My situation: I produce using Reason, so using Reason alone, I've been told that the sound quality of the end product is not as great.

I just got Cubase and have fiddled a little but still haven't got the ropes.

What would be the best method of mastering a song from Reason to make it clean and crisp, like a professional end product? Would the best be to run Reason into Cubase and master it from there? Or to export each layer of the song in Reason to .wav files, then Import each .wav file into Cubase and master it from there? Or should I just not bother with it and save up for ProTools?

How do you most of you master your songs?

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"Hearing the music is just like seeing the colours of trance and feeling the power of acid."

Well, this is really done at the mixing level as opposed to the mastering level. It starts with the cleanest source samples, all carefully EQ'd such that they fix the mix well. If your mixing is done well then all the mastering should really consist of is a little EQ for gloss and compression.

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"When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading."

I personaly... export to wavs and then throw it all in cubase for sequencing, and then use soundforge for most of the mastering. But alot of people complain that exporting from reason takes some of the life out of the sound, its hard to hear, but sometimes you will pick up on it, and if this is the case just record you pcs sounds to export. Also check out the Production Studio

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Avant Sounds.com

I'm no master when it comes to mastering - in fact, I suck at it. But here's how I do things anyway, not that it'll be of much help to you or anyone else.

I always strive to get the best possible sound quality from Reason before exporting. Perhaps it's a given, but you can't work miracles with a track that sounds bad to begin with. Ensure that there are healthy levels of bass, mid and treble, check those volume levels and watch for clipping, particularly in build-ups. As Sean Walsh has said already, use only high quality sounds/samples. You can't rely on external mastering to cure everything...

As for said external mastering, I've always used Steinberg WaveLab in conjunction with something called 'Waves 4.0'. To be fair, I don't do much at this point because I'm knackered. But I will always normalise the volume, and do a bit of EQing. This is usually as simple as adding treble and taking away a little bass. It makes quite a difference, though. And if I'm feeling a bit saucy, I might add some phasing effects and employ other wizardry.

There, well that was all quite pointless, wasn't it? Wasted some time, though...

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www.myspace.com/alazarmusic
Al Azar - At The Edge Of Tomorrow (A Retrospective) 16 tracks for FREE!

quote:

Originally posted by MaRt There, well that was all quite pointless, wasn't it? Wasted some time, though...

Not really... Gave some good points to me atleast..

I use Soundforge 6.0. It's absolutely fantastic!

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ehm.... wrong section

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Daniel