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@tecnolover: EQing isn't a part of mastering...the mastering stage isn't supposed to do all that "magical stuff."
As stated by Arksun:
| quote: | Also what are you using for monitoring. The better your monitors (and acoustic space / listening position ) , the easier it is to hear exactly where the problems lie, making it much easier to fix the eq/levels/width etc etc.
It's really driving me crazy now, everyone expects everything to be fixed by 'mastering' and that mastering is some amazing magic wand.
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and in another post:
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Haha, well, my point was more in terms of the way 'mastering' has been marketed and thats the manufacturer's fault.
All these plugins are out now brandished with the word 'mastering' on it, giving the amatuer producers this idea that that's where all the fixing lies with making a track sound good.
I just think some the new generation of producers need to be re-educated to understanding that its really about getting the fundamentals as rock solid as possible to really make a track sound good.
Really that's something that applies to many things, whether its learning a martial art, or building a house!. If the foundations are solid the rest follows smoothly. Dodgy foundations and you spend far too much time and effort trying to stabilise and support the structure at a later stage (just like mastering)
Mastering should be about giving that final polish to an already balanced track, yes some corrections can be made, and made well in skilled hands using high end tools, minimum phase multiband compression etc. But again, its the old 'you can't polish a turd' scenario.
There's really no specific advice that can be given for these sort of things, its a question of learning to listen to music in a way that you can deconstruct it and realize what needs boosting/cutting where.
Use reference material, our perception of sound changes all the time as the brain constantly re-adjusts the frequency balance (in the same way as when you've been wearing coloured tint glasses for a while, when you take them off you get a negative colour shift until the balance re-settles again). Play tracks you know are well engineered through your speakers/headphones and relate to that whilst producing.
nec218, you mentioned the pads clashing with the hihats, have you tried just using eq to roll off the higher frequencies on the pad sound?. Or perhaps that particular sound has too much fizzyness to it, or heavy aliasing, and you need to find a sound that just has a smoother top end.
More often than not, I'll change the choice of sound itself, than use one that's causing technical issues trying to fix it to make it fit in more. |
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Then you aren't even near what mastering is. It's not just about getting the track louder. EQ is one the most important parts of mastering and requires not only very good monitors, good ears, very flat room accoustics but very good EQ's also.
