at 5:18 PM, chimera slot mom said:

Why master when you can make it sound good from the start?

I see mastering as being synonymous with colour grading in video - Sure you could light every scene perfectly when you film it but more often than not in post you'd have to bring together different shots then grade them to create a universal whole, then maybe try adjusting the overall tone to create a character to the project. Mastering isn't the same as mixing

  On 5/8/2013 at 5:18 PM, chimera slot mom said:

Why master when you can make it sound good from the start?

 

there has virtually never ever been a professional record that didn't warrant mastering

Except for THIS one.

 

  On 5/8/2013 at 7:00 PM, LimpyLoo said:

 

  On 5/8/2013 at 5:18 PM, chimera slot mom said:

Why master when you can make it sound good from the start?

 

there has virtually never ever been a professional record that didn't warrant mastering

 

but an album would need mastering as tracks will have so many variations. To make it a flowing listening experience you would need to master an album as a whole (however little the tweaks are needed)

did Mike encounter challenges when trying to master footwork albums by people submitting tracks in 128kbps-192kbps mp3 form? Or did he just throw his hands up and say fuck it

Edited May 8, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

flol

  On 5/9/2013 at 2:23 AM, xox said:

 

already linked that, brah

I've just been learning mastering myself in Renoise.

 

To start, basically, I'll just slap an EQ 10 into a track after I have completed a pattern and do a low end shelf cut around the 20hz area. I'll then throw on a Filter and use the bandpass filter to sweep through the frequencies of a track slowly and then cut or boost frequencies very delicately to what frequencies I want to come out more versus ones I don't. I'll put on a compressor to that track and adjust based on amplitude and speed.

 

After all my patterns are done I'll put a second EQ 10 on and use the master spectrogram to look for any frequencies that are resonating between tracks and do some minor cutting of frequency bands. I don't usually boost any frequencies in this stage unless I want to bring out a bass part more in the final mix.

 

It's like having to wash dishes after cooking a lavish dinner: It's a very long and tedious process and I hate it, but it has to be done.

 

 

If I do mastering in Cooledit, its more to try out experimental stuff (dynamic compressor, strange Russian algorithms for filtering, etc...)

  On 5/8/2013 at 11:44 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

did Mike encounter challenges when trying to master footwork albums by people submitting tracks in 128kbps-192kbps mp3 form? Or did he just throw his hands up and say fuck it

 

har har, well as I stated before, it's important to try and get the tracks to flow well sonically so getting so geting the volumes etc right is important.

 

It's good to see old fashioned footwork bashing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWC9ByU17No

 

 

Matt masters planet mu and many artists (http://www.discogs.com/artist/Matt+Colton)

 

He's a real genius when he's in the studio, maybe this video will be insightful.

  On 5/10/2013 at 12:44 AM, rixxx said:

 

  On 5/8/2013 at 11:44 PM, John Ehrlichman said:

did Mike encounter challenges when trying to master footwork albums by people submitting tracks in 128kbps-192kbps mp3 form? Or did he just throw his hands up and say fuck it

 

har har, well as I stated before, it's important to try and get the tracks to flow well sonically so getting so geting the volumes etc right is important.

 

It's good to see old fashioned footwork bashing.

 

all bashing aside, it was a serious question. I mean was a professional mastering engineer, this Matt dude responsible for mastering all that footwork stuff submitted to Mu in low quality mp3 form? Just from my own experience, even if I loved the material and it was my responsibility to release it I'm not sure I could throw down $500 to have someone professionally master a 128bkps album just out of principal. So yeah it was a genuine question. I once had someone submit to me a 320kbps mp3 file for a compilation because they lost the wave master, i had to ultimately reject it because upon being distributed to the digital networks like Itunes it would be transcoded and lossy sounding.

Edited May 10, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

Mike does a vast amount of mastering, I cant quite remember which ones were mastered by matt that were the MP3 footwork tracks, I'll double check.

 

It actually wasn't too many of the tracks that were MP3s tbh.

this is my only reference point, http://www.discogs.com/DJ-Diamond-Flight-Muzik/master/362395

I think I bought it on boomkat as a 320kbps download and it sounded like the source was derived from a 128kbps file. I could be totally wrong though.

  On 5/10/2013 at 12:50 AM, rixxx said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWC9ByU17No

 

 

Matt masters planet mu and many artists (http://www.discogs.com/artist/Matt+Colton)

 

He's a real genius when he's in the studio, maybe this video will be insightful.

 

he mastered TUSS, and just for that, he deserves my attention.

I'm always shocked to hear how many stupid things can go out of golden 'pro' mouths!

This Mr. Coituston said that in comparison to 44.1k file 176,4k digital file sounds more 'natural' cause

it's >>>high definition<<<.

