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when doing final mix... (pg. 2)
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| Eldritch |
| quote: | Originally posted by daeus
I havent got to this point yet but when I finish a song I've read that bouncing the entire tune to a WAV then mastering (as best you can) with the OZone mastering VST.
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Completely pointless, unless you want an unmastered version for some reason. You might as well just apply the mastering on the master channel. The advantage is that you don't need to worry about clipping on the exported track and it saves time. |
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| G-Con |
| quote: | Originally posted by Eldritch
Completely pointless, unless you want an unmastered version for some reason. You might as well just apply the mastering on the master channel. The advantage is that you don't need to worry about clipping on the exported track and it saves time. |
not completely pointless. For one if your cpu is very high, its good to have just the one wav so it plays back seamlessly enabling you to concentrate on the job of mastering.
second reason (the reason izone give) is it stops the temptation to start altering individual channels and sounds. The idea being that you complete track in full, mixdown in full then you can focus on mastering on its own. |
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| derail |
If the final mix is perfect, there's no temptation to alter individual channels. If there's something wrong with a channel's level, then yes, you want to be able to change the channel's level. Though absolutely, ideally you'd have all that worked out before mastering.
Mastering shouldn't throw out the balance of your mix. I "master" as I go, getting the levels right, getting the instrument's eqs set right (well, it's actually called mixing. If the mix is done right there's no need for an extra mastering stage). The master channel has an L1 on it and it's done.
No bouncing down to WAVs (well, the recorded synth parts are WAVs, but they still have effects working on them) and no additional mastering step. It sounds fine to my ears.
If your CPU is having issues because you're using a heap of VSTs, why wait until mastering to render them to WAV and free up the resources? Lock them in/ freeze them as you go. |
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| kopi_luwak |
Mastering is always needed, not because your mixdown is great you dont need masterring, this is actually very wrong. Mastering is needed because there are several processes to be done, one of them for example is to get a good sound image in any stereo, car stereo, headphones, stereo image, etc, something you cant work from the mix because you are woring with several tracks instead two channels (stereo). All the tracks you hear in the industry, have a perfect mixdown, and all of them are taken to be mastered (EMI, BMG, VIRGIN, etc), usually at other studio, this is a classic process.
- transferring audio to workstation
- removing possible noises, pops, clicks and 50/60Hz humming
- compression and multiband compression
- equalization - correcting the tonal balance
- soundmatching - adjusting relative volume levels, EQ, stereo image etc. between songs
- multiband stereo enhancement
- multiband harmonic enhancement
- editing track start/end points, making fade ins/outs
- maximizing
- limiting
- dithering 16bit or 24bit depending of the final media
- high quality processing on 32bit Floating Point up to 192kHz with one of the best D/A-A/D converters
Kopi =o. |
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| Diginerd |
Oy...
1. 2 Bar loops saves disk space, but pushes your disk I/O higher Vs whole track bounces
2. 2 Bar loops MAY be tighter if your sequencer is garbage, or give you that loop feel. Personally I like whole track bounces for the variation.
3. An Uned about with 2 Track is ALWAYS a great idea.... Certainly the guy sat in the $500k mastering suite will thank you.
If your track ever gets that far..
4. Handy hint, if you have "Decision Angst" instead of bouncing to one 2 Track LR, bounce to say 8 tracks...
1. Kick
2. Bass
3-4. Instruments
5-6. Perc
7-8. FX
As everything is digital the 8 tracks together should be a perfect match.
Read:- flip polarity of the 8 tracks, play against the 2 track master version and normalize. You should hear NOTHING.
After that's done you can tweak at a macro level. ie Compress, EQ and mange whole sets of parts at once.
Trust me..
It's refreshing, and will get you a lot closer to where you need to be... Hopefully it will stop you from destroying any soul your track may have by slamming a hard limiter on the master output and add your effort in making dynamics an endangered species.. |
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| derail |
"Mastering is always needed"
"All the tracks you hear in the industry, have a perfect mixdown, and all of them are taken to be mastered"
I have a real problem with terms such as ALL, ALWAYS, NEVER and so on. It's very black and white thinking.
