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In Love With T-RackS

Hello fellow music lovers. I'm new to this forum but have been reading it for about a year now, and i think it's fantastic the way people share their hints and tips about certain aspects of trance producion. In my mind no genre will ever be as beautiful or emotive. Anyways movin on;=) .... I just wanted to say to any guys that are relatively new to production, that they should buy a copy of T-racks. I think it's a fantastic piece of mastering software and it really breathes life into any track that your fed up of hearing cos you've been workin' on it for six months!!. I'm going to post a track that i put together a few months back in the promotion forum, purely for feedback from you guys so please keep your eyes peeled.

well, personally, I'm against the act of attempting to clean up a sloppy mix with "mastering". Just get back in the mix until it sounds good! It's possible to create a mix that doesn't need mastering, which is always better.

A polished turd is still a turd.

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Originally posted by Pjotr G well, personally, I'm against the act of attempting to clean up a sloppy mix with "mastering". Just get back in the mix until it sounds good! It's possible to create a mix that doesn't need mastering, which is always better. A polished turd is still a turd.

you are against mastering? what if it's a polished diamond?

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Originally posted by Connector you are against mastering? what if it's a polished diamond?

That's not what he said at all.

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Originally posted by Mr.Mystery That's not what he said at all.

Note the ? i asked him a question. He said that "it's possible to create a mix that doesn't need mastering, which is always better". I was just woundering if he didn't like mastering for some reasons...

mastering will bring the fullness of the track out and create a stronger presence of key aspects of the mix...

but the main point about the polished turd thing is you can't make something that sounds like ass into a hit...that would be like taking a dried up steak someone made that tastes bad, and trying to recook that same steak to make it taste good...it aint going to happen, it still going to be dried out no matter how much sauce u put on it trying to camouflage how dry and bad it is, it will still won't taste good.

Re: In Love With T-RackS

quote:

Originally posted by perfect cadence Hello fellow music lovers. I'm new to this forum but have been reading it for about a year now, and i think it's fantastic the way people share their hints and tips about certain aspects of trance producion. In my mind no genre will ever be as beautiful or emotive. Anyways movin on;=) .... I just wanted to say to any guys that are relatively new to production, that they should buy a copy of T-racks. I think it's a fantastic piece of mastering software and it really breathes life into any track that your fed up of hearing cos you've been workin' on it for six months!!. I'm going to post a track that i put together a few months back in the promotion forum, purely for feedback from you guys so please keep your eyes peeled.

I am enjoying T-Racks as well, though I think I have barely scratched the surface of its capabilities...

quote:

Originally posted by Connector Note the ? i asked him a question. He said that "it's possible to create a mix that doesn't need mastering, which is always better". I was just woundering if he didn't like mastering for some reasons...

He's right... a track that is perfectly written and mixed will need zero mastering.

If you did it all correctly and chose the right sounds and made it all work the way it should, then you don't need to do anything to master it. In fact, mastering may even ruin the song.

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Originally posted by DJ Shibby He's right... a track that is perfectly written and mixed will need zero mastering. If you did it all correctly and chose the right sounds and made it all work the way it should, then you don't need to do anything to master it. In fact, mastering may even ruin the song.

Hey. This is only true if you are planning to only put it on a cd. If you wanted to put it on pretty much anyting else, cassette, radio, vinyl, it HAS to be mastered in just such a way or else itll sound like total shit.

Cheers,
Zac

quote:

Originally posted by Pjotr G well, personally, I'm against the act of attempting to clean up a sloppy mix with "mastering". Just get back in the mix until it sounds good! It's possible to create a mix that doesn't need mastering, which is always better.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Shibby He's right... a track that is perfectly written and mixed will need zero mastering. If you did it all correctly and chose the right sounds and made it all work the way it should, then you don't need to do anything to master it. In fact, mastering may even ruin the song.

You guys oviously aren't aware of what real mastering is if you believe that.

Yes, if you make a perfect mix (which is pretty much impossible and quite cocky for you to think that you are capable of doing) it will be perfect for your studio dynamics, your monitors, and equipment. But that is all it will be perfect for. Do you plan on having all your listeners come to your studio to hear your track?

Mastering makes your mix work on multiple other situations and formats and also will make your track louder so that it will equal levels of other songs. You don't want to have your song be the quietest track in a mix set and you also want to make sure that all parts of your track are heard evenly without one part being overbearing (something that may be impossible with just adjusting levels alone). Also Limiting can allow you to keep any nasty peaks from distorting. Expanders and sonic maximizers can give a more *full* effect which is impossible with mixing alone.

Exactly zero professional songs make it big without pro or semi pro mastering. I seriously doubt any big name DJ's would touch a track that hasn't been properly mastered.

If mastering ruins a track, the mastering was not done correctly.

all I hear is blah blah bullshit about if you do your mix right then you wont need mastering....who the hell do you think you are? Probably everysingle damn track out there needs mastering even if the mix is pretty damn good. So please don't consider yourself a master until proven worthy.

