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someone hit the nail on the head. mastering is to make sure it sounds great on everything. do all the guys who dont master tracks have acoustically perfect rooms?? and amazing speakers? its noit just a second pair of ears. its a second pair of ears listening to your track making eq adjustments in a studio most of us can only drool over... you can NOT do that just by listening to it on headphone/car speakers etc. if you dont have an acoustically balnced room, how do you know you not got a big notch in your bass frequencies? sure you can use analysers but its no substitute for a good ME.

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Originally posted by studiobob someone hit the nail on the head. mastering is to make sure it sounds great on everything. do all the guys who dont master tracks have acoustically perfect rooms?? and amazing speakers? its noit just a second pair of ears. its a second pair of ears listening to your track making eq adjustments in a studio most of us can only drool over... you can NOT do that just by listening to it on headphone/car speakers etc. if you dont have an acoustically balnced room, how do you know you not got a big notch in your bass frequencies? sure you can use analysers but its no substitute for a good ME.

Some producers have studios which some mastering engineers drool over.

At what stage are the speakers and room good enough to make sure it sounds great on everything? Quarter of a million dollars? A million dollars? Where's the line?

i talked to one dubstep producer and he told me he masters his work as he`s producing it, does anyone else do this? and if so what is some advice you have for people who are just starting to make music?

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Originally posted by derail Some producers have studios which some mastering engineers drool over. At what stage are the speakers and room good enough to make sure it sounds great on everything? Quarter of a million dollars? A million dollars? Where's the line?

when you can run a frequency analyser on your speakers output and get a nice flat line from top end to bottom. or as close as possible anyway. however much money that takes. our control room cost about �5,000 to design and build and its not far off that - couple of little dips in the bottom end but nothing major. we did it as cheaply as posible as well - ie built it ourselves instead of hiring builders!

and you need good speakers as well, preferably a couple of pairs. main room and nearfields at least.

www.myspace.com/iainsanderson , have a look around

my studio partner makes a rough master while he mixes using the UAD plugins and liquid mix. its a template he loads up when he starts the project - then adjusts the settings to taste. bit more complex than that as he has about 50 templates to choose from depending on the band he has in. record the tracks, switch on the plugs and bang - finished. ok its taken him nearly 10 years of recording and producing bands to get that quick at it but his stuff sounds as good as some commercially released bands.

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Originally posted by derail Getting your songs mastered is about having a professional objective second pair of ears. Unless you grow a second head, you can't master your own songs. You can learn how use tools like compressors, limiters and EQs on the master channel of your song, and use similar settings to a mastering engineer, but to me this isn't mastering. I don't believe you can master your own songs, unless you take a break of a year or so between finishing the song, then mastering it from a freash perspective.

This is a very very dumb statement to make. You CAN and many DO master their own songs. Yes you may not have an ideal environment to do so but if you know what you want your song to sound like which HAS been mastered by an engineer; it's just trial and error to get there. Anyone who believes different is dumb.

Why do I master my own tracks? Because I'm a perfectionist and I don't need to pay someone to get it to sound the way I WANT IT! It takes longer yes; but I spend 1-2 months on each track, making sure I don't fall into the trap of releasing too much too soon like the rest of the industry.

There is nothing wrong with being a perfectionist and taking your time with projects. I let them sit for a good amount of time before I even allow others a listen. When they've sat for a week or two and I come back after working on other tracks and listen and I still love what I hear; they're good to go. If not, there is still work to do.

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Originally posted by Richard Butler The greatest realisation for me has been to truly learn to listen and then be prepared to tweak for thousands of hours, no short cuts. Each time I thought I'd cracked it, I realised I had yet further to go. Years ago I knew the theory of making a supersaw pluck ("you slap 3 saws together, slightly detune, get the amplitude and filter envelopes lpucky, add some reso, slap on some verb and ping pong and job done" - notttttt), yet like most if not all noobs I then found the result still lacked that certain almost intagible something. I found you had to go incredibly deep into every tiny paramater over and over. The lesson I learned then was that for me personaly it comes down to literally thousands of hours tweaking to be able to achieve those miracle sounds - I'm for sure I've still a way to go. Mastering is that final polish (if needed), to ensure playback on a variety consumer systems and to match the percieved loudness of a number of tracks on a compilation. Think about chefs - they all can access the same recipe books, yet how is only a few become true masters of thier art? It has to be down to thier passion for the never ending search for tiny details that add up to perfection. thousands of chefs could make a meal, but only a few will add that something extra. In the UK is a TV show called masterchef. Despite ALL the contestants claiming they have passion, in the end only a selct few go the extra miles and put in the extra hours to perfect tiny details. Above & Beyond always get thier shit mastered.

This is the motherfucking truth! Best post i've seen on these forums. This is where all of the time is spent on tracks and where the really great producers break away from the others who just want to move on to a new song. It takes me a week to finish a tracks composition, and one to two months tweaking everything to where it needs to be to sound ideal. If you really love producing this is the most fun part too!

Wish more people understood why this is so important.

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Originally posted by studiobob someone hit the nail on the head. mastering is to make sure it sounds great on everything. do all the guys who dont master tracks have acoustically perfect rooms?? and amazing speakers? its noit just a second pair of ears. its a second pair of ears listening to your track making eq adjustments in a studio most of us can only drool over... you can NOT do that just by listening to it on headphone/car speakers etc. if you dont have an acoustically balnced room, how do you know you not got a big notch in your bass frequencies? sure you can use analysers but its no substitute for a good ME.