Mastering is a final check, and yes, those things you mentioned are extremely important. For my last album, absolutely I sat there with my mastering engineer and we worked on the album as a whole, to give it a consistent feel.
For individual tracks, which don't have to fit with any other tracks, that isn't an issue. A good mastering engineer will have the maturity to say, on occasion, "this piece of music sounds great. I will not do a single thing to it".
From my viewpoint, many many tracks that get released, even on the top compilations, have nowhere near a perfect mixdown. Sure, some mastering is likely done on most of these to try and salvage what can be salvaged, but mastering won't fix mixing problems.
We all make decisions on which of our tracks we take to get mastered. I've been to many mastering engineers. Some of them make my tracks sound a lot worse. Some of them improve them. Sometimes mastering isn't required.
All those things you mentioned - fade ins/outs, dithering, multiband enhancement, maximizing/limiting, compression, equalization, etc can be applied to the master channel on the original mix.
I'll agree that in the vast majority of cases, mastering as an additional step would really help things. But I can well imagine a lot of great sounding tunes out there today didn't have an additional mastering step.
If mastering changes your sound dramatically, then there are problems with your mixing. Otherwise, you're going to put years into working on your own distinctive sound, only for a mastering engineer to come in with their personal tastes, and change it completely in the first 10 minutes. (some of them do this! Some of them don't want you to bring in reference CDs so they can give you exactly what YOU want!) Obviously the good ones find out what YOU want and will try to give you that. And hopefully get you to do the mix again if the mix isn't salvagable.
The main issue I have here is this: take 100% responsibility for your sound. Don't give other people massive control over YOUR songs, unless you're happy to do that. If you have a strong vision of who you are and what your sound is, then like heck do you want other people interfering with that. If you're not entirely sure what you're after, then yes, mastering engineers may be able to provide valuable feedback and help you, but please aim to one day take complete control of your sound. if you still use external mastering engineers (like I do from time to time), sit there with them and tell them what you want. You're paying them, they're working for you. |
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| Diginerd |
+1
Attended mastering sessions are key. Sending your track off to some anonymous guy is not going to teach you anything, and the results may well be sub-standard as you had no influence in what was arbitarily done to your track. that sucks if you paid big $$ for what you had hoped to be an awesome experience.
1st thing is to find someone with a strong reputation (and by insinuation a strong understanding) of the type of music you're producing.
A pop mastering engineer will MASSACRE a club track, as will the guy who is cutting acetates for the local punk bands...
But... Find someone in a decent room who knows what they are doing though and your world will turn upside down.
The greatest complement I ever recieved was from a well regarded mastering engineer turning to me after listening to a track saying "Well, there's nothing I need to do to this".
Ok, it took 9 visits with varying degrees of deficent mixes to get to that, but each time when he was tweaking the track I watched and listened to what he did and why. If you're paying for quality talent they'll tell you what they're doing so the next time you visit (Assuming you're a quick study!) you won't make the same mistakes and what you deliver to them will be of a higher standard, with a consequentially higher final standard of track.
Best quote I ever heard from a mastering eningeer "We can polish turds, but unless they're solid & frozen we can't make them gleam..." |
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| kopi_luwak |
| quote: | Originally posted by derail
"Mastering is always needed"
"All the tracks you hear in the industry, have a perfect mixdown, and all of them are taken to be mastered"
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If you see, I named only major labels like EMI, Vrgin, wich all have perfect sound quality, I took special care to name major labels because right now the industry is so full of digital sales mixed by producers without the comprensive knowlegde&experience of a sound enginner.
I have a real problem with terms such as ALL, ALWAYS, NEVER and so on. It's very black and white thinking.
Mastering is a final check, and yes, those things you mentioned are extremely important. For my last album, absolutely I sat there with my mastering engineer and we worked on the album as a whole, to give it a consistent feel.