If any one of you can make a perfect mix that needs no mastering then your in luck because we just fired about 500 mastering engineers and replaced them with you!

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Originally posted by Limit all I hear is blah blah bullshit about if you do your mix right then you wont need mastering....who the hell do you think you are? Probably everysingle damn track out there needs mastering even if the mix is pretty damn good. So please don't consider yourself a master until proven worthy. If any one of you can make a perfect mix that needs no mastering then your in luck because we just fired about 500 mastering engineers and replaced them with you!

Whoa, whoa whoa...

I must have came across completely wrong here.

I was in fact describing a perfect and pretty much unattainable goal; it's the ideal. The thing you strive for in order to give yourself quality. The perfect mix.

I wasn't saying "AH HAH A I am DJ Shibby and my productions needs no mastering!!"

You're right about mastering for other mediums; but this is not something you do in your home studio with T-Racks. This is something that you let a professional do.

"Mastering" as far as a producer needs to achieve to give his song the most professional appeal towards a label... that's what we do.

Anyway, you guys are right... different media are mastered in specific ways (such as radio); as for your job as a producer, you can make an ideal mix that needs no mastering. It's possible.

Mixing and mastering for digital producers is usually something we do as we work; we add compression to our kickdrums, we duck certain instruments in certain places so that the others stand out, equalizing, we automate volumes and cutoffs, we place a limiter on there to stop clipping in the hot spots etc etc.

I'm just saying that when you get to the end of your process, you adding your waves L2 to make it louder shouldn't really change the song's sound too much. You should already be in a place where the song is solid, else the mastering plugs you use most likely won't make too much difference.

My personal advice is to ease up on EQ, compression, and limiting and focus on dynamics. That's what the master should be about : having a track that is both loud enough, and pumps properly.

Just tossing an L2 onto your track is *not* mastering. It's stuff that you should have done professionally if you get to that point.

Hey listen, I don't mean to come across as "I'm 100% right". The way you do things may be perfect for you; I'm just sharing what I've found to work well for myself. I'm also not meaning to blatantly disregard certain facts; like I said, you're right, Vinyl and digital MP3 need two different types of masters. If you know how to do that nicely, then that's awesome... share the knowledge.

Okay, peace.

I think you pretty well always need a decent end-master from the 'label-side' before doing anything with it; pressing onto vinyl, recording to audio cd, etc. Unless you already took care of it in some sort of professional environment.

What I believe is that the 'real' mastering doesn't always come AFTER the whole production of the track; you are in fact always busy improving the sound of the track when composing it - that's also mastering in my eyes. If you don't do this, the end-mastering won't be able to 'save' your track.

Okay, a solid end-master can sometimes do wonders for the sound and feel of your track, though if you're really still at a kind of starter level, it'll most probably be the 'trash-in-trash-out' method.

Blimey, what a load of whoo ha!!. It's good to see how emotional people are getting over their art. The point i was making (for the record), is that I like T-racks on first impressions and feel that it might be interesting for newbies to use. By running through a few presets they can hear (hopefully!) any muddiness in their mid area etc etc, and it may give them a different approach in how they attack their next piece of work, or amend their present one. Trial and error is always a good plan of attack, and if you are of the opinion that mastering is important, and you don't have the money or the intention of mailing your production to a mastering house for a lot of money, then T-Racks could play a part. It could never take the place of a fantastically trained musical ear, but it's the most intuative and cheapest way to go about it. Finally, Pjotr was right in saying that you can't polish a turd, but it helps to use a magnifying glass(T-racks)to see just how shi*ty it is, as people tend to learn from their mistakes.

hmm I see my statement has raised hell



What I said does not imply that I am the mix master of the world, and that my mixes are so great etc etc. But I do notice, especially in the "amateur scene" that mastering is used as a quick and dirty fix.

For vinyl, a track is mastered, not to make it sound better (ideally), but to make sure that the vinyl is cuttable/playable, and to get a decent volume out of it. The latter part is also applicable to any medium.

But a lot of "mastering" is a lot less subtle than that, which I think is a shame. If you invest time and effort to fix problems at the root, the result will at the very least leave you with more possibilities for a better end result.

I don't see why this has to be taken as arrogant. I'm not saying my skills are better, I'm suggesting a process which I feel would improve quality in a lot of cases.

Bah, mastering at home is overrated. Home producers should focus more on making a proper mix, rather than mastering. Most times a bedroom producer will completely kill the dynamics of their track by trying to "master" it by themselves, as it takes a truly skilled professional to properly master a track. Making your track louder is not a problem(as long as you save an unmastered copy), but overdoing it (which most seem to do) is a huge problem. Even some professionals screw up sometimes(look at some recent pop music, ie. recent Red Hot Chilli Peppers stuff, totally overcompressed to hell), so what makes you think the average joe with no experience can get it right. Just remember, as long as it took you to get a grasp on producing there is a hell of alot more to be learned about mastering, which is more about slight almost unnoticeable subtle changes.

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