i dunno. you know when you are in the process of writing a song. i cant just leave some part of the song and think 'ok, i can add a bit of sparkle to that later on when i master it.' if it sounds flat, i keep working on that part of the track until it sparkles. then i move onto the next part. invariably ill have a delicate balance going and something (and this always happens) will outshine what id just polished. or obstruct it. or something. and ill sort of have to polish it again or polish something else and get the balance right again. then ill add something else. repeat. ad nauseum. usually though ill get frustrated and annoyed part way through because of all this delicate rebalancing with hours in front of a spectrum analyser, ears splitting, compressors and EQs all over the screen. i cut out the mastering process. but i tend to hate most of my tracks just from running it over and over and over again on loop until its as it should be.

T-Racks vsti.

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maybe offtopic but the mixdown is imo more important than the mastering, it's easier to maximise and denoise a track which has a good mixdown.

I use Wavelab w/ waves plug and SF.

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Originally posted by d-miurge maybe offtopic but the mixdown is imo more important than the mastering.

exactly ! nowadays, a lot of amateur producers think that mastering is "TEH OMG" solution to make their badly mixed tracks sound great and pro. It's simple, it does not work like that.
Now that i've gained knowledge about mixing, i don't like to hear people saying their tracks are bad because they "suxx at mastering". They should just go back and mix it again.

(offtopic mode OFF)

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quote:

Originally posted by Derivative i dunno. you know when you are in the process of writing a song. i cant just leave some part of the song and think 'ok, i can add a bit of sparkle to that later on when i master it.' if it sounds flat, i keep working on that part of the track until it sparkles. then i move onto the next part. invariably ill have a delicate balance going and something (and this always happens) will outshine what id just polished. or obstruct it. or something. and ill sort of have to polish it again or polish something else and get the balance right again. then ill add something else. repeat. ad nauseum. usually though ill get frustrated and annoyed part way through because of all this delicate rebalancing with hours in front of a spectrum analyser, ears splitting, compressors and EQs all over the screen. i cut out the mastering process. but i tend to hate most of my tracks just from running it over and over and over again on loop until its as it should be.

My suggestion my friend is to take a few hours break from music all together and then come back to it with fresh ears, makes a world of difference! I used to have the exact same problem!

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Originally posted by JoeyEnv Guys, what does everyone use to master their tunes?

nyquist eq and tls maximizer. both freebies.

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Originally posted by d-miurge maybe offtopic but the mixdown is imo more important than the mastering, it's easier to maximise and denoise a track which has a good mixdown.

If you get your track EQ'ing and frequency balance done right during the mixdown, almost no post-production mastering is necessary.

I had a little sit down with Paul from Marscruiser and he showed me a few tricks on how if you EQ things to give each sound their own frequency space and properly compress the right sounds (namely your bass drum).

Grab a FFT plugin and strap it across your main output bus and solo each channel to see where your sound lie in the frequency spectrum. If you have a bunch of sounds that all lie around say 2KHz, then that range is going to sound very muddy, if not harsh. Separating things out like this and filling in gaps where there's a valley can take a muddy, hollow sounding track and turn it into something that shines (assuming the source material is any good to begin with).

Examples of some very busy tracks "mastered in the mix" are in my sig.

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