You don't need any of those things to make a great master. You need your ears; your desire; an open mind for change, and something to go by for what you're looking to sound like. The only other thing involved is time and passion.

I think the underlying problem here is that the definition and process of "mastering" has changed and become very convoluted with the proliferation of home/hobby studios and the ubiquitous use of mp3s as the most widely used format. Bob Katz's book Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science is widely regarded as the authoritative reference on mastering, but how many have read it, let alone utilize the same or similar concepts and practices? I've read it and, of the parts that I actually understand, I only incorporate a handful of them when finalizing my mixes because much of it is just not relevant to my workflow and end product. On the other end of the spectrum, you have those who consider slapping a limiter/loudness maximizer on their master buss before exporting their mixdown as "mastering." So, what's the right answer? I have my own general opinion, which lies somewhere in between the two extremes described above, but even then I consider my personal approach to be more along the lines of "finalizing" my tracks for a specific medium or two (i.e., online/iPod listening [mp3] and, to a lesser extent, live DJ sets), and not necessarily "mastering."

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Originally posted by johncannons1 hey Cryo do you mind putting a pre and post mastered song up so we can have a listen. as ive never heard a pre/post comparison before?

I just noticed this! I'll try to remember to post a clip of one track that has been professionally mastered this weekend. (of course, I can't post the whole song because it's signed)

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Originally posted by mfitterer1 This is a very very dumb statement to make. You CAN and many DO master their own songs. Yes you may not have an ideal environment to do so but if you know what you want your song to sound like which HAS been mastered by an engineer; it's just trial and error to get there. Anyone who believes different is dumb. Why do I master my own tracks? Because I'm a perfectionist and I don't need to pay someone to get it to sound the way I WANT IT! It takes longer yes; but I spend 1-2 months on each track, making sure I don't fall into the trap of releasing too much too soon like the rest of the industry. There is nothing wrong with being a perfectionist and taking your time with projects. I let them sit for a good amount of time before I even allow others a listen. When they've sat for a week or two and I come back after working on other tracks and listen and I still love what I hear; they're good to go. If not, there is still work to do.

As Cryophonik said, we're using different definitions of mastering.

I do exactly the same thing you do - I spend a lot of time doing the exact same processes to get my song sounding the same as a song that has been professionally mastered. Many artists can create songs that sound like they've been professionally mastered. As you say, anyone who believes different is dumb. If you read my posts, I say several times that artists can create songs that sound like they've been professionally mastered.

The only difference is, I don't call this "mastering". These processes that you call "mastering", I call part of "mixing". We're doing exactly the same thing, but are using different definitions.

I just prefer to cleanly delineate the processes. Back in the day, many mix engineers mixed into a bus compressor, so they were already doing things to the overall sound - this was part of the mixing process, even though it could technically also be done at the mastering stage (if slightly differently).

It's also clear that some people don't delineate cleanly between mixing and mastering, when they put up forum posts asking "how do I master my tracks to get them sounding pro?" You get them sounding fantastic at the mix stage.

mfitterer1, I agree totally with what you're saying. We're just using slightly different definitions.

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Originally posted by derail mfitterer1, I agree totally with what you're saying. We're just using slightly different definitions.

Gotcha

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Originally posted by Ravist i talked to one dubstep producer and he told me he masters his work as he`s producing it, does anyone else do this? and if so what is some advice you have for people who are just starting to make music?

Steve Angello have said that he does the same thing. I don't really see the how it can be advantageous. FL8 has a limiter, with the default setting mind you, put in on the master channel as a standard when you open up a new project. On several occassions this has fucked up my mixing because I've forgot to take it away.

So even a just limiter I would find annoying.

But then, Steve Angello would probably have a nice enough accoustic setup and enough experience with sound to be able to produce this way.

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Originally posted by PutBoy Steve Angello have said that he does the same thing. I don't really see the how it can be advantageous. FL8 has a limiter, with the default setting mind you, put in on the master channel as a standard when you open up a new project. On several occassions this has fucked up my mixing because I've forgot to take it away. So even a just limiter I would find annoying. But then, Steve Angello would probably have a nice enough accoustic setup and enough experience with sound to be able to produce this way.

You learn how to mix into a compressor/ limiter, through experience. I tried it early on and couldn't handle it, the compressor was making all my levels go crazy. But these days I'm fine with it.

I just find it more inspiring, working with something that sounds "finished", as I'm working on it, rather than having the sound change substantially near the end of the production process.

here's a tune that i mastered using just my sennheiser hd 595 headphones
mastered:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1734626/master.mp3

unmastered:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1734626/unmaster.mp3

doesnt sound like much difference, but compare/solo the waveforms and you can see the master gives more space and cuts some weird harmonics

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Originally posted by Subtle Here you go, professionally mastered versus limiter slap on. http://www.subtleinc.net/unmastered.mp3 http://www.subtleinc.net/mastered.mp3

Actually there is quite a difference...its the quality of the mastered version that stands out... . Sounds really professional.

It sounds like the guy did some serious EQing when he mastered it, making the mix much less muddy.

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Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles It sounds like the guy did some serious EQing when he mastered it, making the mix much less muddy.

Yes, a lot of frequency sweeping.

I regularly freq sweep every sound in the mix nowerdays

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