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Time on mastering?

Hello,

How long time do you usually spend on mastering?

I'm not sure what's normal but I think I'm pretty quick with my mastering. I usually spend 10 minutes.. I have a feeling this is very little time, what do yoou think?

It depends.

Sometimes (just like DJSound) I spend hours and hours on it and the result is... well, shit. (usually way too much bass or something similar)

The last one took me about 30mins tops and it must be my best mastering yet.
Some tracks are easier to master than others...

Mastering? What's that... Nj��h... Just kidding

Anywayz, I am so new with Reason that I am just happy if I can create melody, so not yet mastering.

But if U create your sounds carefully so mastering should be quite easy thing to do... Well, that's just my opinnion

I guess mastering is really important, my stuff sounds like shit without mastering... no matter how good I try to mix it...

My intention in mastering is to bring to up the loudness without changing the way the track sounds (i.e. compression). I used to labour and waste a lot of time trying to fix problems during mastering. I don't even try to do that anymore, I will go back to the sequencer program and fix the levels in there (re-do the mixdown).

I personally have a lot of trouble using a compressor when it comes to compressing a whole track (as opposed to compressing one sound in the track). I can't detect small changes in the compressor settings and it can be incredibly time consuming to listen to the whole track after each little mastering tweak. I've developed a compressor setting that seems to work well on pretty much anything I do. I just have to tweak the gains for each track until the loudness is adequate. I then burn it and test out the track on different stereos to see how it sounds. I make notes of things I need to fix and go back and re-do the mixdown. This usually takes about 3 iterations.

I probably only spend about 10-15 minutes in wavelab using the compressor on the whole track, but fixing the problems in the mixdown can take hours.

quote:

Originally posted by Anheuser I've developed a compressor setting that seems to work well on pretty much anything I do. I just have to tweak the gains for each track until the loudness is adequate.

what are your settigns at (all compressors should have the same settings, so it should work on all)?

I have recently spent 4 or 5 days figuring out a new meathod of mastering, to be more efficiant, and to produce a better sonic result.
this is what I have come up with:

I usually try to fix all the levels in the sequencer, including lowering the master to -12 db (to prevent any clipping) and then export to 96.24 quality pcm wav.

Import into Cool Edit Pro 2.0 (soundforge takes way too long to apply changes).

Apply hard limmiting using a max of -0.5 db, and a gain of 5 db.

Apply pan/expand with center channel path at 0, stereo expand pretty high (have to adjust according to track),

Apply parametric EQ with low end around a 5 level boost, hi end at 2.6 boost, and don't touch the middle freques.

Set sample type to 44,1 / 16, + gaussian dither 1 bit, no noise shaping, pre/post sample on at 999 high quality.


For some reason I find this actually better without applying a compressor. Compressors are hard to use, and can molest the track if it's the slightest bit off.

SO here are my tips people. but remember, its always slightly different depending on the actual song.

enjoy.

chrono you should really invest in 24 bit

heres some tips i picked up on mastering while interning for a pro:

get a DE-ESSER

when using a compressor use a huge knee too raise the lower levels and maintain the high levels

spend $100 too $600 and get it done by a pro with alot of experience, they will be able to make it sound thousands times better

make sure that your monitors are flat

make sure the room you are in is a very good audio environment or you could screw up on the eq as some frequencies might resonate more

and theres a bunch of other stuff i dont remember right now ill try to post it latter

bondor

Chrono my Waves RCL compressor settings are below.

I typically do the following (in Wavelab):
1. Normalize to -2dB (to minimize the chance of distortion during compression)
2. Chain the Waves RCL compressor followed by the Steinberg ME Compressor.

Settings on RCL: Thresh=-0.4, Attack=1.00, Release=86.7, Ratio=5.00, Gain=2.5 to 5.0 (Typically, I only touch the gain until the track is loud enough, unless the compressor starts screwing with my track too much)

Settings on the ME Compressor: Softclip=ON (I do this so that I can crank the gain on the RCL compressor without causing clipping)
Output gain=set to desired loudness
I typically don't touch the EQ part of this compressor. If I want to adjust the levels of the track, I prefer to do another mixdown.

3. I render the track and then normalize to 0dB.

I don't know a lot about dithering, so I just use the Waves dithering plugin. Your only options are 16 or 24 bit.

I'm definitely not that experienced with mastering, so I try to keep it simple. I'm happy with my sound quality, so I'm not that motivated to put more time into it.

Let me know if you see any problems with what I'm doing. If you decide to give my process a try, let me know how it works out. My process won't make a track sound better, it's more geared towards bringing the loudness up.

quote:

Originally posted by Anheuser 2. Chain the Waves RCL compressor followed by the Steinberg ME Compressor.

sounds good.. I have the RCL, but I'll have to get the Steinberg ME Compressor.

One question that I was trying to figure out for a while though, how do you chain these things??

I've heard it reduces quality loss etc, so how do you do it?

quote:

Originally posted by Bondor get a DE-ESSER

I've got the waves de-esser, but I've never used it. Maybe I'll try it out.

Oh one more question:

when producing a vinyl, will the record company require a 24.96 copy of the track?

I advise against using a de-esser. It is the easiest way, but it DOES leave artifacts, be it very minimal ones. The couple of times you get some aliasing problems, just fix them by hand (in a wave editor, by just editing the evil bit in the vocal track for instance), problems only occur on few places, so hand fixing shouldn't take that much trouble.

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Chrono when producing a vinyl, will the record company require a 24.96 copy of the track?

CD master will do.

Which is why I don't understand why you're not keeping it all in the 44.1 khz 16-bit domain. All that dithering is worse than no need for dithering.

quote:

Originally posted by Pjotr G CD master will do. Which is why I don't understand why you're not keeping it all in the 44.1 khz 16-bit domain. All that dithering is worse than no need for dithering.

exactly.. that's why I think I'm going to start producing in 16/44. It saves alot of computer memory, plus when using 30 tracks of 24.96 audio it really lags the processor, and prevents usage of things like fx during the mix.

I found out how to chain plugins now, so you can ignore my last post

Anheuser, I tried your way of mastering, and you know the end result is almost identical to the way I did it before (posted earlier here).

I guess just do it the way you are most familiar with

What's best? Multipand compressing or Tube like compression (or tube modelling)?

I use T-racks and it works pretty good.. but I don't know if multiband compression would be even better

quote:

Originally posted by attacc What's best? Multipand compressing or Tube like compression (or tube modelling)? I use T-racks and it works pretty good.. but I don't know if multiband compression would be even better

I have heard that real tube compressors are hard to emulate in a software form, but that the real ones change the sound abit, and give it a much warmer sound. but tube compressors are expensive, one of the cheapest is the behringer

it's around $600 CND at my local music store.

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