For individual tracks, which don't have to fit with any other tracks, that isn't an issue. A good mastering engineer will have the maturity to say, on occasion, "this piece of music sounds great. I will not do a single thing to it".
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It can sound great, but mastering is important not only because the sound quality, but some important things as I said before, like to create a good sound image in any stereo.
From my viewpoint, many many tracks that get released, even on the top compilations, have nowhere near a perfect mixdown. Sure, some mastering is likely done on most of these to try and salvage what can be salvaged, but mastering won't fix mixing problems.
This is because the digital era, now you can hear a lot of tracks released with not a perfect mixdown, or mastering at all, all done by a producer, without a sound enginner, in the past, before the internet, the majority was done at a studio.
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We all make decisions on which of our tracks we take to get mastered. I've been to many mastering engineers. Some of them make my tracks sound a lot worse. Some of them improve them. Sometimes mastering isn't required.
All those things you mentioned - fade ins/outs, dithering, multiband enhancement, maximizing/limiting, compression, equalization, etc can be applied to the master channel on the original mix.
That stills being mastering, once you have finished the mixdown, and you apply all that in the master channel, is mastering, you just do it in the master channel instead the exported wav, and is not the best way to do it.
I'll agree that in the vast majority of cases, mastering as an additional step would really help things. But I can well imagine a lot of great sounding tunes out there today didn't have an additional mastering step.
Even a sound enginner, with alot of experience, will send his tune to be mastered, usually by other sound enginner, because as you know, is not recommended to master your own tracks, believe track, ft cher, was done at a studio by a sound enginner, and in the interview he says even when the tracks done, we sent it to be mastered, this is the standart, mastering is not only relate to improve the sound, but to get the track perfectly done to any sound system.
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If mastering changes your sound dramatically, then there are problems with your mixing. Otherwise, you're going to put years into working on your own distinctive sound, only for a mastering engineer to come in with their personal tastes, and change it completely in the first 10 minutes. (some of them do this! Some of them don't want you to bring in reference CDs so they can give you exactly what YOU want!) Obviously the good ones find out what YOU want and will try to give you that. And hopefully get you to do the mix again if the mix isn't salvagable.
You are focusing only about the quality of the mix, and forgeting other processes I did mention before, plus a master is not sent to be changed totally, that's just pointless, unless the original mix was totally wrong, it's done to reach the maximum level of quality, not intended to change the whole mixdown.
The main issue I have here is this: take 100% responsibility for your sound. Don't give other people massive control over YOUR songs, unless you're happy to do that. If you have a strong vision of who you are and what your sound is, then like heck do you want other people interfering with that. If you're not entirely sure what you're after, then yes, mastering engineers may be able to provide valuable feedback and help you, but please aim to one day take complete control of your sound. if you still use external mastering engineers (like I do from time to time), sit there with them and tell them what you want. You're paying them, they're working for you.
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No one is giving 100% control over the master to other person, unless someone only focused into the composition and not the production, like a pianist for example, is a process done by both, when you do the mixdown you have a kind of sound idea on mind, when you go to a studio to get it mastered, you are involved in the process, so the sound enginner wont change totally the sound image you had in mind, and he helps you to reach the best of your tune. |
If mastering would not be so important, because the mixdown is great, there would not exist mastering, because mastering is not intended to fix broken tracks, but to reach the higuest level, check out any big band in the history, mastering will be involved always ;).
Kopi =o. |
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| derail |
A lot of this is historical. You're talking about "big bands" on "major labels" like EMI, Virgin etc. Yes, absolutely all that music went through mastering engineers.
I'm talking about trance, including the greatest sounding trance. I don't think all the greatest sounding tracks had a separate mastering stage. Most of them, absolutely. But ALL? No. It isn't an essential process if you've taken care of it during the mixing process.
Please explain why mastering has to be a separate process from mixing. What will that separate process be able to achieve that applying the same process to the master channel won't? I don't see why it's not possible to get the same result.