What are those freqs of wave shapes below 22.05k (a 30 year old can hear up to 18k max) that 44.1k digital file can't reproduce that 176,4k can?!

No knowledge of sampling theory what so ever! He's just another marketing parrot.
Hah...professionals...

Edited May 11, 2013 by xox

  On 5/11/2013 at 5:02 PM, xox said:

I'm always shocked to hear how many stupid things can go out of golden 'pro' mouths!

This Mr. Coituston said that in comparison to 44.1k file 176,4k digital file sounds more 'natural' cause

it's >>>high definition<<<.

What are those freqs of wave shapes below 22.05k (a 30 year old can hear up to 18k max) that 44.1k digital file can't reproduce that 176,4k can?!

No knowledge of sampling theory what so ever! He's just another marketing parrot.

Hah...professionals...

 

 

I read your entire post through these dorks' voices.

 

While I have no idea about mastering (just listen to my tracks lol) but I'm pretty sure that the guy who has mastered nearly all of my favorite electronic records and continues to get work and put out good work might have a reason to believe what he wants. Its sortof his job to care about audio stuff, isn't it?

 

I master horribly, this thread has helped me learn a lot, thanks WATMM

Edited May 12, 2013 by Audioblysk

  On 5/12/2013 at 2:44 AM, Audioblysk said:

 

  On 5/11/2013 at 5:02 PM, xox said:

I'm always shocked to hear how many stupid things can go out of golden 'pro' mouths!

This Mr. Coituston said that in comparison to 44.1k file 176,4k digital file sounds more 'natural' cause

it's >>>high definition<<<.

What are those freqs of wave shapes below 22.05k (a 30 year old can hear up to 18k max) that 44.1k digital file can't reproduce that 176,4k can?!

No knowledge of sampling theory what so ever! He's just another marketing parrot.

Hah...professionals...

 

 

I read your entire post through these dorks' voices.

 

While I have no idea about mastering (just listen to my tracks lol) but I'm pretty sure that the guy who has mastered nearly all of my favorite electronic records and continues to get work and put out good work might have a reason to believe what he wants. Its sortof his job to care about audio stuff, isn't it?

 

I master horribly, this thread has helped me learn a lot, thanks WATMM

 

 

I can see that you're a native English speaker so it could be that i f.ed up something but please, read it again; with eyes on the text!

>>> I didn't say he's bad in what he does, did I? No. <<<

...and if he wants to believe something it's his thing but it would be better for him to know before talking in front of so many people.

But don't worry, he's not the first one. It's a common mis-knowledge.

wish I'd read all this about 2 months ago, some good tips.

  On 5/12/2013 at 3:10 AM, xox said:

 

  On 5/12/2013 at 2:44 AM, Audioblysk said:

 

  On 5/11/2013 at 5:02 PM, xox said:

I'm always shocked to hear how many stupid things can go out of golden 'pro' mouths!

This Mr. Coituston said that in comparison to 44.1k file 176,4k digital file sounds more 'natural' cause

it's >>>high definition<<<.

What are those freqs of wave shapes below 22.05k (a 30 year old can hear up to 18k max) that 44.1k digital file can't reproduce that 176,4k can?!

No knowledge of sampling theory what so ever! He's just another marketing parrot.

Hah...professionals...

 

 

I read your entire post through these dorks' voices.

 

While I have no idea about mastering (just listen to my tracks lol) but I'm pretty sure that the guy who has mastered nearly all of my favorite electronic records and continues to get work and put out good work might have a reason to believe what he wants. Its sortof his job to care about audio stuff, isn't it?

 

I master horribly, this thread has helped me learn a lot, thanks WATMM

 

 

I can see that you're a native English speaker so it could be that i f.ed up something but please, read it again; with eyes on the text!

>>> I didn't say he's bad in what he does, did I? No. <<<

...and if he wants to believe something it's his thing but it would be better for him to know before talking in front of so many people.

But don't worry, he's not the first one. It's a common mis-knowledge.

 

 

 

wow you just sum up everything thats bad about watmm, fucking IDM fans think they know absolutely everything and that they are so much more superior than their others.

 

You don't understand what truly makes a record great, too involved in the technicals to understand the emotional.

id be much more interesting in examining his actual mastering techniques and not his opinion on high definition sampling rates. Most people will be working with 44.1khz material and end up hearing it in 44.1khz. If he shares the opinion that most pro audio engineers have, that higher sampling rates are useful, that's fine with me, it's a very common belief to have when in the industry.

Yeah, I tried to find some other stuff (talks etc) couldn't find too much, some interviews etc.. maybe you'd have better luck googling him (his name is Matt Colton) he's good at teaching this stuff.