Some mastering engineers get to trust their one set of speakers and don't feel the need to check many types of speaker, to check that the mix will sound good everywhere. Some will check a few different speakers/ systems. Likewise, if an artist has a few year's experience with how their mixes sound on other systems, then they trust that their listening environment is telling them what they need to hear. No need for separate checks. It sounds good on their system, it'll sound good everywhere, based on their years of experience.
I'll definitely get further external mastering done in the future. I've attended a lot of mastering sessions for my tracks and I've realised how very, very limited the process actually should be, ideally. In an ideal situation, the mastering engineer won't do a thing to it. They're looking for things that went wrong in the mix. If they need to touch an eq, that's something that went wrong in the mix. Whether it's due to the listening environment in the mixing room or whatever, that's something that went wrong in the mix. If the mastering studio has particular high-end volume maximization hardware that the mix engineer doesn't have, then yes, you'd probably rather have that working on your track than the plugin you'd use. But a lot of mastering engineers are using Waves plugins, and they're the exact same plugins I have in my gold bundle. A lot of stuff was mastered using Waves and a lot of it sounds fantastic.
If I get external mastering done, I:
1 - sit in on the session. That's absolutely vital. It's my track, I know every sound that went in there, I want to know everything that the engineer is doing to it, and why. When it comes to eq, limiting, etc, finding out the why will help me to improve my mixing skills so the mastering engineer doesn't have to do that again with my tracks.
2 - bring in reference CDs with as narrow a ballpark as I can find, so the mastering engineer doesn't try to take it away from what I want and towards their personal musical preferences.
3 - Ties in with point 2 - find someone experienced in my sub-genre of music. I can spend massive amounts of money on a mastering engineer working in a million dollar studio, but if they generally master rock music, they may very well make my trance track sound like rubbish (and they have done! I learned that lesson!). If they do a lot of trance, and like trance, they'll do a better job with my track.
4 - make sure I have the opportunity to come back the next day, or next week after listening to it on my usual systems. It's hard to tell what's being done to a track when listening on unfamiliar speakers. One engineer I went to mastered extremely loudly, the music was slamming, it sounded great. Until the next day when I listened to it on my cd player!
I think every mix engineer should have the aim to one day not need anything extra done to their tracks at the mastering stage. It takes a long time to get there, but I think it's wrong to say that every artist will always need to get their tracks externally mastered.
The Mix is 99.9% of the final sound, mastering 0.1%. Give 100% to the process when mixing, don't think mastering will make things sound better. |
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| Diginerd |
If a track is on Vinyl (And I don't mean cut with a Vestax!), its been mastered.
Period.
For a Vinyl release Mastering is not just a good idea, but the law. No on is going to let a track with out of phase bass and other "Illagal" things near their very expensive cutting lathe.
How much tweaking is done, well that depends, it can be as simple as slapping a limiter on the bus to catch any random overs, or it can be all kinds of complex.
It all depends.
One of the key points to mastering is that it should be done in a different room to the one it was mixed in. Why? Because you'll only magnify the accoustic deficiencies of your montioring setup (That includes the room, it's all one big system).. |
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| derail |
Hmm. Yes, specialised mastering rooms (well, the very high end ones) have ideal listening conditions.
I still think though, if you have a good set of monitors and an excellent knowledge of how good tracks sound coming through them, in time you'll make great mixes. Sure, the first time you go to a mastering engineer, they might go "oh, 300 Hz is a bit low, I'll add a bit there". The second time they might go "oh, 300 Hz is a bit low, I'll add a bit there".
At that point you can say "okay, I'll keep going to get my stuff mastered and they'll keep adding stuff at 300 Hz" or you can say "I'm going to focus on that 300 Hz region and see if I truly have a handle on what's going on there".
I find, knowing what good sounds sound like in your environment is vital. Frequency analysis tools/ programs help catch mix issues as well. They just add that extra piece of mind that your track isn't going to sound weird, frequency-balance-wise, compared to the ballpark of your reference tracks.
In the end, we all do what we feel is best for our music! |
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| ASFSE |
| i agree with everythin derail said |
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